FICTION AND NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS: THE EXAMPLE OF MAIK NWOSU’S INVISIBLE CHAPTERS By LOLA AKANDE (PhD) Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, Akoka, Yaba, Lagos Email –
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ABSTRACT This paper offers a reading of Maik Nwosu‟s Invisible Chapters as a quintessential national conscious novel. It subjects the novel to textual analysis and highlights some depicted perceived gross injustices and inequalities in the Nigerian society. The paper foregrounds the role of the writer as an observer of national life, a social crusader and conscience of the nation charged with the mission of engendering positive social change through the production of good quality works that promote national pride. It dwells on Nwosu‟s presentation of Lagos as a city in chaos and examines his concern over the continuous and painful dehumanisation of the Nigerian citizenry by their leaders. The paper pays particular attention to the author‟s almost self-conscious look at city building and the way Nigerian cities end up not being as liveable as Nigerians would want them to be. Nwosu betrays specific Marxist biases by portraying his slum-dwelling characters as unfortunate victims of abuse and misuse of power by the agents of state. In illustrating the painful Nigerian existence, the novel borrows from history by fictionalising an actual event that left an indelible mark in the psyche of the citizenry. A close reading of the novel however reveals the citizens‟ complicity in perpetuating Nigeria‟s problems as epitomised by their weak organisational capacity and inability to confront the powers that oppress them. The paper also discovers the citizens‟ penchant for pursuing frivolities at the expense of confronting serious issues of state and taking decisive action capable of enhancing the national cause.
Word Count: 250. Key words: Fiction, Marxist, national consciousness, Nwosu.
INTRODUCTION National Consciousness is the awareness of belonging to a nation that is bigger than tribe or nationality. It is a shared feeling of belonging in reference to one country rather than to individual ethnicity. Fiction is a product of imagination that links one generation to another just as it links one part of the country to another. Interestingly, both fiction and national consciousness are derivatives of imagination because a nation is an imagined community that is displayed in real life. Over the years and across cultures, changes in environment, and in this case the nation, are responsible for the kind of fiction the public requires and gets. It is therefore important that what we read as fiction should modify and correct the influence of environment as good literature can most readily improve the quality of living that the atmosphere in which we live can be enriched. It is against this background that this paper argues that national consciousness enthuses Nigerian writers to write in particular ways and that the sense of belonging to one country engenders the production of narratives that can be regarded as Nigerian literature.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF MARXIST CRITICISM TO THE STUDY OF THE CITY Marxism has a direct link with the city in literature because Marxist theory is directed at social change which is achievable by understanding social relations. The Marxist perspective looks at the antagonism, so to say, between those who live in a particular way and those others who literally feed off them. We may use the commercial bus drivers in Lagos most of who live in poverty but who have leaders that exploit them while giving the impression of protecting them as an example. The leaders collect the drivers‟ money and live fat off it thereby creating and maintaining a class hierarchy different from the general representation. What the Marxist does is to question the picture of representation and critically examine the conflictual relationships between them and various classes in a given environment. To the Marxist therefore, that some people live in Government Reservation Area (GRA) while others live in slums can explain a lot of things about how the city is built and how it fares. The Marxist is interested in the internal structure of the environment including the city and in why and how the repression of people in the lower class affects the management of the city. Ideas within the Marxist mainstream are a weapon of struggle promoted by affirming that ideas, after a given form of acceptance by a populace, actually constitute themselves into substructures and that if ideas are that powerful, then, they ought to be made use of. Marxists
make use of ideas in various ways. For some, literature simply becomes mere propaganda for whatever people believe in. Marxist theory believes that there is a struggle between ways of accumulating resources and ways of celebrating what we have. Therefore, Marxists critics want to analyse social relations in order to change them to a more egalitarian order thereby ultimately changing or at least „realistically‟ reflecting the image of the city in literature. Marxists are interested in changing what they perceive as gross injustices and the inequalities existing among residents of the city which they believe have been created by capitalist economic relations. One of the crucial concepts in Marxist thought is the idea of alienation which observers of city life have also identified as one of the problems of living in the city. Mary Klages (2006) explains that there are two aspects to the Marxist idea of alienation. According to her, the first is that labour is alienated in the sense that the labour put into an object becomes part of the capitalist‟s profit and it therefore no longer belongs to the labourer. This means that the labourer is alienated from his labour power. The second aspect is that capitalism forces the worker to become alienated even from self by selling his labour power which becomes a mere commodity