Fine Boys is arranged in a way to expose the impressions outside influences have on young minds.
By Lechi Eke
Fine Boys is of superior assemblage. You cannot put your hand on why immediately you start reading it, but I think it has to do with that sine quo non thing found in its long and loose plot and presentation.
If Fine Boys has not won any award, it is the fault of the editors. After its superb intro, the next few pages, between Chapter One and the beginning of Chapter Two, drag. I would shrink these pages or condense them into two sentences, or at the most a paragraph. I almost stopped reading at this juncture, but for a leading I felt to continue.
What killed the above-mentioned pages is the lack of something to look forward to as Ewaen, the main character and narrator, plays big brother, does school runs and laze about with his friends while waiting for ASUU strike to be called off and university to resume. Warning: narratives are enthralling when there are things to look forward to.
The merits of this novel are yet to be discovered. I pray that Imasuen would reap them in his lifetime, that what happened to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby will not happen to it. (For the philistine, The Great Gatsby was published in 1925 during the Jazz Age, and was not well received by literary critics. This drove the author into self-destruction. But in 1944-45, US soldiers were given copies to read during WW2.
(Today, The Great Gatsby is recommended for the 11th grade in American Literature classrooms because of its literary devices, POV, style – it’s written in beautiful prose. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald died in 1940 believing that his novel was a commercial failure. By 1950, The Great Gatsby became a bestseller. Now, it is number 3 of the best 10 American novels).
Theme/meaning, plot, diction, characterisation, structure, setting, and POV in Fine Boys
Theme/Meaning
Fine Boys is multi-themed. Its major theme examines growing up or coming of age which becomes explosive as young impressionable adults are let loose in a free university environment.
Is Imasuen answering an unasked question: what can young people do if left by themselves? Do young people have enough, or the right kind of education from home to help them make good decisions and choose right actions when they’re away from home?
William Golding’s 1954 Lord of the Flies tows the lines of these posers too. Imasuen’s Fine Boys like Lord of the Flies tackles loss of innocence (in their new freedom, teenage university freshers shed vital virtues). We look for the line between civilised actions from educated and enlightened youths, and actions of savagery from the same educated youths as found in the savagery of confraternity activities in the campus. How can educated people whose education is being guided into acquiring skills that would help them administer societies and nations, engage in the savagery we see in cultism in tertiary institutions?
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Dissecting Eghosa Imasuen’s Fine Boys (1)
Of course, Good and Evil engage in a stiff battle in the highest institution of learning. These youth in Fine Boys are not trapped on an island, they are in the highest institution of learning to acquire education that will better their country, but here, they turn savages. Good and Evil are at each other’s throat in rivalries that will bequeath society with shameful and incompetent leaders tomorrow!
But before you blame them, what examples have the adult world given them? What impressions do adult behaviours, including consequences of bad governance leave on the minds of young impressionable adults? This is the social influence.
The socio-political situation in Nigeria is a huge bad influence on growing minds. The leaders are not behaving well. They are hard-hearted and exhibit behaviours morally wrong and uncalled for. They are cruel, denying and eventually killing the winner of a free and fair election? They killed, dissolving bodies of activists!
Security agents beat up innocent students for returning late from a party. The police join students in looting only to send their colleagues later to arrest looters! The army employed to safeguard lives, beat and rape female students? Their mad ways beg for reactions from the young and restless. Thus, there are several clashes (chaos).
On the home front, Ewaen’s mum describes Uncle Max, Ewaen’s father’s brother, as a serial polygamist – he changes wives like boxers! Ewaen’s father is a wife beater; he and his brother are very stingy.
Then, there is the delusion of acquiring an education in the novel, but in reality, they’re acquiring nothing. For example, what kind of a doctor would Ewaen and Wilhelm become? What kind of engineer will Harry who doesn’t attend lectures at all become? On page 312, Ewaen writes, “We never went to school (classes).”
Also, mob mentality is examined. It is the thoughtlessness of individuals losing their individuality in the elation of belonging; being part of what’s going on whether they understand it or not. You see fresh students joining the demonstrations, the riots, the looting. They also, join confraternities, or brotherhood to blend, to become cool guys, to acquire a sense of achievement. What is the profit? The school rusticates some and expels some, while some die! Destinies, truncated.
Being alone in school with no family supervision thrusts these young ones into social pressures such as: peer pressure, media pressure and family pressure (oh, what the pressure of seeing your father chasing around your mother to beat her will have on you!). They grapple with decision-making. But do they have the right kind of education from home to assert themselves; to make good decisions?
