An innocent girl child archetype in Adimora-Ezeigbo’s select fiction

Abstract

The African Society is replete with girl-children that are seemingly adherent to keeping their parents‟ instruction and cultural norms. The essence of grooming such innocent girl children that exhibit cultural nuances with the acceptable beliefs and norms is, to have a near perfect posterity that would take over the affairs of the state from the older generations. This paper investigates the innocent girl-child archetype as the stage of life where she operates in the state of purity and innocence of a new life that is devoid of contamination.
The study employs Carl Jung‟s Archetypal Theory, which describes archetypes in fiction as that controlled by the individual personal experiences that are deeper and more universal; a repository of repressed innate materials, inherited thoughts and feelings that reside in the impersonal and collective unconscious. Purposively selected fictional works of Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo are used for the study. Issues related to the innocent girl-child are subjected to critical textual analysis.
Findings reveal that the innocent females have the potentials of delivering their parents, culture and society from their predicaments. The innocent girl-child if she is adequately guided by the family and adults group residing in the society is susceptible to taking care of her parents more. Adimora-Ezeigbo represents the girl-child in her sense of innocence with a burden of the adults who are held spell-bound by the usual insight and incredible wisdom exhibited by her. The innocent girlchild is highly endowed with spiritual and physical powers that could weld the family and society together with sustainability and proper achievement. Besides, the innocent girl-child archetype enforces the right conscience, her in-born innocence trait, to curb out the spirit of lying in other children in her family and environment; a habit they acquire during the period such children get trapped in the bad gangs and cults found everywhere in different societies.