A Presentation Of Post-Independence Political Disillusionment In Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born And Kojo B. Laing’s Search Sweet Country.

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2015-02-13
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Abstract
This project evaluates political disillusionment in Ghana as presented in Ayi Kwei Armah and Kojo Laing’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Search Sweet Country, respectively. Armah and Laing embark on a form of artistic awareness creation to help in the process of reconstruction. The Beautyful Ones and Search Sweet Country are used in this project because firstly, both of them present political disillusionment. These texts validate the reality that disillusionment is in direct opposition to the exuberance and expectations of independence. In depicting the issues that plague post-independence Ghana, the authors express their disappointment with activities of political leaders that eventually stifle development. Also, the two texts put political disillusionment in a historical context: while Armah’s text represents the period immediately after independence, Laing’s portrays Ghana in the mid-1970s. Essentially, The Beautyful Ones depicts civilian dictatorship under Kwame Nkrumah while Search Sweet Country gives a picture of the military regime under Colonel Ignatius Acheampong. Consequently, the project traces the beginning and depth of disillusionment immediately after independence to the Ghana of today. The project comes to the conclusion that Ghana is grappling with socio-political issues decades after independence. This project probes the depth of the “Ghanaian situation”, and hence creates the awareness of the possibility of social fragmentation.
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A Dissertation Presented to The Department of English, College of Arts and Social Sciences of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for the Award of MPhil in English,
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