Analysis of "A Caring Man" by Ken Saro-Wiwa

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The narrative

“A Caring Man” is a short story narrated according to the principles laid down by pioneers of the genre. The author narrated the story from the standpoint of the first person, who in this case, happens to be the protagonist (a housewife) of the story. Thus, the writer uses “I”, “Me” “We” and “Us” even right from the opening of the story, and renders the narrative through the major character. This makes it possible

for reader to see the story events through the eyes of the central character.

The story, “A Caring Man” is premised on sociological comedy of love between ‘Dan’ and his wife, who had been married for twenty six years. But their marital life however, turned sour when ‘Dan’, the family head, got involved with their house maid, ‘Ayo’ in a clandestine love relationship. The story ultimately reached its high point when the house wife uncovers the love escapade between ‘Dan’, her husband and ‘Ayo’, the house help.

  The characters

The story, ‘A Caring Man’ was constructed around a very few characters, eight to be specific. These include ‘Dan’, the family head, his wife (hero of the story) and their two children. Others are Dan’s mother, ‘Ayo’, the house help and her parents (Mama Ayo and Papa Ayo).

Dan’s wife is the central character of the story. She was happily married, and the marriage  was  blessed  with  two  female  children.  Though,  she  was  lucratively employed but the stress of her job made it difficult for her to manage effectively between  work  and  household  responsibility,  as  Dan,  the  husband,  never  took interest in assisting her with the tasks. Hence, the need arose for her to get a house help who would take care of the household chores while she devotes enough time to her job. Eventually, she brought in ‘Ayo’ .

Ayo was a skinny tall girl approaching puberty when she joined Dan’s family as a maid. She was from a poor background though, but Dan’s wife took good care of her by  feeding,  clothing  and  training,  which  transformed  her  to  a presentable young lady.  Thus, she became useful and indispensable to the entire family. But unfortunately, her presence  in the home  soon became  the pivot  around which revolved the comedy in the home front.

Dan and wife were in their fifties – a plausible reason why Dan’s wife was losing physical attractiveness. Other probable reason was the demand of her job and the stress she suffered there from. These and other factors collaborated to deprive Dan of his wife’s attention. In an attempt to reminisce on marital bliss and to get rid of these matrimonial challenges, Dan soon began to have extra marital affairs which later on “earned” him a bastard baby boy. Dan’s wife took it badly initially but quickly got over it and she decided to adopt the child and rear him together with her biological children. But Dan would not stop at that as he, before long, added salt to the injury of his wife: he condescended and put the house help ‘Ayo’ in a family way through a promiscuous affair.

It was  at  this point  that  “papa”  and  “Mama” Ayo  featured  in  the  story:  they appeared in the house of Dan to express their anger and disapproval of Dan’s misconduct. Their presence in the house consequently let the cat out of Dan’s bag as it turned to be an occasion for Dan’s wife to realize her husband’s persistent infidelity.  She was  seriously devastated, ashamed, embarrassed and humiliated. She  wept  bitterly  and  appealed  to  Papa  and  Mama  Ayo  for  clemency;  that arrangements would be made to send Ayo back to them, but before she could do this Ayo had fled the house.

Incredibly, Dan had withdrawn from the sitting room on hearing papa and Mama Ayo knock the door, hence leaving his wife to face the wrath of his misbehavior. This caused a hot confrontation between the couple, and Dan before dawn had left home informing his wife through a note that he was travelling to London for a week on business trip. But Dan did not return home until after one month probably after having suffered nostalgia. The quarrel continued between the couple even after  a month  of separate  living,  and no punishment his wife  devised  seemed commensurate with his naughtiness. When co-existing with the wife under the same roof was becoming miserable, Dan decided to appease her with a gift of Mercedes  Benz  car,  which  she  gladly  accepted  and  then  pardoned  him.  Her remark was that “Dan was always a caring man…” Was he truly a caring man? The answer is in between the lines of the story!

The setting

With  respect  to  the  time  setting,  “A  Caring  Man”  belongs  to  Nigeria’s  post- independence  period.  It  is  an  invention  of the  period  of military  rule,  when dictatorship, oppression and cruelty were the system of governance.  The story is a production of what is referred to in literary sphere as the modern period.

Concerning the place setting, it belongs to a metropolitan city in the Niger Delta area  of Nigeria  where  ignorance,  high  life  and  social  corruption  often  cause heartbreaking consequences on individuals, families and the society at large. This is apparent in the fallout between two different families and the aftereffect on the larger society, all as a result of waywardness of a family head.

The plot

The  plot  of  the  story,  “A  Caring  Man”  was  designed  through  logical  and sequential arrangement of the events in the story. Thus, the story has beginning, middle  and  end  as  the  author  networks  the  activities  of characters  with  one another, revealing the bearing of each character (and his/her actions) to the central theme of the story. The author employed what is known as “Rising Action” when he  revealed  the  conflict  in  the  story  to  reader  and  where  the  events  become complicated. This, as far as this story is concerned, came to the open when Dan’s wife discovered that her husband was having an affair on the side. This led the reader to the highest point of interest (climax) in the story as s/he wonders with anxiety what will happen next; will the conflict be resolved or not? The conflict

eventually got resolved with the settlement between the couple, thereby furnishing the reader with the outcome of events in the story.

  The central theme

The central idea behind the short story is the theory that “man is the backbone of the family” and any transgression on the part of the man in a given home, would certainly crumble the home and would impact negatively upon the larger society. This was made clear in the story through the gross social misconduct of a family leader; how his home  consequently  fell  apart  and how  the  larger  society was adversely affected. The author also pointed  out the need  for man to assist the spouse in some petty domestic duties to ease the burden, especially when she is taking up a white collar job.

Conclusion

“A Caring Man” is a five-page short story curled from “A Forest of Flowers”, a collection  of stories  written by Ken  Saro-Wiwa  in  1986  to portray  ignorance, fallacy  and  moral  decadence  of the Nigerian  society.  “A  Caring  Man”  is  the seventeenth story in the story collection that was divided into two unequal parts. The first part consists of eight short stories, while the second comprises of eleven different stories.

In “A Caring Man”, appreciated here, Saro-Wiwa’s underlying theme is that man as the pivot upon which any family rests, determines to a large extent, the moral rectitude of the nuclear family and that of the society as a whole. The story is observed to have fulfilled all the requirements of a short story, and the writer was able to effectively manage the story elements.