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Chinua Achebe

Refugee Mother and Child

Easier questions to cut your teeth on!

Keith Tankard
Knowledge4Africa.com
Updated: 18 January 2014
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The poem looks at the bitter hardship in Biafra during its civil war with Nigeria. Starvation and disease were rife, and children died with unconcerned regularity. The poet examines one case where a mother did care and continued to treat her child as if he would live.



ABOUT THE POET

Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi (Nigeria) in November 1930. He was the son of a teacher at a mission school.

He was schooled at the Government College in Umuahia and then at the University College in Ibadan where he received a Bachelors degree in 1953, having specialised in English, History and Theology.

He thereupon studied broadcasting with the BBC, after which he worked for the Voice of Nigeria. Later he was appointed research fellow at the University of Nigeria, where he eventually became a professor of English.

In 1961 Achebe married Christie Chinwe Okoli with whom he had four children.

In 1967 civil war broke out in Nigeria when the Catholic dominated province of Biafra attempted independence from the Moslem dominated central state. During those fateful years, Achebe worked as an ambassador for the Biafran government.

The war went badly for the Biafrans who suffered immensely, and starvation was rife. The poet's firsthand experience of the hardship and struggle inspired him to write "Refugee Mother and Child".

Achebe has written several novels and many poems. Indeed, he is considered to be one of the finest literary artists to have come out of Africa. He is a believer that all literature "should have a message, should have a purpose".

He retired in 1981 but in 1990 was paralysed from the waist down in a car accident.

Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:



"No Madonna and Child could touch
that picture of a mother's tenderness
for a son she soon will have to forget."
  • What is meant by "Madonna and Child"? (2)

[Need help?]

  • Why will the mother soon have to forget her child? (4)

[Need help?]




"The air was heavy with odours
of diarrhoea of unwashed children."
  • Explain how the meaning of these two lines would alter if one placed a comma after the word "diarrhoea". (2)

[Need help?]

  • Why does the author not then use commas in these lines? (2)

[Need help?]




"Unwashed children
with washed-out ribs and dried-up
bottoms struggling in laboured
steps behind blown empty bellies."
  • Why would the children's ribs be "washed-out"? (4)

[Need help?]

  • If the children's bellies are empty, why would they be "blown"? (4)

[Need help?]




"Most mothers there had long ceased
to care but not this one."
  • Explain the implication of the words, "Most mothers there had long ceased to care". (4)

[Need help?]




"She held
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother's
pride as she combed the rust-coloured
hair left on his skull."
  • Comment on the poet's use of the words "ghost" and "skull" in these lines. (4)

[Need help?]




"In another life
this would have been a little daily
act of no consequence before his
breakfast and school; now she
did it like putting flowers
on a tiny grave."
  • What does the poet mean by "in another life"? (4)

[Need help?]

  • Why would this act normally be "of no consequence"? (4)

[Need help?]




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