in the market place. The worker who is forced to exist as a commodity in the labour market is therefore no longer fully human since he cannot exercise free will to determine his actions. He has become alienated from his humanness. Like the pathetic proletariat in the Marxist theory, the average inhabitant of the city hides under the city anonymity and surrenders to dubious means of livelihood which he perennially hides from his folks and which continues to nag at his conscience, thereby alienating himself from his family kinship and self. Marxist theory holds that the economic base in any society generates other social formations which it calls the superstructure. It defines the superstructure as consisting of all other kinds of social activities or systems including politics, religion, philosophy, morality, art and science. It identifies literature as part of any society‟s superstructure because of the way it articulates forms of cultural ideology; for example, novels or poems might justify or attack a belief or sets of beliefs such as religious beliefs, political beliefs or aesthetic ideas. Marxist theorists ask questions about how literature functions as part of the superstructure. They want to examine how the economic base of any culture and particularly of capitalist cultures, influences or determines the form and content of literature. They are interested also in how literature functions in relation to other aspects of the superstructure. They want to know for example, if literature reflects the economic base and if so, how? They ask if
literature reflects other ideologies and how. Most importantly, Marxist theorists are concerned with investigating how literature can work as a force for social change or as a reaffirmation of existing conditions. Karl Marx (1818-83) believed that materialism was the driving force behind human endeavour; an assertion that is nearly incontrovertible in relation to city life if we think of the quest for fortune and „achievement‟ which often dominate the psyche of city dwellers. Perhaps, the most invaluable contribution of Marxist criticism to the understanding and interpretation of literary texts that use the city as setting is the encouragement to keep in mind issues of power and money. What the Marxist critic would seem to require of readers of Nwosu‟s novel, therefore, would include a careful examination of the role of class in the city and the author‟s analysis of class relations through events and characters in Invisible Chapters, how the Nwosu‟s slum-dwelling characters overcome or fail to overcome oppression, and whether the novel proposes some form of utopian vision as a way of solving the numerous problems in the city.
NIGERIAN WRITERS AS SOCIAL CRUSADERS As stated by Okonjo Ogunyemi (2007:285), the man credited to be “the grandfather of African literature,” Chinua Achebe, opines that: The African author today has a mission. In addition to resuscitating a sense of pride in Africa‟s own cultural achievements, it is the writer‟s duty to educate his African audience. He should help them more readily to understand the nature of Africa‟s problems and he should also, perhaps, suggest ways of solving them (The Sociology of Urban Women’s Image in African Literature, 4).
Other notable Nigerian writers such as Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, Elechi Amadi, Festus Iyayi, Ben Okri, among others may be less didactic and explicit in their utterances, but they have continued to use their works to support and promote national consciousness. Scholars and critics like Charles Nnolim (2005) have also advocated for “thematic focus” from Nigerian writers, deploring what he perceives as the absence of “a clearly defined thematic focus” (29) in contemporary Nigerian fiction. Nnolim laments that: Contemporary Nigerian fiction writers […] lack a clearly defined thematic focus. There are no heroes in our recent fiction, there is no national cause to fight for, no charismatic or ascetic character willing to make sacrifices for the common good. But there is corruption of the
Nigerian dream, there is absence of a national ethos there is […] cultural dis-inheritance. (Charles Nnolim in “New Nigerian writing: between Debauchery and the Kitchen” The Guardian, Friday August 5, 2005, 29).
In a keynote address he presented at the annual convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Imo State Branch in July 2005, Nnolim takes contemporary Nigerian fiction as comprising fiction written between 2000 and 2005 and concludes that Nwosu‟s fiction is among the contemporary Nigerian fiction that lack “a clearly defined thematic focus” (2005, 29). Undoubtedly, there have been instances in the past in which fiction has generated a sharp reaction among the people of a particular environment. A memorable instance is the phenomenal influence of Ekwensi‟s Jagua Nana. Ernest Emenyonu (1991) recalls how the novel initially generated outcry and disdain among some Nigerians who perceived it as being capable of corrupting young people who were deemed to be innocent but highly impressionable: Appearing a year after Nigeria‟s independence, the novel became an embarrassment to some groups of Nigerians who feared that Jagua‟s portrait could be mistaken for a true picture of Nigerian womanhood. Consequently the novel was attacked by many groups. It was banned in some institutions of learning for fear that it would corrupt young minds. When an Italian film company, Ultra Films, approached the Nigerian Government in 1961 for „facilities‟ to produce the film version of the novel, the Government imposed difficult conditions. Even then the issue had to go all the way to the Nigerian Parliament where the proposed filming was rejected and stopped. This action must have contributed in no small measure in creating the very high demand which the novel soon witnessed. In the process, the novel became extremely popular and attracted national and international attention. (Studies on the Nigerian Novel, 66).
