scholarly journals Bridging the gap among social classes in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-191
Author(s):  
Abdou Sene

The Biafra War has been the subject of many historical accounts and literary texts. Among the novels produced about the Biafra War is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) where the author recounts not only the events leading to the war but also those during and just after the conflict. Though the events of the Biafra War constitute the central theme in Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie also deals with the relationships among social classes in this novel. One may wonder why the author shows that some upper-class people are keen on their difference, their ‘superiority’, and, on the other hand, people of the upper and middle classes are human and respectful towards lower-class persons. What is the purpose of the writer in drawing this parallel? From a socialist and humanist perspective, this article deals with “bridging the gap among social classes in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.” Based on sociology, psychology, socialism, and humanism, the paper will first deal with the criticism of the Nigerian upper class and then with Adichie’s advocacy for a socialist and humanist society.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Badri Akandi ◽  
Dwi Taurina Mila Wardhani

This research was about Marxism in Jack the Giant Slayer on social class and kind of Marxism. Marxism was an important thing in the society because Marxism wanted to remove social classes. Thus, this research was to describe how social classes could influence someone’s roles in the society. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The research was conducted by accommodating two theories: kinds of Marxism by Tyson (2006) and social class by Barry (2002). Tyson’s theory (2006) classifies Marxism into classism, patriotism, religion, rugged individualism, and consumerism. On the other hand, Barry’s theory (2002) classifies social class into the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class. The findings of the analysis reveal that there were ten data in Jack the Giant Slayer. The researcher found ten forms of Marxism, There were one form of classism, twelve forms of rugged individualism, and one form of consumerism. The most of kind dominant Marxism was classism. Besides, the researcher found three forms of social class, they were the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class. There were four characters of the upper class, one character of the middle class, and two characters of the lower class. The dominant social class was the upper class, which appeared in four characters.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (7(57)) ◽  
pp. 3-5
Author(s):  
Daria Andreevna Romanenko

The diary of G. Morris is valuable on the history of the French Revolution of the XVIII century, in particular on the problems of salon life in France, biographies of some outstanding personalities (Talleyrand, Lafayette, Necker). The article mainly focuses on the interpretation of events by the author of the diary — G. Morris, a revolutionary, politician, orator and a recognized authority in the circle of the upper class. G. Morris not only gives a chronology of the history of the revolution, but also rethinks this experience, which has become the subject for the study of this article. To reveal the topic, a question was raised, to which G. Morris indirectly gives an answer. The inertia of the revolution or just the beginning? Will there be a continuation of the revolutionary events or will it come to naught? And Morris was largely right when he said that the revolution did not achieve what was originally planned – freedom, which means that its work is not finished, but on the other hand, although the tension did not completely disappear, it was smoothed out by the activities of the government.


Imbizo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Epongse Nkealah ◽  
Olutoba Gboyega Oluwasuji

Ideas of nationalisms as masculine projects dominate literary texts by African male writers. The texts mirror the ways in which gender differentiation sanctions nationalist discourses and in turn how nationalist discourses reinforce gender hierarchies. This article draws on theoretical insights from the work of Anne McClintock and Elleke Boehmer to analyse two plays: Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon by Bole Butake and Gilbert Doho and Hard Choice by Sunnie Ododo. The article argues that women are represented in these two plays as having an ambiguous relationship to nationalism. On the one hand, women are seen actively changing the face of politics in their societies, but on the other hand, the means by which they do so reduces them to stereotypes of their gender.


1942 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
H. Barnett

Much has been written of William Duncan, "the Apostle of Alaska", who came to the coast of northern British Columbia in 1857 as a missionary to the Tsimshian Indians. Although he deplored it, in the course of his sixty years' residence in this area controversy raged around him as a result of his clashes with church and state, and his work has been the subject of numerous investigations, both public and private. His enemies have called him a tyrant and a ruthless exploiter of the Indians under his control; and there are men still living who find a disproportionate amount of evil in the good that he did, especially during the declining years of his long life. On the other hand, he has had ardent and articulate supporters who have written numerous articles and no less than three books in praise of his self-sacrificing ideals and the soundness of his program for civilizing the Indian.


1922 ◽  
Vol 26 (140) ◽  
pp. 325-330
Author(s):  
S. Heckstall Smith

If the thought of another war troubles you, then don't read this article. If you would rather say to yourself as the Secretary of State said to the Air Conference, “ There won't be another war for ten years, so why worry? ” then no doubt you will think with him that it is better to let other nations have alk the bother and expense of trying to advance; after all, we are jolly fine fellows and can soon pick up. If, on the other hand, you have imagination which gives you a nasty queasy sensation when you think of what might be, then perhaps the following notes, albeit disjointed and mostly stale, may at least conjure up in you thoughts of your own on the subject. This is all that is needed to help, our advancement in the air–the stimulation of spoken and written thoughts by the British nation, for if every taxpayer in the British Empire says “ Air Force,” then the Press and Parliament will say it too.


