Alienation and Trauma in Chika Unigwe Better Never Than Late
Abstract
This study explores alienation and trauma among African migrants in Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late. Literary writers at home and in the diaspora have been reacting to the rate at which Africans are leaving the continent for a living in Europe, America, and Asian countries. Chika Unigwe is a literary writer who has responded to the migration of Africans from their continent with the publication of Better Never Than Late. This research, therefore, discusses the trials and ordeals of African migrants as portrayed in Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late.
Alienation and Trauma in Chika Unigwe Better Never Than Late
As the migrants try to make out meaning from their broken lives and psyches, they become traumatized and disoriented as a result of the environment they find themselves. Using Caruthian trauma theory as its theoretical bases for analysis, the selected novel revealed that the dehumanization of migrants has left them confused and in a state of dementia; revealing that migration has brought them more trauma than the better life they envisaged. Each of the characters tells their narratives of vicissitudes they have been through. Through technique, Unigwe presents a detailed view of the trials and ordeals of the migrants.
The findings also revealed that despondency, forlornness, despair and trauma are the fulcrum of Unigwe’s novelistic experience in this novel. The researcher however concludes that to curb this exodus, African countries must counter poverty with economic development, as none of the characters in Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late has either economic or mental reprieve; all of them live a desultory life.
Alienation and Trauma in Chika Unigwe Better Never Than Late
