DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERATURE

This study examines the use of metaphor as a tool for social criticism in selected poems from Kola Eke’s August 1985. The research explores how Eke employs figurative expressions to expose and challenge social, political, and economic injustices in Nigerian society. Through vivid metaphors, the poet critiques corruption, class oppression, gender inequality, and moral decay that characterize post-colonial realities. The study interprets these metaphors as symbols of resistance and social awakening, reflecting the voice of the marginalized and the oppressed. The analysis focuses on how Eke transforms ordinary experiences into powerful social commentaries that provoke thought and inspire change. His language of protest and imagery of struggle reveal the tension between the ruling elite and the common people, making his poetry not only artistic but revolutionary. The study finds that Eke’s metaphors deepen the meaning of his criticism, turning poetic language into a weapon of awareness and reform.
The research concludes that metaphor in August 1985 is not just a stylistic device but a conscious political act. It exposes inequality, questions authority, and advocates social justice. By merging art with activism, Kola Eke’s poetry strengthens the tradition of Nigerian writers who use literature to mirror society and drive transformation.

This study presents a corpus-assisted thematic analysis of Angie Thomas’ novel, The Hate U Give, investigating the linguistic and thematic construction of racism, systemic injustice, identity crisis, and poverty. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research integrates qualitative literary interpretation with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and quantitative data derived from Voyant Tools to explore the novel's vocabulary and statistical features. The analysis reveals that the theme of racism is dominant, with high-frequency terms like "Cops" collocating heavily with violent indicators such as "tear," "gas," and "death," while the concept of "justice" is linguistically bound almost exclusively to the victim, Khalil. Furthermore, the study examines the protagonist’s fragmented identity, demonstrating how code-switching between African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Standard English is used to navigate the segregated worlds of Garden Heights and Williamson Prep until trauma forces these personas to collapse. significantly, the research highlights the often-overlooked theme of poverty, using lexical indicators to frame it as a cyclical survival trap where characters are forced to choose between the "legitimate hustle" and the "street hustle" to meet basic needs like "lights and food". The study concludes that Thomas utilizes specific linguistic patterns to map social inequality, providing measurable evidence that systemic oppression and economic scarcity are foundational to the narrative structure

Insanity possesses its own peculiar beauty and serves as a powerful instrument in literature, revealing hidden truths about the human condition, this study investigates the aesthetics and utilitarian values of narrating insanity in selected short stories: Edgar
Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”, Nikolai Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”, Chinua Achebe’s “The Madman”, and Adekunle Mamudu’s “The Beauty of Madness”. It examines how madness functions not merely as a psychological or pathological condition but as a narrative technique, a thematic instrument, and a philosophical metaphor. The research situates insanity as oth an artistic medium and a utilitarian tool that enables the exploration of social, moral, and existential tensions within diverse cultural contexts. Anchored in psychoanalytic literary theory, drawing particularly from the ideas of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, the study interprets madness as a manifestation of repressed desires, fractured identities, and unconscious
resistance to societal norms. Through close textual analysis, it investigates how anger, frustration, and the collapse of reason serve as emotional and structural forces that drive each story’s form and content. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, relying on close reading, interpretation, and comparative analysis to unpack how each author constructs madness as a mode of critique and revelation. The findings reveal that narrating insanity operates at the level of aesthetics usefulness in exploring human consciousness and societal dysfunction. Madness, as represented in these stories, becomes a creative discourse on identity, alienation, corruption, and the instability of reason. Ultimately, the study asserts that madness in literature is not a deviation from
meaning but a deepening of it — a poetic method of confronting truths that sanity often conceals

This study examines how the combination of language, images, and spatial layout convey messages of religious beliefs, values, and practices in Deeper Life Christian Women Mirror. This study employs Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) theory to analyze Deeper Life Christian Women Mirror studying how various messages are conveyed through different modes of communication like images, layouts, texts, and gestures e.t.c. This systematic approach merges different analytical tools such as Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA),Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA), and Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL). This study is limited to five physical copies of Deeper Life Christian Women Mirror, issued in 2024-2025, primarily from local Deeper Life Bible Church branches in Benin City, focusing on the themes of principles for spiritual growth, healthy living and child nurturing. These collected copies will be subjected to a systematic multimodal discourse analysis (MDA), drawing on theoretical frameworks primarily from Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, recognizing that meaning is simultaneously constructed through multiple semiotic modes beyond just written language. Moreover, this study focuses on specific sections of the magazine such as articles on spiritual growth, child training and health talk e.t.c. It samples the data derived from close reading of the texts and the photographs of the images in Deeper Life Christian Women Mirror.

This study explores the representation of trauma and identity crisis in Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain and Richard Wright’s Native Son. It examines how both authors employ narrative technique to portray the psychological fragmentation of individuals struggling under repressive sociopolitical structures. In Arrows of Rain, Ndibe situates trauma within the postcolonial African landscape, exposing how state violence, corruption, and moral decay deform both personal and collective consciousness. Conversely, Wright’s Native Son situates trauma in a racially stratified America, where systemic oppression and poverty shape the disintegration of Black identity. Through close textual analysis, the research reveals that both authors transform narrative into a means of resistance— employing silence, symbolism, memory, and stream of consciousness to articulate suffering that language itself often fails to express. The study concludes that literature serves not merely as an artistic mirror of pain but as an act of reclaiming voice and agency within a world structured to silence the oppressed.

