The obstacles Adah must overcome in her quest for personal development include gender discrimination, the untimely death of Pa, her father, violence in an abusive marriage, racial discrimination, and a lot more.
In this tutorial, I will teach you how to answer this Literature question on Second Class Citizen.
Question: What obstacles does Adah have to overcome in her quest for personal development?
By the end of the lesson, you should be able to write a simple but acceptable essay on the challenges that Adah has to overcome in her quest to realize her dreams of personal development.
Are you ready? Then let’s jump in.
How to Answer This Question
Hello. Welcome again. Whether you are a teacher or a student, I’m excited to have you here.
To be able to come up with your best answer possible to the question on the obstacles Adah must overcome in her quest for personal development, you have to, first and foremost, have a simple essay writing strategy or plan.
This makes life very easy for you as you begin to write your essay. But for you to quickly draft a good essay plan, you need to bear the following in mind.
First points to note
- The question is about obstacles in Adah’s way. For that matter, you need to arm yourself with at least three different kinds of obstacles.
- Please note the following synonyms for ‘obstacles’. They will help you to know that there are several ways of presenting this same question to a WAEC Literature candidate.
CHALLENGES, ROADBLOCKS. DIFFICULTIES, FRUSTRATIONS, SETBACKS
- You must also be sure about the kind of personal development the question is referring to.
In this case, note that it is about Adah’s personal development only. This must form the centrepiece of your essay. Avoid making other characters take centre-stage.
- And it is principally about Adah’s desire to rise above her circumstances and create opportunities for a better standard of living for herself and her children.
- It is also about her ambition to achieve and maintain a much higher social status as a woman and a black person.
- Finally, note the word, ‘overcome’. It suggests that Adah has been able to overcome some of these obstacles. Some others have not been fully overcome. Try to identify at least one of the obstacles that have proven most difficult for Adah to overcome.
With the above in mind, we can now draw a general plan for the essay. All you will need to do after going through this is to implement the plan with your own style of writing.
Suggested Plan for the Essay
With this plan, you should be able to produce your best answer.
Do not forget this important point. The question is only about obstacles Adah must overcome in Buchi Emecheta’s novel, Second Class Citizen, in her journey towards personal development. Anything other than this amounts to deviation, please.
Take each point in the plan and develop it into a full paragraph.
Do Not Write More Than Necessary
But avoid repeating points or stating too many. Three to five obstacles should be enough for a typical high school level Literature essay.
In fact, you do not necessarily have to use all the points in this lesson. Taking all may make your essay too long. Unless you are writing a university-level essay on Second Class Citizen.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Focus this paragraph on the following.
- Adah is the central character in Second Class Citizen
- The narrative is about her struggles to overcome certain challenges in her quest for personal development. She desires to achieve a number of dreams.
- Adah’s dreams for personal development include but are not limited to the following.
To travel to the United Kingdom in order to further her education and also get English education for her children.
To become a successful professional librarian
To become a published writer.
What are Adah’s motivations for personal development?
Some probable motives you can mention here are
- To emulate Lawyer Nweze’s example
The Significance of Lawyer Nweze’s Return from the United Kingdom
- To prove that the female gender is not as brainless or worthless as her society thinks. Females can do what the males are doing. Maybe even more.
- To give her children a head start in life.
- For personal fulfilment.
Note that each of the above dreams requires the achievement of some smaller dreams.
For example, to be able to travel to the UK, Adah needs to
i. get an education
ii. be a married woman
iii. get a well-paying job
Main Body of the Essay
Now is the time to identify the obstacles Adah must overcome.
Consider the following and feel free to add others you can think of.
Make sure to state and describe how these obstacles threaten her desire to improve herself. Do so one by one in separate paragraphs.
Let’s take a quick look at the obstacles Adah must overcome in order to achieve her goals for personal development. They will constitute the major part of the rest of your essay on Second Class Citizen.
Paragraph 2
Discrimination against the female gender in her society.
Develop this point with a couple of examples. Here is one for you.
Boy, Adah’s younger brother, is sent to the expensive Ladi-Lak Institute while Adah is sidelined and forced to remain at home. This is one such example of discrimination against the female gender in Second Class Citizen.
Paragraph 3
The effects of the death of Pa, her father. Examples are
- Lower quality basic education in a different school as compared to Ladi-Lak Institute
- Lack of money to register for the Common Entrance Examination
- Financial exploitation by her in-laws.
- Reluctance on the part of her in-laws to allow her to join Francis, her husband in England
Here is a continuation of the major obstacles Adah must overcome
Paragraph 4
An abusive and irresponsible husband.
Illustrate this with appropriate examples. A look at a post on the character and role of Francis will give you excellent ideas. You must mention the beatings and the burning of the manuscript among others.
Paragraph 5
Cultural shock and an unfriendly climate on her arrival in England
Adah’s early experiences on her arrival in the United Kingdom will give you enough points to explain this point. This is recorded in Chapter 3 of Second Class Citizen.
Paragraph 6
Racial discrimination in England
Remember to mention the incident involving the landlady in Hawley Street.
List of Characters in Second Class Citizen
Paragraph 7
Too frequent pregnancies and childbirths
Describe the health and emotional effects of these on Adah. Do not forget the trauma associated with the birth of Bubu. You can also mention Adah’s attempted abortion of the pregnancy that brings Dada to the family.
Paragraph 8 – Conclusion
Bring your essay to an end now. Make sure to write a compelling concluding paragraph. How to do it?
Let me show you how to write a good concluding paragraph to attract as many marks as possible.
State the following in your conclusion.
- Right from childhood, Adah has dedicated her life to the fulfilment of some goals.
- Some of these goals fly in the face of the status quo in Igbo culture.
- So she naturally must overcome obstacles in order to better her condition and those of her young children.
- Summarize at least three of the obstacles you have been writing about in the previous paragraphs.
- Then summarize the extent to which Adah has achieved her dreams for personal development.
Below are some ideas for you to select from.
By the end of the novel, Adah has been able to
- get education up to the sixth form level,
- find a man to marry,
- land a high-paying job and
- arrive in the United Kingdom, place her children in an English educational system,
- She has also finished writing the manuscript of her first novel.
It is a huge achievement, also, that in spite of these obstacles she has all along been able to earn enough to support her in-laws, her babies, and Francis study in faraway England.
Nevertheless, the effects of her suffering at the hands of the abusive Francis have not left Adah. At the end of the novel, it is obvious that she must find a way to heal herself emotionally in order to leave the past behind and realize her dream of becoming a published author.
But one thing is clear. Adah has broken the glass ceiling of gender stereotyping in her Nigerian society.
The End.
This should be enough to give you the mark you need for this Literature essay on the obstacles Adah must overcome in Second Class Citizen.
Thank you.
Homework
I will strongly suggest that you write this essay and submit it for marking. I will give you suggestions to improve the essay and similar ones where necessary.
Additional Resources for This Essay
The Theme of Domestic Violence in Second Class Citizen
Chapter by Chapter Summary of Second Class Citizen
The Theme of Marriage in Second Class Citizen
Significance of the Big Fight in Second Class Citizen
Chapter 13 Summary of Second Class Citizen
Photo by Ir Solyanaya from Pexels
