LONELINESS AND ACHIEVEMENT: A STUDY OF AYI KWEI ARMAM'S PROTAGONISTS

Abstract

Critical response to Ayi Kwei Armah in Africa has tended to be nagative. Chinua AchJoei, Atta Britwum2 and most recently Charles Nnolirm have been the most articulate of those critics who object to the landscape of Armah's works, his type of hero and the so-called pessimistic tone of these works. Armah's group of supposedly ineffectual heroes have been found in the opinion of these critics to be unfit for the functional role which literature, and in fact art in general are expected to play in society. Professor R.N. Egudu was referring to the same problem when in a paper he presented at the 1980 Modern Languages Association conference held at the University of Benin, he lamented the lack of models, that is exemplary heroes, in African Literature. His particular reference was to Armah's hero, the man who is the central character of The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Egudu's contention is that despite the hero's ceaseless fight against corruption Armah has failed to project him as a more positive character: ... the 'Man' who is trie symbol of the virtue, spirit and ideology that can guide the people has fortunately triumphed in his stand. But we are sadly aware that the 'Man' is through the novel presented as a sorry sample of living humanity. His wobbling doggedness along the path of virtue is commen