Similarly, the publication of Achebe‟s A Man of the People (1966) coincided with the coup d‟état and counter coup of 1966. In the novel, Achebe holds the Nigerian political class to ridicule and draws attention to the unhealthy political atmosphere in the city, prophetically concluding that military coup is a likely consequence of the kind of recklessness that pervades the country. I was not interested in legalistic traditional arguments just now, especially when they were calculated to delay things; a coup might be followed by a counter coup and then where would we be?” (165).
These and similar thematic concerns of old Nigerian writers may appear to vindicate Nnolim‟s (2005) position on what ought to constitute „serious literature.‟ However, the
tendency of the old writers to focus on such seemingly more national issues is hardly surprising because the old writers were the people who watched their fathers fight for independence; they were the ones who came together at the University of Ibadan to study. Most of the contemporary writers, on the other hand, were born after independence, and it is expected that their thematic preoccupations would reflect the issues of their generation and time. Marge Piercy (1981) observes that readers prefer stories they can easily identify and connect with because such stories help them resolve personal dilemma. Piercy holds that “art validates experience” (216), and that “all novels have a political dimension” (216). She further avers that: The notion that literature has nothing to do in the world but is to be consumed in a vacuum is a [...] heresy. [...] In truth, every work of art changes our world [...]. Every work of art possesses some [...] capacity to move us and affect our emotional and mental state. It occupies our mind and our attention and alters them as it goes into our memory. In that respect novels are like dreams. If you remember them, and sometimes even if you don‟t, they never happened and yet they will influence the way you expect things to be, even what you will long for or dread or fear. [...] Our novels embody our values and choices (1981: 216-217).
This paper agrees with Piercy‟s submission and considers useful the contribution of a good number of contemporary Nigerian writers who have written and depicted situations in their writings that describe the psychological kinship between them and their environment and have succeeded in helping readers make sense out of their „ordinary‟ lives. One of such contemporary writers is Maik Nwosu, who demonstrates, through his novel, Invisible Chapters, that the city does not only worsen empathy, it also creates a disposition of empathy which may not be formal but which makes people believe they can rely on one another.
INVISIBLE CHAPTERS Invisible Chapters recreates the history of the demolition of Maroko, a slum in Victoria Island (Lagos) by the military government of Colonel Raji Rasaki in the early 1990s. The demolition was carried out with military swiftness leaving Maroko residents in particular and Lagos residents in general with a huge sense of betrayal. Hence, it also stirred a sense of national consciousness among many Nigerian writers such that Maroko is memorialised across the genres of Nigerian Literature. In his commentary on Invisible Chapters, “Invisible Chapters and Daring Vision (2002),” Odia Ofeimun chronicles Maroko‟s presence in Nigerian literature following the demolition exercise. According to him, in poetry, Ogaga
Ifowodo has a collection entitled Red Rain in 1993 which Ofeimun notes sojourned from a series Ifowodo titled Maroko’s Blood that metamorphosed to Homeland and other Poems. Ofeimun recalls that Wole Soyinka also gives Maroko a mention in his The Beatification of Area Boy as contained in the Minstrel‟s song for Maroko: Maroko, what a ruckus Over a wretched shanty town It was stinking It was stinking We were rescued or we would drown
Maroko also recurs in J.P. Clark‟s poem, Maroko, from his collection – A Lot from Paradise where he does not hide his aversion to the state governor‟s perceived insensitivity to the plight of the poor residents of the slum: Col. Raji Rasaki Governor of Lagos In cold blood, expelled the poor at a loss Doing in seven days clear What God and war had not done in many a year
Similarly, Ofeimun personifies Maroko in his London Letter and Other Poems, specifically in Demolition Day, where an old woman‟s “world of cardboard and decayed zinc” crumbles under the “antlers – and implacable mortars of bulldozers rolling.”
Where cattle may be ranched and limousines brace the lustre of flash sky-scrappers pointing a rude finger in God‟s eye (2010, 5).
