Second-Class Citizen

Buchi Emeta uses many literary devices in Second-Class Citizen. These include personification, allusion, and simile. One example of personification relates to Adah’s identification of the river...

Chapter 5 of “Second-Class Citizen” is titled “An Expensive Lesson.” The chapter starts with Adah having a difficult morning. She is pregnant and feels tired. As if this is not enough, her baby...

Second-Class Citizen, written by Buchi Emecheta, tells the story of Adah, a Nigerian woman who overcomes setback after setback in her life due to her being classified as a second-class citizen. The...

Adah has always dreamed of one day going to England. Indeed, it is the pinnacle of her ambition. But when she sets foot in the country as a teen bride, the dream quickly turns into a nightmare. Far...

A large portion of Adah’s desire to bring change to her life and improve her circumstances stems from her responsibilities as a mother. While she has always been ambitious, she prioritizes her...

While there is no universal definition of what makes a parent a failure, a compelling case can be made for Francis Obi's failure in this area. It is also easy to argue that he is a failure as a...

There are two tensions in Adah's attempts to be a good mother and a good wife, leading to contradictions which are almost certain to emerge whenever a wife and mother is married to an abusive...

All too often in literature, the theme of the stubborn woman can be put to misogynistic ends to portray women as shrewish, nagging, and chronically unreasonable. Stubbornness in women was not...

Second Class Citizen is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in 1974. It follows the life of Adah, who grew up in Nigeria and then moved to the United Kingdom in order to join...

In Second-Class Citizen, the character of Francis Obi embodies the theme of irresponsible husbandhood. After they are married, Adah Ofili’s impression of him changes. Adah had been attracted to...

In Buchi Emecheta's novel Second-Class Citizen, Adah often seems like the embodiment of determination. Even as a young girl, she is determined to go to school. While her family thinks that school...

In chapter 12 of Second-Class Citizen, Adah experiences something of an epiphany. At this crucial stage in the story, she starts to think of herself as more of an individual rather than a mere...

Throughout Second-Class Citizen, our protagonist, Adah Ofili, is expected to fulfill a variety of roles. She is a dutiful daughter, and after tragedy strikes, she becomes a ward and slave. Later,...

Adah does not marry for love; she marries to pursue her dreams. She has wanted to go to the United Kindgom since she was eight years old, and she stops at nothing to pursue that goal. Still, even...

At the start of this novel, Adah is a young Nigerian girl who has dreams of getting an education and making something of her life. By the end, she is a battered wife determined to leave her...

Buchi Emecheta's novel Second Class Citizen follows the journey of the protagonist, Adah, from childhood to adulthood. Throughout her life, Adah overcomes many obstacles, and through her...

Pa Noble used to work as a liftman on the London Underground. It wasn't his first choice of career; he came to London to study law but was never able to succeed in his studies. He tried finding...

Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows more about the situation in a literary work than the characters do. Indeed, dramatic irony is built right into the title of Buchi Emecheta's novel...

There are far more points of contrast than comparison between Adah and Francis in Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen. We can, however, identify a couple points of comparison, at least early on...

Adah's first-born child is a daughter, who she and her husband, Francis Obi, name Titi. Titi's birth came as a disappointment to Francis and his family, as it was widely hoped within the family...

Our protagonist in this great story is Adah Ofili. As a child, all Adah wanted was the opportunity to get an education. Through sheer determination, she completes her secondary education and then...

In Chapter 6, Adah and Francis are evicted from their apartment and must find a new place to live. Landlords either refuse to rent to “coloured” people or lie and say the place is already rented....

In Buchi Emecheta's novel, Second-Class Citizen, Adah dreams of moving to the United Kingdom as a little girl. When she is old enough to work, she finds a job that pays well, and which guarantees...

When Adah moves from Lagos to London to join her husband, Francis, she finds him a changed person. In Nigeria she had believed that the shared the same dream of finding success in England. During...

In Buchi Emecheta's novel Second-Class Citizen, the young Adah develops a two-part dream. She wants to go and live in the United Kingdom, and she wants an education. But obstacles to this dream...

In Second-Class Citizen, Adah's welcome to London is cold in both the literal and the figurative sense. In the literal sense, the English weather is incredibly cold, certainly a lot colder than the...

In Second-Class Citizen, the story's protagonist, Adah, comes from a part of Nigeria where Christianity is the dominant religion. That being the case, it's not surprising that the author uses a...

There are a number of occasions in which Buchi Emecheta uses Nigerian expressions and words in Second-Class Citizen. Doing this helps give the story a distinctly Nigerian flavor and highlights the...

The novel Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta is rife with the frustrating anecdotes suffered by Adah Obi, a young woman of the Ibo people of Nigeria whose status among her people contrasts...

Male privilege is evident in Nigerian society right from the start of Adah's story, when the fact that she is a girl means she must fight to be sent to school and get an education. For her brother,...

In Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen, the return of the lawyer Nweze to Nigeria is significant because it deepens Adah's dream of going to the United Kingdom and because it shows readers a...

Adah's husband Francis is an old-fashioned Nigerian man who doesn't believe in any kind of birth control except natural family planning. Inevitably, this means that Adah ends up giving birth at...

Second-Class Citizen is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in 1974 and follows the story of Adah, who eventually leaves her homeland and moves to Great Britain, following her...

The novel Second-Class Citizen, by Buchi Emecheta, follows the life of its protagonist, Adah. Adah grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. During her childhood and youth, Adah developed the desire to live in...

Adah’s relationship with her children is governed by her desire to make the best possible life for them. However, she is also deeply aware that every time Francis pressures her into getting...

In chapter 2 of Buchi Emecheta's novel Second Class Citizen, we learn that Adah, a young Ibo woman, is quite progressive, headstrong, and independent within the parameters established by her...

The exposition in Second-Class Citizen occurs when Adah's educational aspirations and her childhood dream of living in the United Kingdom are revealed. The rising action occupies the majority of...

In Second-Class Citizen, Buchi Emecheta includes and comments on various superstitious beliefs and traditions, making the point that the difference between a belief condemned as superstitious and...

Three cultural practices among the Igbo in Second-Class Citizen are that men rule the roost, that women are second-class citizens, and that women are not supposed to get ideas. All of these...

When Adah arrives at school, having intermittently run and walked from her home, managing to remain unseen by her Ma or any of her friends, Mr. Cole has her sit next to a boy who is described as...

The role of Adah in Second-Class Citizen is to highlight the problems encountered by the wave of post-war immigrants in the United Kingdom. Adah's experiences are fairly representative of those...

Our impressions of Francis in Second-Class Citizen are not very favorable, to say the least. An abusive, controlling husband, he sees his wife Adah as little more than a baby factory whose sole...

In Second-Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta, Adah knows what she wants out of her life. Her dream has long been to get an education and to live in the UK, and she takes several drastic steps along...

Colonialism and its enduring legacy is a central theme in Second-Class Citizen. The protagonist, Adah, is an indigenous African born in Nigeria during World War II and spends her entire childhood...

Second Class Citizen is a 1974 novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It tells the story of a Nigerian woman who overcomes sexist traditional African (Nigerian) practices to eventually provide an...

Titi is almost two years old and Vicki nine months when Adah falls pregnant with another child. Although Adah is a loving mother who regards having children as a blessing, she's also aware that it...