TRAUMA FROM CONTRADICTORY WORLDS: ENGAGING LANGUAGE AND EXPERIENCE IN FEMI OJO-ADE'S HOME SWEET SWEET HOME

Abstract

Literature is known for its recreation of human experiences, and language is its major tool. The experiences come in different manners: joyful, shocking, purgative,self-expiating, and so on. The hero is usually the focal person in the experiences. He or she is created to exist in a world that has direct impact on him or her through interaction. The interaction carries all the vagaries of life, and trauma which arises from turbulence, fear, delusion, surprise etc. is one of the possible experiences. As a concept, though developed in psychology but which has permeated other disciplines and discourses, trauma in literature interrogates the space for inner memories of characters to introspect and retrospect, foreshadow and flashback, ruminate in awful regrets, suffer pain and agony etc. This paper, therefore, examines Femi Ojo-Ade’s creation of two worlds and the trajectory trauma in the hero of the novel, Home Sweet Sweet Home. The paper adopts the text linguistic theory, which draws a connection between the message of the text and its language; examining how texts are created and understood. The conclusion of the paper is that part of the beauty of the novel, Home Sweet Sweet Home, lies in the ability of the author to stylistically use language to create two worlds, with the incidental trauma and contradictions that engulf the hero.