Veronica

How does the writer engage the reader in the text Veronica?

In the text Veronica Okeke as a narrator tells us a story about two different family backgrounds and shows a clear contrast between his and Veronica’s life.

In the beginning of the passage we are able to see a clear picture of Veronica’s hard and terrible life, fully and described by Okeke. They both were born in poverty in same village, but his family was slightly well off. He states that “her family had been even poorer than mine”, when “even” emphasizes critical and shocking way of living. Moving on through the text the narrator actually describes stressful life where Veronica has a lot of responsibilities which had “fallen on her shoulders” bringing up young children. She plays the main role of mother, a role of career for her parents, a role of housekeeper looking after the hut. Veronica is simply expected to do all the heavy duties in the house, like fetch water from the stream and chop firewood. She works so hard to provide all necessity for existence of her family.

Her father doesn’t do much in the house and doesn’t play important role of provider in their family. He is presented as an aggressive and violent alcoholic who is interested only in his drinking companions. From the Okekes words’ describing Veronica’s reaction of tensed situation “listening to her screams” it is lead to conclusion that father was very brutal and dominant figure destroying her life. She must have often suffered from moral and physical abuse of his paranoid father. Veronica seems to be very lonely, unprotected child who is just without understanding getting on with her daily duties. She doesn’t look for mothers support as her mother is weak and seems to be very tired dealing with her husband. HeHer parents comparing with Okeke’s parents are not interested in her life. They don’t bother to send her daughter to school for further education. They are very passive characters in giving the right example and lead their...