The preoccupation of these writers with the demolition of a slum in Lagos is an attestation to the support literature gives to national consciousness. Unfortunately, however, Invisible Chapters has not enjoyed enough critical attention despite the lenses it provides and through which it can be studied. A novel of this kind ought to have enjoyed much attention because it enables us to know a lot about our cities and the people who live in them. Invisible Chapters tells the story of the determination of the fictional Maroko residents to sustain their livelihood, friendship and the spirit of oneness that exists among them in spite of the decision of the military governor, Governor Omo-ale, to demolish their slum. Central to the narration of events in the novel is the incredible humanity of the slum dwellers whose
lives are controlled and dominated by genuine friendship, love and enviable sense of duty and responsibility towards one another. A careful reading of the novel reveals Nwosu‟s concern over the unfavourable condition of living in Nigeria especially in our cities. Through his characters, he provides an exposé on the causes, nature and complexities of slum dwelling in Lagos. The slum in the fictional Maroko is created by a combination of factors including wrong approach to governance manifesting in the form of lack of planning; double standard, insincerity, trivialisation of serious issues of state and outright misuse of privileges by the agents of government. The decision to demolish the fictional Maroko appears to have been taken in haste and without consideration for the general well-being of the evacuees leading to inadequate provision of alternative houses for them. To make matters worse, those assigned with the responsibility of allocating houses at the New Maroko choose to ridicule the government and compound the slum dwellers‟ woes. The criteria for allocation are enunciated in the novel as follows: As a spinster, you‟re entitled to a single-room apartment, but we‟re also allowed a certain latitude in these things. I‟ll make an exception and give you a three-bedroom apartment (109).
But to another person the rule is different: … Under the rules guiding this board, we can‟t assign you a room in the New Maroko. You do not meet the character requirement, and this haven is intended for a certain category of upright and responsible persons… (110).
To further make a mockery of the entire exercise, only those who possess the “basic requirements” in the form of “a lease agreement or a proof of house ownership” (110) among the slum dwellers can aspire to the level of being considered for selection or rejection. Even then, the „lucky‟ few among them who eventually get selected have yet another ridiculous hurdle to cross: they must declare their loyalty and support for the government in power. For the majority who have lived in rented apartments at the Old Maroko, they are summarily disqualified from seeking allocation at the „New Heaven.‟ It is instructive that even in spite of the dubious criteria used in allocating houses, actual houses available at the New Maroko are grossly inadequate to go round the number of resettlement certificates issued by the government leading to another falsehood being sold to the evacuees by the Resettlement Board to the effect that although the “settlement… has been carefully planned,… the Resettlement Board …was moved into making more allocations than are allowable” (146). The consequence is that:
In no time at all…those unfortunate ones and the many illegal residents set about erecting their own shanties, with the result that soon the area looked more like the Shanty Town that was Maroko than any government-logic New Town (146).
Another reason why the New Maroko may never be saved from slumming is the continuous upsurge in the population of the slum. Notwithstanding that the place is already overpopulated and the facilities (if any) are dangerously overstretched, New Maroko continues to play host to more people throughout the story. Invisible Chapters is also concerned with Nigerian leaders‟ penchant for displaying opulence in the midst of extreme poverty. Chinua Achebe deals with this issue in No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People. In the latter novel, the protagonist, Odili Samalu, laments the worrisome disparity between the rich and the poor in his country during an early morning walk from the opulent house of his former teacher who is now an Honourable Member of Parliament. In No Longer at Ease, Obi Okwonkwo also muses over this unhappy trend while driving through Lagos. In Invisible Chapters, following the evacuation of slum dwellers from the Old Maroko and their resettlement in New Maroko which rapidly turns into a more slumming settlement, the land at the Old Maroko is promptly sold to the affluent members of the same society who erect structures befitting of their social class. …the buildings seemed like competing chest-thumpers imported from the great cities of the world. Affluence and prosperity had evidently become the double-breasted suit of where Maroko once grovelled in dirt in its tattered nakedness. An inner city that had been nothing but shrivelled buttocks and flabby breasts and tobacco-stained teeth had become a wondrous metropolis [New Queenstown] of robust posteriors and bulbous anteriors and gold-filled dentures (38).
