ENGL 264

POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY

 SYNOPSIS
• The story is about a seventeen-year old girl who is forced to
marry a man who said he was forty-six.
• Even though the man had money, provided sufficiently for her
and her mother and showed her love and affection, the girl was
not happy.
• What changed the way she felt was when she delivered a baby-
boy.
 THEMES
• Arranged or child or forced marriages are bad. It is painful for a young girl to
marry an old man she does not love.
• The evil effect of the patriarchal system in the society. Uju and her mother
were thrown out of her late husband’s rooms because she did not have a son.
• Women are their own worst enemies. Papa Uju’s sister accused the wife of
being responsible for her husband’s death.
• Poverty has very serious effects individuals and the community.
• Poor health facilities probably caused by ineffective political leadership.
• Motherhood has its joys. Uju’s mother and new-found wealth. Note the listing
she does. Uju experienced pride, joy and love for the baby and probably the
husband. Note Uju’s feeling of love and joy.
 UJU’S PAIN
• The pain of poverty. The food she ate was sometimes very poor.
• The pain of being married to Chief. Chief was ugly and snored
heavily when he slept. She had not got to the legal age of
consent which is eighteen in many parts of Nigeria.
• The pain of childbirth. It was so painful that she insulted her
husband and cursed the baby inside her.
 THE SETTING
• First the family lived in a modest three-bedroom flat in a place
called New Lay Out.
• When they were thrown out they went to live in a single room on
Obiagu Road.
• The story ends when Uju is the mistress in the big mansion of
Chief with all the amenities that made life pleasant.
 POINT OF VIEW
• The story is told from the omniscient point of view. The story is
told mainly through the perspective of Uju.
• This is interspersed with dialogue.
• In many instances Uju bares her mind to the reader.
 CONTRASTS
• Uju and her husband.
• The beginning and the end of the story.
• Uju and her mother are a study in contrast.
• Uju’s mother in poverty and later in wealth.
• Wealth and poverty and their stark effects.
• Public and private health facilities.
• The contrast between the ugliness of Chief and the beauty of
love. The hatred she felt for Chief and her marriage is
contrasted with the secret of joy at the end.
 CHARACTERS
• The two major characters in the story are Uju and her mother.
• There are a number of minor characters including Chief, Uju’s
husband, Uju’s child Ifunanya.
• A string of professionals: Chief’s driver, a number of nurses and
doctors.
 SATIRE
• A literary composition which holds up vice and folly to ridicule
and scorn through humour, sarcasm, irony and exaggeration.
• Chief, Uju’s husband, is presented in a humorous manner to
hold up teenage marriage to scorn.
• Uju’s mother is also ridiculed.
• The lack of health infrastructure is also presented here
seriously.
• Uju’s baby is described as ‘an angry geriatric’ and the irony is
that it is this baby that made Uju so happy.
 LANGUAGE
• Direct simple words and sentences.
• The mixture of Ibo and English words.
• There are many similes in the story.
• Apt descriptions in the story.
• Another style of the story is that it begins in the middle and the
other details are then supplied. This technique is called
Flashback
 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
• Teenage and forced marriages.
• The stark effects of poverty.
• What is love considering the beginning and the end of the
story?
• The secret of joy. What is yours?
FROM THE JOYS OF MOTHERHOOD
• Nnu Ego was just falling asleep with a full stomach when in
walked a man with a belly like a pregnant cow, wobbling first to
this side and then to that. The belly, coupled with the fact that
he was short made him look like a barrel. His hair, was not
closely shaved; he left a lot of it on his head like that of a
woman in mourning. His cheeks were puffy and looked as if he
had hot yam inside them and they seemed to have pushed his
mouth into a smaller size above his weak jaw. … If her
husband-to-be was like this, she thought, she would go back to
her father. Why, marrying such a jelly of a man would be like
living with a middle-aged woman!