Decision-making is an essential skill young people shouldn’t leave home without!
Imasuen writes on one of the opening pages that the narrative is about youth and lost innocence. Ewaen and friends arrive in school with virtues they discard fast at the first sign of mocking from their friends. The author narrows down the ventricle of university confraternity to what bad communication does to good manners using Ewaen and Wilhelm as examples. The pressures of becoming cool or acceptable in the campus by losing virginity, drinking alcohol, and smoking are there on one hand, while the pressure of becoming the untouchables by joining any of the confraternity groups in Nigerian universities is there on the other hand.
Fine Boys is about cultism in Nigerian universities. It’s is about Wilhelm, the half-Nigerian half-German boy who arrives university as a good boy and ends up blending confra to the point of becoming a hit man. This is why the novel hits climax at his death. It is about evil communication destroying good manners. The University of Benin is just a case study to expose the evils of cultism.
Wilhelm is half-caste, good-looking and charming. He’s respectful, a good son, no smoking, no drinking, still a virgin until he arrives in UniBen. He and his very close pal, Ewaen, are smart (but in the university they play truancy and begin to perform poorly in their academics). They’re teetotallers with no girlfriends. But arriving in UniBen to total freedom, and by continually hanging out with bibbers and smokers, they both pick up the bad habits of truancy, smoking and drinking, and of course, girl-chasing.
From Ewaen’s narration, we deduce that it’s pride that pushes Wilhelm into blending. Ewaen has said that the reason why they rebuff blending is because they feel superior to cultists. But their airs cannot save them from being forced to blend. Tommy often warns Ewaen that his protector, TJ, will soon finish school and that would leave him vulnerable. Cosa Nostra members stripping Wilhelm naked and taking his glasses humiliated and reduced him. And for this he becomes furious and joins the more dangerous Black Axe cult to protect self, and forestall any further degradation by any cult group to force-blend him.
Then, there is a very important underlying theme of where to get the education for good manners. It is not in school!
We see Ewaen’s dad who is London-trained in both professional course and etiquette, yet doesn’t behave well. Ewaen and his brother and his friends, children from ‘good homes’, lie, cheat, steal, play truancy and smoke and drink engaging in premarital sex (instead of abstinence) because they have not the right kind of education from home to live right. Abstinence is a factor; hence the joke about someone’s girlfriend who thinks abstinence is the name of a condom.
Training for good manners happens at home. For all the problems the characters in Fine Boys encounter, they are as a result of little or no home-training. Iye, Ewaen’s paternal grandma did not train her son, neither did Nene, Ewaen’s maternal grandma. Ewaen’s parents came from dysfunctional families; little wonder Ewaen turns out the way he does. He has no education from home to maintain his non-smoking and non-drinking status (he doesn’t know they were virtues). He allows his friends to cajole him into drinking and smoking.
Parents should know that engaging in litany or sermons, the talk-talk-talk of corrections, are not training.
Ewaen’s dad has a UK education with etiquette and ballroom dancing as extra-curricular activities, yet he swears in front of his children and uses the f-word and beats his wife and, places more value on saving money than in quality education.
Page 4 gives us a glimpse of the inner working of the author’s mind. Imasuen/Ewaen (this is where the author and his persona collide) writes: “Daddy had told my brother and me about his training in England. The group had been taught ballroom dancing, etiquette and other oyibo mannerisms. The company wanted to mould these chaps into highflyers, brilliant and well-behaved young men who would come back to take control of the country’s destiny and protect the industry.” (This also sounds like what universities are meant for).
Unfortunately, these classroom training did little for Imuetiyan (Ewaen’s daddy). At the staff camp for the gas terminal in Forcados, Ewaen’s daddy broke a snooker stick on an oyibo man’s head for saying that ‘Black men lack the intellectual capacity to understand a gentleman’s game of billiards.’
Although he explains this violent behaviour, fact still remains that he doesn’t understand billiards, and violence cannot be excused.
We must not forget the meaning of nemesis in the book – Ewaen’s dream hints at nemesis. It seems Wilhelm kills Lopez at Abraka, maybe Lorenchi’s hand deals Wilhelm the fatal blow that sends him to eternity; he gets shot in class himself… towing the Bible line that ogbu mma ga ala na mma (he who lives by the sword will die by the sword)!