Indeed, Invisible Chapters exposes the power structure in Nigeria which Nwosu insists is unchanging as evidenced by the fact that in spite of the propaganda that attends the government demolition of Old Maroko supposedly to protect the inhabitants from slumming and disease, no sooner have the inhabitants been moved to their new settlements than the supposedly new place begins to resemble the old one because the real problems of the inhabitants are left unresolved. The timing of the demolition on a Christmas eve also attests to the insensitivity and callousness of the high and mighty in the country who continue to take the poor for a ride on account of the people‟s inability to stop their oppression by the agents of power. Although the daily existence of the slum dwellers appears to know hope and the communal fellow-feeling existing among them empowers them for a spirit of protest which they carry out from time to time and in different ways in the novel, their tragedy stems
from a weak organisational base that is easily overridden by the power mongers and their agents. In Invisible Chapters, Nwosu engages Nigerian leaders seriously and shows their culpability in perpetrating poverty and slum-dwelling in the country. The novel shows the lack of transparency that characterises the power structure in New Maroko, and if we take Maroko as a microcosm of Nigeria, then Invisible Chapters overtly shows the lack of transparency that marks the power structure in our country just as the novel laments the powerlessness of the citizens who ought to do „something‟ about their situation. Apart from the communal fellowfeeling that characterises the daily living of characters in the novel, they have nothing to show for their existence. While the intellectuals among them engage in endless rhetoric that promises much but delivers nothing, those with vocations hardly earn enough to guarantee their immediate sustenance let alone plan for their future. One of the intellectuals in the novel is Prinzi, who, despite his charm and intellect, is also frivolous and lacks the necessary focus and determination expected of a serious minded person. Prinzi reminds the reader of the hero of No Longer At Ease, Obi Okonkwo, with whom he shares a lot of attributes and character traits. Like Obi, Prinzi is essentially a mere dreamer, an idealist who lacks the will of a doer. Apart from leading the pack of drifters in Invisible Chapters, Prinzi does not achieve anything tangible throughout the story beyond speaking “big grammar” which is one of the few tendencies that distinguish him from Obi who reportedly speaks “is and was” (No Longer at Ease, 29), at a time when his kinsmen at Umuofia Progressive Union look up to him to tell them in concrete terms how he intends to use his newly acquired education to benefit his people. Like Obi, Prinzi is also unable to translate his much flaunted knowledge into concrete action such that can better the lot of his fellow slum dwellers in Maroko despite the fact that he is highly revered and eminently looked upon for succour by the people. Prinzi‟s weakness and incapacity are better exemplified by the failure that dominates his personal life resulting in his inability to realise his life ambition, He announces his intention to write “the great Nigerian novel” (5) very early in the novel, and when asked for his reason for sitting his café at Maroko, he replies that Maroko provides for him the most ideal environment for his writing ambition emphasising that “there must be something about the slum that draws the artist” (5). He appears quite believable at this stage in the novel. However, at the end of the
novel and during Ashikodi‟s wedding when Prinzi has the opportunity to present the „novel‟ he has spent his entire life trying to put together, there is only one copy and “apart from the cover page, the content is made up of three hundred blank pages… (266). Thus, Prinzi spends the entire lifespan of the novel talking rather than writing the muchtalked-about novel. Prinzi‟s failure at writing a novel he makes so much noise about summarises the failure of his entire life. He is a drifter and like Obi Okonkwo, the tragic hero of No Longer At Ease who appears very promising but proves incapable of using his intellect to benefit himself let alone his society, Prinzi is a mere idealist. What sets Prinzi apart significantly from Achebe‟s hero, however, is that unlike Achebe‟s Obi who fails to survive on account of his weakness, Nwosu‟s character appears rugged and able to weather the precarious storm in his country. To his credit, however, he succeeds in organising a handful of protests with his friend, Ashikodi, but the protests do not produce the desired changes. It is not surprising therefore that nothing changes in Prinzi‟s life throughout the novel, not even his marital status. Although he begins what looks like a promising relationship with One, another quiet, almost anonymous character, at the end of the novel, the relationship is no longer a secret to their fellow slum dwellers, there is also no concrete plan by the „couple;‟ no marriage plan known either to them or the entire community. They seem to be moving simply as the tide moves them – adrift. It is therefore not a surprise that his café serves merely as a rallying point for his fellow slum dwellers to converge, talk and purportedly strategise on how to confront the powers-that-be with a view to liberating themselves from the excesses of the power mongers but without really doing so. Prinzi appears to be intelligent enough to know that he and his fellow slum dwellers are being taken for a ride by the „high and mighty‟ in society who donate cows to them for communal rituals and public ceremonies, but he cannot stop the swindle in spite of his overwhelming knowledge. Perhaps, the unchanging attitude of Prinzi even after his incarceration and his failure to change the pattern of his personal life by taking some decisions that are far-reaching and following them up with action is representative of the unchanging ways of power in Nigeria. Thus, Prinzi‟s incapacity to write “the great Nigerian Novel” in spite of his intellectual ability and what seems to be his sincerity of purpose symbolises the powerlessness of the poor at altering their situation. The menace of religious charlatans who take undue advantage of the gullibility of Nigerians essentially because their leaders subject them to a myriad of problems is also a source of
