Saving Mr Ugwu

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Saving Mr. Ugwu Literary essay The short story ”Saving Mr. Ugwu” was written by Lin Anderson in 2012. It is about Mr. Ugwu, his job and his family. It concerns different identities and their individual rights. The text deals with the themes imperialism and racial division. Mr. Ugwu and his family have moved from Lagos, which is the largest city of Nigeria, to the bush because of Mr. Ugwu’s work. In the beginning of the text, Mr. Ugwu is getting dressed to go to work while he is looking out the window waiting for the rain to drop and water the family’s pretty garden. It is a Saturday, on which he is used to work – though this particular Saturday is different from others and he is anxious to go to work because his bosses, the white men, have decided to make him deliver smaller, unsatisfying paychecks to the other workers of the company. On his way, he comes past his white neighbor’s house and sees his pet monkey, which is locked in a cage. He gets home after closing time only to discover a crowd standing around his house to “punish the dog who stole their money”. As he runs from the crowd, suddenly it begins to rain and the crowd dissolves leaving him alone hidden under a veranda. Abruptly, his neighbor’s monkey finds him and he kills it. In the end of the short story, Mr. Ugwu and his family move back to Lagos. The action in the short story takes place in Nigeria that until 1960 was a British colony. After they gained independence, Nigeria consisted of many different cultures. Later in the 60’, there was a civil war due to cultural and religious differences between the two tribes: the Muslim Hausas and the Christian Igbos. The main character, Mr. Ugwu comes as mentioned above from Lagos, which is nominated by Igbos and therefore he too is an Igbo. He moves to the bush that is dominated by the Hausas. From the Ugwu family’s point of view, the bush is not a

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