This study examines how Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah portray the struggles of African people living abroad. It focuses on how the authors use narrative voices, settings, and characterization to highlight themes of racial discrimination, identity crises, and immigrant experiences. Two theories were applied in this research: Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theory. During the course of this research, the researcher was able to examine racism from different scholars' perspectives using the two books as case studies. This research reveals that racism is not just practiced by individuals, but is also embedded in government structures and has evolved over time.

This study explores gender deconstruction in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater and Tendai
Huchu’s The Hairdresser of Harare. It examines how both writers question traditional
gender norms and present identity as fluid and socially constructed. Drawing on Queer
Theory and Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity, the research analyzes how
characterization, narrative technique, and symbolism are employed to challenge
heteronormative ideals within African societies. Emezi’s Freshwater portrays the protagonist’s fragmented identity through spiritual and psychological dimensions, redefining gender beyond Western binaries, while Huchu’s The Hairdresser of Harare explores gender and sexuality within a conservative Zimbabwean context, revealing through irony and social critique the marginalisation of queer identities. Using a qualitative analytical approach, the study concludes that both texts disrupt fixed gender categories and reimagine selfhood as performative and evolving. Through this, Emezi and Huchu expand the discourse on gender and identity in contemporary African literature, emphasizing diversity, self-definition, and the freedom of individual expression.

Poetics refers to the artistic principles and creative techniques that govern the composition of poetry, including the use of form, rhythm, imagery, tone, and language to convey meaning and emotion. The poetics of African humanhood, therefore, describes the artistic and philosophical expression through which African poets celebrate the dignity, identity, and spiritual wholeness of African people, while resisting cultural erasure and colonial domination.This study examines The Poetics of Celebrating African Humanhood using Maya Angelou and Ifi Amadiume’s Poetry, arguing that both poets employ poetic form, imagery, and rhythm to affirm the dignity and identity of African and Black people against colonial and patriarchal
opression. The study is limited to the analysis of selected poems — Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise, Weekend Glory, and Our Grandmothers; and Amadiume’s Nok Lady in Terracotta, Mistress of My Own Being, We Have Even Lost Our Tongues, Be Brothers, "Bloody masculinity" and Creation. Using a qualitative research method, the poems are analyzed through close textual and thematic reading to uncover how poetic language expresses African-centered values. The study adopts Afrocentric Theory and the Ubuntu philosophy as its the retical framework to foreground African perspectives and communal identity.Findings reveal that the technical elements of voice, rhythm, and repetition serve as vehicles for psychological and emotional restoration. In Angelou’s Still I Rise, the repetitive refrain “I rise” transforms trauma into an act of healing and self-assertion. Similarly, Amadiume’s Creation employs cyclical imagery such as “seed took root again” to symbolize renewal and resilience. Both poets use affirmative, rhythmic voices to democratize dignity and restore faith in African self-worth. The study concludes that the poetics of celebrating African humanhood in their works is defined by a shared aesthetic of resistance, empowerment, and spiritual wholeness—transforming poetry into a lasting testmony of African strength and identity.

This study examines the impact of war on the family as reflected in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come. It explores how war and political instability destroy family ties, distort affection, and transform domestic life into a site of suffering and endurance. Both writers reveal that conflict extends beyond the battlefield, invading personal spaces and reshaping identity and human relationships. Through the Postcolonial Theory, the study interprets how historical oppression, power struggle, and the search for belonging continue to influence the African social order. It analyses the themes, characterisation, and dialogue of the two novels to show how war breeds trauma, silence, and loss within homes. The findings show that both Adichie and Atta represent the family as a mirror of the nation. In Half of a Yellow Sun, the Biafran War dismembers homes and leaves emotional ruins that reflect the nation’s tragedy. In Everything Good Will Come, dictatorship, social inequality, and moral repression recreate a form of domestic war that stifles growth and love. The research concludes that African women writers use the family setting as a platform for recording the psychological aftermath of national crises. It contributes to scholarship by revealing that the true cost of war is not only in the number of the dead but in the brokenness that lingers within the living.

This study explores the discourse of political ideologies surrounding the Rivers State politics in Nigeria by examining the communicative functions and socio- political implications of Internet memes within the context of the Wike-Fubara political crisis in Rivers State. It adopts the discursive use of Kress and ven Leeuwen's Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) to analyze the multimodal nature of the cartoons that convey the Wike-Fubara political crisis. Overtime, memes have emerged to become a powerful multimodal tool in computer mediated discourse combining both visuals and written texts to convey political information. Through the analysis of memes, a discourse is engaged to intercept the Wike-Fubara political crisis, capturing the roles and influence memes have in contributing to public perception, and shaping the Nigerian politics. This research made the following findings: citizens use memes to mock and challenge political authority by turning serious issues into humorous visuals, godfatherism, security threats, and political tensions remains a dominant theme in Nigerian politics, and also that emergency rule is both a subject of satire and a source of anxiety. In conclusion, this study concluded that memes function as instruments of communication especially during the Wike-Fubara political crisis in Rivers State. It serves as the public voice expression frustration, hope and uncertainty.