synopsis of the beautyful ones are not yet born

As we shall see, the latter lives in an environment where people consider him as a means towards the satisfaction of their immediate needs. First I will examine the popular beliefs associated with the man of letters. To back up my argument I will have recourse to socio-critical theory, which allows the analysis of literary texts with reference to the context.

Failure to alter things raises the issue of his status within the social hierarchy. His incapacity to alleviate the material concerns of his next of kin unveils the magnitude of the malaise consuming the intellectual. The popular perception about the intellectual’s function seems to be at the root of the crisis. Despite his clear-cut blueprints, all his efforts to make things change for the better lead to nothing.ģ The aim of this paper is to examine what it means to be an intellectual in Africa, taking Armah’s Fragments (1988 ) as a yardstick. Baako Onipa in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments is one of these highbrows who finds it difficult to make his society move forward. Those who fall within this category are citizens endowed with a formal western education and who are keen to make things change within their society. The concerns of these characters rest with creating the conditions for the betterment of the society whereas the majority of their fellow countrymen pride themselves on the status quo.Ģ Yet one should not oversimplify by defining as intellectuals merely people who know how to read and write.

Their education notwithstanding, Armah’s characters are invariably crushed by the prevailing atmosphere in which they live. In his novels Armah acquaints us with reformers who want to change the unpalatable side of their society but usually end up being defeated. The individual with a distinguished amount of knowledge, the man who “sabe book’’ 1 as Kofi Awoonor would have put it, experiences a profound uneasiness in his societal environment. From his very first novel to the last one to date, with the exception of Two Thousand Seasons (Armah, 1976) and The Healers (1978), the malaise gnawing the African intellectual is emphatically presented.

1 This is one designation of the scholar in pidgin English, Kofi Awoonor (1972: 158).ġ Anyone with a nodding acquaintance of the writings of the Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah will readily admit his obsession with the plight of the educated man in Africa.

Synopsis of the beautyful ones are not yet born