Essay/Term paper: Essay on flowers and shadows

Essay, term paper, research paper:  College Essays

Essay on Flowers and Shadows


As darkness cloaks the mists of the story line; So who, one of the many
unprevailling & vengeful victim of Jonan's Crumbling & destructive success,
finally makes an appearance at the okwe's residence; leading the fall of
Jonan's wealth and power. So who's vengeful plot brought him out of the shadows,
where his controlled madness might have fooled the likes of Jonan for a while,
but the latter's paranoia finally caught on and killed Sowho and itself;
putting a rest the destruction and curse laid upon the poor factory workers and
opening a broad new scale of possibilities that might (in long terms) help tip
the edge of demeaning business ethics in the Nigerian society.
Anyone who read Macbeth would agree that it's quite parallel to Flowers
& Shadows. Even thought the books where written by two different authors at
different time periods; the depicted morals of the stories show the
fundamental and universal relation of corruption to all systems, may it be
governmental, sociological etc... Ben Okri and Shakespeare showed that (1)
corruption is due to the lack of power on one side of society and too much on
the other, or the intrinsic desire of power on the greater side of society, (2)
that ones desired limits of wealth and power are relative to ones situation,
(3) that one must pay redemption for the evil acts one has commit in the past,
and (4) that the cycle of corruption can only be broken with the lack of desire.
These points where made quite clear during the book, especially at the end with
the loss Jeffia's wealth and his gain of happiness. If Jeffia where to be sad
and power hungry, the cycle would have continued but Jeffia is merely a flower
blooming in the shadows.