concern to Nwosu. However, he seems to hold the view that some Nigerians are actually not as foolish as they appear, but that they get entertainment from the antics of religious charlatans thus making them willing victims some, if not all, of the times. The novel shows how the lives of the inhabitants of Maroko are somewhat enlivened by the ridiculous activities of a religious priest who promises to make them millionaires by issuing them with false cheques which he claims they can only cash in spiritual banks. To demonstrate that many of the characters have become wizened, experienced and knowledgeable in the ways of their country and that religious absurdity can have implication and consequences only for the foolish, Nwosu shows how some members of the congregation promptly throw away their cheques in apparent realisation of the foolery of succumbing to dupes, while the obviously foolish ones pick up the rejected cheques to add to their own in a bid to multiply their millions. However, Nwosu seems to be implying that religion constitutes a serious distraction and an impediment to the citizens‟ capability to find solutions to their real problems because rather than pay serious attention to the business of confronting those that are oppressing them, many Maroko residents are seen pursuing frivolities that can lead them nowhere. It is instructive that Nwosu ends the novel by showing that in the absence of sincere and purposeful leadership by those that control the affairs of state and with perennial incapacity of the led to confront their oppressors, what remains is the determination of the citizens to uphold their dignity and give and receive love from one another either in times of joy or sorrow. It is significant therefore that the novel closes with two major events that are representative of the two emotions. Kaabiyesi, whose existence is either real or imagined, dies at the end of the novel providing an occasion for a grand funeral that brings the slum dwellers together. The happy event which produces the same effect is the marriage between Ashikodi and Segilola, perhaps the only virgin ever found in a brothel. The occasion also gives Prinzi, the self-styled writer and “Prince of hearts” an opportunity to present the only one copy of a three-hundred blank pages novel (266) he has „written‟ to his newlywed friend, Ashikodi, as “a special wedding present to a special couple on a special occasion in the life of New Maroko: the seemingly invisible chapters of dreams at work” (266).
CONCLUSION Nwosu‟s approach in Invisible Chapters suggests that he may have yielded to the persuasion of Marxist theorists on what should be the role of literature in the society. This observation finds credence in the ideas of Georg Lukacs, a Marxist critic, cited in Selden & Wildowson (1993), who insists that the novel reflects reality not by rendering its mere surface appearance, but by giving us “a truer, more complete, more vivid and dynamic reflection of reality.” Lukacs believes people ordinarily possess a reflection of reality, “a consciousness not merely of objects but of human nature and social relationships.” He wants a novel to conduct its reader “towards a more concrete insight into reality,” which should transcend a merely “common-sense” apprehension of things. He submits that a literary work should reflect not individual phenomenon in isolation, but the full process of life “even when the reader is always aware that the work is not itself reality but rather “a special form of reflecting reality.” In Lukacs‟ view therefore, a “correct reflection of reality will involve much more than the mere rendering of external appearances.” He rejects mere „photographic‟ representation and describes the truly realistic work as one which possesses an “intensive totality” that corresponds to the “extensive totality” of the world itself (A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory pp. 75-76). In Invisible Chapters, the slum dwellers who are collectively the heroes of the novel celebrate their lives. They are also determined to remain in the city in spite of all odds. This tends to be a positive disposition to the city which may find acceptance with the Marxist idea of „reflecting reality‟ in the environment as city dwellers are usually not inclined to abandoning the city in spite of the difficulties associated with city dwelling. However, it is important to state that Nwosu is not under any illusion that the city has an acceptable image or that life in the city is not difficult; but he seems to be positing, through his characters‟ audacious hope, that the condition in the city may improve with time. Beyond hope, there also seems to be a stoic acceptance of the ways of the city, by his characters, essentially because they appear to have come to the conclusion that there is no better alternative outside the city. Above all, Nwosu appears to perceive the city as a celebration of humanity‟s continuous quest for civilisation and globalisation.
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