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Emilia Ilieva and Waveney Olembo, When the Sun Goes Down and Other Stories from Africa and Beyond “Parenthood comes with responsibility and preparedness.” Using illustrations from...

      

Emilia Ilieva and Waveney Olembo, When the Sun Goes Down and Other Stories from Africa and Beyond

“Parenthood comes with responsibility and preparedness.” Using illustrations from Tillie Olsen’s story, ‘I Stand Here Ironing’, discuss the plight of children born to parents lacking in these qualities?

  

Answers


Peter
Introduction
Children go through untold suffering when their parents are not ready financially and emotionally to take care of them. Emily suffers since her mother gives birth at a tender age of 19 and is incapable of adequately taking care of her as a mother.
Content

(i) Emily’s parents are absentee parents. At 8 months, her mother leaves her to go to look for work and leaves her under the care of the woman downstairs who mistreats her. Her father also abandons the family when she is one year old. This makes her emotionally unstable (emotionally detached from the mother).
Her mother took her to her father’s people who did not take proper care of her-p.128.

(ii) Emily is a victim of lack of proper medical care as a result of her mother’s financial inability. This leads to:
? suffered from chicken pox which is not well treated (p.128)
? ill health- eating and sleeping disorders.
? taken to a convalescent home where she gets no love and becomes emotionally disturbed.(p.132)

(iii) Emily further suffers from lack of tenderness/love from parents at an early age when a child most deservers such a love. This creates a gloomy and unhappy child later.
P.130 the mother is advised to smile at Emily but the mother’s face was one of care/ tightness or worry. This made Emily’s face closed and somber.
? She was an unhappy child.

(iv) Emily is taken to school too early because her mother has to search for casual jobs to cater for the family’s needs. With no one to watch over Emily, she is forced to taken to nursery school at an early at the age of 2yers where she is taken care of by an evil teacher-(p.129-130)
? She’s fatigued… challenge of lacerations of group life. She implores her mother not to leave her there implying she was uncomfortable.

(iv) Because of lack of a stable home, Emily lacks friends. She became a lonely child unlike her siblings who had friends.
? moved too much…p132-133
? this makes her unhappy and an introvert.

(v) Emily is left to care for her siblings denying her a chance to be a child because she has to prepare her siblings for school even though she is still young.
? getting other babies(p.130-131)
? she has to help to get the others ready for school.
? she also misses school. Affects her performance in school.

(vi) Emily suffers from lowself-esteem. This is as a result of an emotionally torturous childhood.
(p.133-134)
? she is in competition with her siblings especially Susan who is confident probably because the mother was ready to take care of her.
? she’s gifted but she can’t share her jokes, riddles with others instead Susan does.
? she’s unsure of herself.

(vii) Emily lacksfinancial resources to nurture her talent because mother lacks money to nurture it. She has a talent in comedy that needs to be nurtured. (p. 135-136)


Conclusion
Emily’s lack of proper parental care affects her adversely and she’s unable to reach her full potential.

Musyoxx answered the question on February 22, 2018 at 17:34


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