People of the City: Analysis of Major Characters

Author: Cyprian Ekwensi

First published: 1954; revised, 1963

Genre: Novel

Locale: Lagos and eastern Nigeria

Plot: Social morality

Time: 1950

Amusa Sango (ah-MEW-sah SAHN-goh), the protagonist, who lives in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, where he is employed as a crime reporter on a tabloid newspaper. He exemplifies a new class that has developed in contemporary Africa, that of educated urban workers who relish the opportunities for money and pleasure that social change has brought and who are indifferent, even antagonistic, to the restrictive cultural traditions of their parents. Sango is young, lively, and opportunistic, intelligent but not intellectual. He enjoys his role as a man-about-town; he is handsome, easygoing, and self-confident. He finds enjoyment in the high life of the city. During the evenings, he is the leader of a dance band, which plays in the local nightclubs. This moonlighting gives him access to the many good-time girls who, like him, see Lagos as a city of exotic opportunity. He is not merely a superficial playboy. Although he enjoys passionate sex with several women, in each case he defends himself from the guilt of promiscuity by believing himself to be ardently in love. He takes his work as a journalist seriously as well. His news reports show a serious social awareness of the exploitation suffered by the underprivileged in this rapidly evolving economy that provides benefits not for workers but rather for shrewd, even crooked, manipulators. His convictions are strong enough to require that he challenge the system. He is finally fired because his trenchant columns criticizing corruption offend the elite friends of the newspaper proprietor. Forced into exile in Ghana, he swears that he will return to Nigeria to work toward reform. For all of his private sexual activities, he remains a social idealist. He lives by his own code of honor, one that, if flexible in ultimate moral terms, retains a redeeming measure of dedication and decency.

Aina (AY-nah), a pretty country girl. There is nothing remarkable about her. Like hundreds of others, she has been lured to the city by the exaggerated promises of thrills and profit and is eager to experience the fast, glamorous life no matter the consequences, which she is too innocent to imagine anyway. Her only prospects derive from her sex. She is naïve enough to think that the men who seduce her will marry her but soon realizes the disappointing truth. She finds no work and survives by petty theft until she is caught and sentenced to prison. Humiliated and embittered, she turns viciously on society. She creates public scenes and attempts blackmail. At the nadir of her fortunes, she suffers a painful miscarriage. She is a young woman destroyed by the cruelties and indifference of the city. At this point, however, she undergoes a complete (if somewhat improbable) character transformation. She repents of her behavior and displays the heart of gold that exists beneath the angry resentment that has motivated her.

Aina's mother, a strange and ominous person who is powerfully protective of Aina and threatens anyone who might seem to do her harm. Her comings and goings are made so mysterious that it seems as if she may be more than a brooding, attentive mother, a witch who, in the African context, would have great powers for evil. Believing that she is a witch, Sango fears her greatly. When she unexpectedly appears at his mother's deathbed, however, she offers Sango her blessing rather than her curse, so she may be simply an ordinary old woman, devoted and anxious about the uncaring folly of her daughter and the tempting vices among which she lives.

Lajide (lah-JEE-dah), Sango's fat, lustful, greedy, exploitative Syrian landlord, a thoroughly despicable tyrant. He dresses in the Arab style and wears a gilt-edged fez with golden tassels. He has eight wives, but that does not stop him from making lecherous advances to any women who seek to do business with him and becoming incensed if any dares deny him. He has made his fortune with a series of barely legal deals. He is a part-time moneylender at usurious rates, harsh in all of his dealings. With his compatriot Zamil, he exemplifies the rapacious foreign trader, a familiar real-life feature of West African commerce. He drives a large American car to display his wealth ostentatiously and, while living in exceptional luxury, constantly and deliberately grinds and exploits his poor tenants. His greed is his undoing. To acquire still more money, he takes the step into actual criminal activity. His further crooked tradings are uncovered, and his whole empire collapses. The wife he most deeply adores dies. His anguish reveals that even Lajide has some virtues. He dies in a peaceful, drunken, perhaps suicidal, coma that allows him to avoid the jail sentence his activities have earned for him.

Bayo (BAH-yoh), a friend of Sango and, like him, somewhat of a playboy, reveling in the opportunities that Lagos provides for drinking, dancing, and enjoying the transient attentions of innumerable women, preferably very young ones. His cheerfully extravagant way of life makes no provision for the future. Although his behavior is frivolous, he is warm-hearted and a good friend capable of real affection, so that it is not implausible that he finally truly falls in love. It is unfortunate that he chooses the daughter of Zamil, however, because Zamil despises the Africans that he swindles. His death by shooting at the hands of Zamil is pointless, but it may suggest the wider pointlessness of Bayo's existence.

Beatrice, an extremely beautiful mature woman. Without moral embarrassment, she acknowledges that she covets the luxuries she can obtain only by being the mistress of a rich man. This life of virtual prostitution brings her neither money nor happiness, only the feeling of being degraded and exploited. After living for years as the mistress of a British engineer, by whom she has three children, she determines to reform her life. With considerable courage and much optimism, she leaves him, trusting that independence will provide the basis for renewed honor. She is still attractive to men, and, when she takes a job in a department store, Lajide pursues her with gifts. In spite of increasingly ill health, she joins up with yet another man. Soon afterward, she dies and is buried in a pauper's grave, proving the sad futility of her mode of life.

Beatrice Two, a morally perfect, idealized presentation of beauteous womanhood. In complete contrast to all the other good-time girls, who are immoral and appeal to men's sexual urges, she has all the virtues a man appreciates and seeks in a wife, including virginity. She is dainty, modest, and well brought up; she dresses well and converses intelligently. She is educated and appropriately destined for the status and comfort of marrying an elite Nigerian at present studying in England. She is so sensitive that an inner conflict about her choice of husbands brings her to a nervous breakdown. She forgives Sango his past affairs because of her infatuation for him.