the beautyful ones are not yet born themes

The themes of corruption and poverty and desperation run throughout the play. Some themes in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born are corruption, salvation, poverty and desperation. The novel ends with the historical revolution on 25 th February, 1966, the day after Kwame Nkrumah is overthrown. The second part of the novel reveals events that end the reign of the first political regime of the independent nation Ghana. He is too soft for the game for which he bears insults and mockery. The man is deemed a failure professionally by family and colleagues for not playing the corruption game like the rest. This visit will initiate the events that unfold in the second part of the story. The man encounters Honourable Koomson after work and they arrange a visit the following Sunday.

The day is bleakly uneventful and boring but the author does not fail to enlighten readers on the terrible state of the nation with depressing descriptions of the obscene environment sights and smells of human excrement, spittle, graffiti and filth. The novel is introduced by tracing the man’s daily routine through a typical workday.

The author’s voice and language can be described as repugnant and disdainful as he shows his disgust for corruption and immorality in his description of other characters Koomson’s breath is compared to the “rich stench of rotten menstrual blood”.

The imagery employed by Armah is so vivid that readers might feel as if they are physically there as the story unfolds, either in the being of the main character, or as observers experiencing the sleazy situation. Almost every environment has been described as dirty and filthy throughout the novel with the mockery of signposts and rubbish cans that preach cleanliness “keep your city clean…” The only place in the story which might not be offensive is the neighbourhood the man’s old acquaintance from school (currently a government minister), Joseph Koomson lives “’…in the Upper Residential Area… on the hills beyond the new Esikafo Aba Estates.’” This blindness, Ayi Kwei Armah reveals, led to a corrupt government that prosecuted morally upright civil servants. The author exposes the naivety of the people who cheer for the politicians regardless of the damage the government is doing. The events of the novel are set in the historic period of the Passion Week in 1965 and the 25 th of February, 1966, the day after Dr Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown.įocusing on the life of the unnamed protagonist who never compromises his moral values, readers will get to appreciate this man of integrity as their eyes and ears in the novel. It ponders on the corruption and oppression that did not end with the white man but was replaced with the same or maybe worse capitalist regime when the people took over from the colonial masters in 1957. The novel is divided into fifteen chapters contained in 183 pages.

The beautyful ones are not yet born themes