ABSTRACT: This research work exposes The Themes of Exploitation and Violence in Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow and Festus Iyayi’s Violence. The study portrays the evils committed again the poor by the rich social class in our contemporary African society. Such evils may be exploitation, deprivation, intimidation, suppression, humiliation and corruption in high places which are committed against people of lower classes. The study also depicts how Kaine Agary and Festus Iyayi’s writings highlights the political and economic pains African people of lower classes pass through as a result of exploitation and oppression by the ruling class. The poverty and subhuman standards of the lower class citizens as portrayed in these novels are as a result of the leadership styles of the ruling classes who were out to maintain the inequality that exists in the country through force and also suppression of any form of protest from the people.
The exploitation and poverty were so pronounced that the novelists create characters that suffer so much pain and humiliation because of the political and economic situation they find themselves. Hence they resorted to violence as a means of getting at their exploiters. To the novelists, the people need to come together to fight as a force to liberate themselves from the clutches of exploitation and poverty imposed on them by the ruling class. The study concludes that African writers should expand the horizon of their creative arts on the concept of exploitation, violence and socio cultural conflicts.
The Themes of Exploitation and Violence in Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow and Festus Iyayi’s Violence
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
The study attempts to examine the theme of exploitation and violence in Agary’s Yellow Yellow and Festus Iyayi’s Violence. The study foregrounds the manner in which these two novelists portray the social issues affecting the masses in the society. In the same vein, these two novels represent one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Nigerian literary scene. Their writings are distinctly characterized with directness of words that address social and national interests.
As socialist realists, Agary and Iyayi portray the nature of the Nigerian society in various ramifications from political to the economic exploitation and violence especially in terms of implication for the poor masses and marginalized members of the society. Iyayi and Agary in these novels under study explore the corruption and exploitation of the poor citizens. They explore the Nigerian socio-political structures and how individuals negotiate their existence within these structures. Iyayi and Agary are great Nigerian writers in whose novels are the problems of dislocation, exploitation, oppression, question of identity, corruption, bad leadership, and the disintegration of the society. In view of Iyayi and Agary’s assertion, Femi Osofisan expatiates in the mission of this generation that:
Our focus was on the present state of our society, on unmasking the class forces at play within it, revealing the material sources of exploitation, violence and social injustices, demonstrating how the masses could liberate themselves… and of greater performance now as the hero with a thousand faces, a thousand hands (16).
Osofisan’s point shown that since the writings of this era are on the condition of the ordinary people, the peasants and the poor workers in the society, Iyayi and Agary’s writing therefore reflects the social injustice that the rich imposes to the poor. Consequently, the examination above forms the research work under study.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The choice of Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow and Festus Iyayi’s Violence critically expose how the masses go through social injustice of exploitation, violence and humiliation that is inflicted on the individual in the society, such as the lack of development, fragmentation, the quest for wealth, the sour relationship between the employer and the employee… and the gulf between the rich and the poor in the society.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this research work is to expose the themes of exploitation and violence in Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow and Festus Iyayi’s Violence as they affect the people in Niger Delta area of Nigeria.
The Themes of Exploitation and Violence in Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow and Festus Iyayi’s Violence
1.4 Significance of the Study
This research work will be significant to mostly to researchers who love to research more on the writings of Kaine Agary and Festus Iyayi because of the concerns for the poor masses in Nigeria. In the same vein, the research work will be important to students of English and literary studies with a view of investigating these authors intentions of writing.