Setting
Apart from Nene’s burial scene, Fine Boys is set physically in Warri and Benin. Time being part of setting, the narrative is also set in the time of Nigeria’s embryonic democracy which turns out to be a time of political abnormality; of a military head of state presiding over civilian governors – what! Nothing can be crazier than that.
Also, Ewaen gives us the global timing of the narrative. Page 5 tells us it is the time of injustice, societal anarchy, of people taking laws into their hands. For example, 16 year old Amy Fisher kills Mary Jo so Joey could be free from the cradle snatcher! It is the time of addiction to harmful music, harmful substances. It is a weird time. Against this background, Imasuen weaves his tale, warning us that what we’re about to read is anarchical.
Under Setting, we have humour in the story. Humour is a mood. We take two examples: on page 210 when Chunky (one of Ewaen’s numerous friends) asks the ugly Odegua who he resembles in his family and he replies his mum and his friends begin to laugh. Odegua realises late that the joke is on him as his friends don’t stop laughing for close to ten minutes and he says, “Se una see Chunky dey abuse my mama o!”
On Page 146, Ewaen tells us how stingy Efe is. He refuses to share his provisions, hoarding them and partaking of other flatmates’ provisions with a promise that they will eat his own when theirs have finished. One of the flatmates later discovers that Efe’s pack of cabin biscuit has a slit on the underside where the stingy boy has been siphoning the snack secretly from and by this time it is more than half empty. Efe who’s been living in the flat free of charge, is thereby thrown out.
Plot
Fine Boys presents a loose plot. This is in tandem with the goings on in the book. Growing up age is not a time of orderliness. Things turn out to be on the overdrive at this stage of life: loose, uncontrollable; too many friends, too many activities, flaunting of the little you have, competitions, succumbing to outside influences so not to be laughed at, afraid of being a laughing object, delving into strange behaviours and things like visiting a native doctor to catch a thief, and so on.
So, this narrative would be strange if it had a tight plot structure. This simply means that the sequence of the story is not cause and effect. Only towards the end, as the author begins to wrap things up, does he achieve the sequence of things happening as a result of what has happened.
Structure
From the structure, which is the arrangement of the plot or the incidents or the events in the story, an observant reader will deduce that what the author is most concerned about is the issue of growing up. We see the too many opportunities, incidents and activities that present themselves to young adults to make their own decisions in life as they grow up.
I conclude this from not only Ewaen’s grappling with issues of pilfering cash and clothing from his dad, grappling with smoking and drinking and the coming of age issue of chasing girls and sex, but also in his younger brother, Osaze, who tows the same lines of actions: ‘making withdrawals from his dad’s pockets’, smoking, cheating in exams…
Fine Boys is arranged in a way to expose the impressions outside influences have on young minds. We first see Ewaen thinking and saying how someone’s opulent office smells like money, and his dad correcting him on that. We see what his parents’ squabbling does to him and his siblings. Then there are the influences of peers: they discuss sex – who’s done it; men drink alcohol; not Fanta!
Imasueh skilfully structures the story to expose youths in ennui, lethargy; in activity (what they spend most time on) – busy youths doing nothing, lazing about. Youths at home, at school, dealing with pressures; parental control, and burial scene of an extended family member to expose what cultists and ex-cultists think of cultism, etc.
Time spent in the classrooms appears to be very minimal compared to time spent idling about. The structure places before readers what young people engage in and how much time they spend on them.
Also, the author structures the narrative to reflect the restlessness of youth: today, they live in the campus, tomorrow they live outside the campus with a set of friends; another day, they’ve regrouped in another out of campus residence, another flat with a different set of friends.
The restlessness of the young is also seen in Tambo (not real name), travelling to Bulgaria with fake passport. Also, typical of young people is trying new things: tasting alcohol, taking a puff at cigarettes, taking up of nicknames: KO, Knockout, Oliver Tambo, TJ (which is actually the initials of his name, Toju, etc)… Change is constant with them.
Structuring in youth activities as seen in Ewaen helping his siblings: Osaze and Eniye, on their JAMB exams day which include driving them to their centres, including Osaze’s special centre, and helping them buy ‘expos’. Then, friends going with their bereaved friends: Ewaen and Justin, to Nene’s burial. These scenes structured into the story are to expose foolishness of youth and regrets.
In fact, I doff my hat at Imasuen on how he presents Nene’s passing on the opening of chapter 18 – this is super structuring.
