Abstract:
This study expands epistemic boundaries of critical literature on the social malaise of society. It is a reflection of a typical postcolonial African country as a site of misrule, social crisis, and disillusionment, where pervasive systemic leadership failure has given birth to disconsolate and revolutionary writers who express despair through their art. This study uses literary semiotics to examine the echoes of a broken nation while exploring a pathway for national recovery. The work uses selected poems in Uche Peter Umez’s Aridity of Feelings (2006) and Idris Amali’s Efeega, War of Ants (2014) to illustrate the brutal realities of a broken nation and the path to tread. The study deploys the theory of Reflectionism to interrogate the issues raised in the paper. The Reflectonist theory states that art is a reflection of the society that produced it. The methodology used is close-reading, implicating aspects of the style and theme of the poems. A limited number of poems from each anthology is chosen to suit the textual space of the paper. The findings of the study are hinged on the aesthetics of the poetic art to portray a broken nation and the need to attain national recovery by treading the path of revolution.
Keywords: Artists, Nigerian literature, Reflectionism, Social malaise, Style, Theme
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2026.v05i02.018
author/Dr. Chimeziri C. Ogbedeto & Dr. Ugochukwu Ogechi Iwuji
journal/Tasambo JLLC 5(2) | February 2026 |