1880 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 202-209
Author(s):  
Cecil Smith

The vase which forms the subject of this memoir has been thought worthy of publication, both because it belongs to a type of which we have as yet but few examples, and also on account of the peculiar interest attaching to the design painted upon it. Its probable age can only be a matter of conjecture, as some of the vases of the class to which it belongs have been considered by archaeologists to be late imitations of the archaic, while on the other hand the internal evidence of the painting would seem to assign it to a place among the earliest class of Greek vases. It is figured on Plate VII.It is a circular dish with two handles, 3 inches high by 11¾ inches diameter, composed of a soft reddish clay of a yielding surface; the painting is laid on in a reddish brown, in some parts so thinly as to be transparent, and in other parts has rubbed away with the surface, so that it has acquired that patchy appearance generally characteristic of vase pictures of this type. The drawing, though crude and in parts almost grotesque, is executed with great spirit and freedom of style,—and thus could hardly have been the work of a late provincial artist—while in the shape of the column and of the wheel of the cart, in the prominent nose and chin which admit of no distinction between bearded and beardless faces, and in the angular contour of the human figures, we recognise features peculiar to an archaic period of art.


Author(s):  
Niek Van Wettere

Abstract This paper examines the productivity of the subject complement slot in a set of French and Dutch (semi-)copular micro-constructions. The presumed counterpart of productivity, conventionalization in the form of high token frequency, will also be taken into account in the analysis of the productivity complex. On the one hand, it will be shown that prototypical copulas generally have a higher productivity than semi-copulas, although there are some semi-copulas that can rival the productivity of prototypical copulas. On the other hand, it will be demonstrated that high token frequency is in general detrimental to productivity, on the level of the entire subject complement slot and on the level of the different semantic classes. However, the shape of the frequency distribution also seems to play a role: multiple highly frequent types are in my data more detrimental to productivity than one extremely frequent type, although the semantic connectedness of the types in the distribution might also be an explanatory factor.


Traditio ◽  
1948 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Kurt Lewent

Cerveri was decidedly no poetical genius, and often enough he follows the trodden paths of troubadour poetry. However, there is no denying that again and again he tries to escape that poetical routine. In many cases these attempts result in odd and eccentric compositions, where the unusual is reached at the cost of good taste and poetical values. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Cerveri's efforts in this respect were not always futile. His is, e.g. an amusing satire upon bad women. One of his love songs, characteristically called libel by the MS (Sg), assumes the form of a complaint submitted to the king as the supreme earthly judge, in which the defendant is the lady whose charms torture the lover and have made him a prisoner. This poem combines the traditional praise of the beloved and a flattery addressed to the king. Its slightly humoristic tone is also found in a song entitled lo vers del vassayll leyal. Here Cerveri, basing himself on a certain legend connected with St. Mark, gives the king advice in his love affair. Again the poet kills two birds with one stone, flattering the sovereign and pointing, for obvious purposes, to his own poverty. The latter is the only topic of a remarkably personal poem in which the author complains bitterly that, while many of his playmates have become rich in later years, the only wealth he himself did amass were the chans gays and sonetz agradans which he composed for other people to enjoy. Cerveri even tries to renew the traditional genre of the chanson de la mal mariée by adding motifs of—presumably—his own invention. This tendency towards a more independent way of thinking and greater originality in its poetical presentation could not be better illustrated than by the two poems which the MS calls Lo vers de la terra de Preste Johan and Pistola The one puts the poet's moral argumentation against the background of the medieval legend of Prester John, the other, which forms the subject of the present study, sets its teachings in a still more solemn framework, the liturgy of the Mass.


1863 ◽  
Vol 8 (44) ◽  
pp. 465-482
Author(s):  
C. L. Robertson

The subject which I am permitted to-night to bring before this Society is one I have long had at heart, and one which the daily experience of my practice at Hayward's Heath prevents my passing by merely on account of the difficulties which evidently attend the realisation of my hopes, should such an issue be granted to them. I refer to the want in our county of an asylum for the care and treatment of the insane of the middle class–a class with which, while separated by education and calling, we, in our profession, are, on the other hand, too often linked by the cominoli bond of narrow means and pressing daily cares.


1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-257
Author(s):  
Robert Iljic

The sentences of the type above mentioned are characterized, on the one hand, by the cooccurrence of bă with an intransitive verb, on the other hand, by the classifier ge following bă and introducing a noun relative to a unique referent. This type of sentence, quoted by most major contemporary Chinese grammars, and to be traced in baihuà texts, doesn't seem, nowadays, to pertain any longer to a universally accepted standard. This paper demonstrates that in these sentences, as in all bă constructions, bă actually marks a patient (even if the latter may be the subject-of an intransitive verb); besides, given its position before bă, a certain agentivity is always conferred to a noun in topic position, even if this agentivity, taken to its far end, boils down to the only desire of having been able to do something to prevent a given event (a point in case: the death of a father); finally, the function of ge before a proper noun or a noun semantically determined as unique, which can be found in some other sentences, isn't to count, that is, to indicate a quantity. but to emphasize the qualitative value of the noun (the father insofar as he is a father), the effect being to underline the value (price) that the speaker attaches to a given person or thing, hence the modal connotation ascribed to such sentences.


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