Also, I admire how we meet the two grandmas – a quarrel between Ewaen’s parents, drives his mother to her mother – that’s how we meet Nene. That same situation brings us to meet and know Iye, Ewaen’s paternal grandma – perfect structuring coming from believable human motivation, one event happening because of another.
Young married women tend to often run to their mothers’ or aunties’ homes when they face challenges in their matrimonial homes. And husbands’ mothers often find delight in coming to visit their sons’ homes with intent to occupy and displace young wives when quarrels happen in their sons’ homes, generically speaking.
Although the above events neither move the story forward nor stall it, they show us life’s incidents or experiences that influence growing minds.
The author’s presentation of the dying of Wilhelm is another example of good structuring – his flatmates see him running back into the flat with no one following him – how their relief turns to horror when he falls down in the kitchen and they see the handle of the knife protruding from his back – great!
Characterisation
There are too many characters in the story, all of them friends. Everyone who went to school and is sociable will identify with this. Ewaen has too many friends. In fact, his 200 level roommate, Efe, in his first off-campus flat, complains about it.
Ewaen sums up the kind of life they are living in this statement: “Efe had issues with my friends. He felt there were too many of them and that they spent too much time in the flat. He said he did not want any of his things to go missing.” Efe’s fears are not unfounded – things get stolen, misplaced, taken without permission, etc.
There are round characters, flat characters, as well as stock characters. The round characters experience changes such as Ewaen from non-smoker, non-drinker to a chimney and bibber; from a serious and smart student to one who plays truancy and performs below average. Fortunately, we see him towards the end of the book trying to sit up, and make the good decision of taking school work seriously again.
Wilhelm is a round character who changes from good boy to bad, but at last regretting his involvement in cultism as he tells Ewaen, “I am so tired of all this wahala. Person can’t read because of his ‘brothers’. When we get to the head of this thing of ours, we are going to change the Neo-Black Movement (as they call the Black Axe confraternity). Everything.”
We see the change in TJ, the ex-don of the mafia confraternity at Nene’s burial. The expelled final year 500 level Agric Econs student regrets school cultism and discourages fresh and Ju-men students of tertiary institutions from joining confra.
I doubt if Odegua, the history student, with his exaggerated 20 carryovers (four actually) will ever change to becoming serious, nor do we see any promise of a change in Harry who never attends classes. Tommy, the mafia hit-man turns don and Yibril (Akay hit-man) show no changes at all. These are stock characters – the natural bad guys.
Many of Ewaen’s friends are flat characters, including Osaze. These are characters that experience no changes in a story and have not much contribution like Amide, Brenda, Weyinmi…
Ewaen’s dad is one of the round characters. With his promise to take his offspring to Europe for their studies which he can afford, shows a change in his thoughts, a paradigm shift of accepting to use money for what it is meant for, purchasing important things like good education. Money is not for hoarding.
POV
Point of View (POV) is first person narrative. The main character of the story tells the tale and we see everything through his eyes. He tells what happens to him, what he sees, or what someone narrates to him. For example, his girlfriend, Amide, tells him that her younger brother in the school at Abraka where Wilhelm goes to settle cult fracas, told her that the ‘arse’ Wilhelm told Ewaen that is causing problems in Abraka, was killed by a foreign student (that is, one who is not a local student of Abraka).
This is how we get to suspect, if not sure, that Wilhelm killed a cult member in Abraka. And when we see him hurry back to Benin earlier than his return date, and at the crack of dawn, we suspect he’s done something terrible.
Fine Boys sticks to the same point of view – first person narrative. Very good!
Style
Of course style is the author’s use of language, his choice of language called diction. As we’ve said before, it is written majorly in Nigerian English with American spelling such as mom, dad, etc., in flowing prose. Even when the author writes in Standard English, he slips into Nigerian colloquial grammar like, “This was daily yabis.” (Page 19); “He was packing a weapon.”(Page 136); “They showed us pepper.” (Page 144); “So that them Osaze could resume with the set.” (Page 207), and so many others.
Please, note that these are sentences in narration and not in dialogue. I put them in quotes for emphasis.
Errors
There are many incomplete sentences in fine Boys such as, “It was supposed a period to put on weight…” (Page 5); “Ehi stood in front us.” (101); “The fellow reading in front us.” (page 226); “The prisoners could been seen out-of-focus in the background,” (page 165).
There are also non-grammatical errors such as God created man on the 7th day! The Bible says 6th (Page 226).
