J.O.J Nwachukwu-Agbada’s Bomblast Or Breakfast?: A Metaphor of Social Awareness and Conflict Resolution

Abstract

A metaphor is an expression that relates something or objects to another or object in way that the sense realised from such comparison helps in manifesting meaning clearly. Metaphor gives a writer the audacity to portray non-familiar ideas and situations in a way the reader is made to understand an intended meaning by comparing unknown things with known ones. It involves the deployment of language in a distinctive manner that words are used outside their conventional environment to express similar ideas or concepts. This paper examines Nwachukwu-Agbada’s Bomblast or Breakfast?as a metaphor for social awareness and conflict resolution. Applying the textual interpretation approach, this paper observes that metaphor as a strong creative technique is deployed constructively to awaken the mental consciousness of the reader. Through the theorist, Kenneth Burke’s Rhetorical Criticism, the paper investigates how the poet deploys metaphor as a veritable device to express his historical, cultural and socio-political value system of his society. The paper also uses this approach to describe, analyse, interpret, and evaluate hidden messages and meaning in the collection, thereby domesticating any claim that metaphor is a veritable literary instrument writers aesthetically and stylistically apply to engender social integration and national development. This study will also enable readers appreciate the detailed use of metaphor in Bomblast or Breakfast?, and how to apply such device in creative expressions.