CHAPTER THREE
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
3.1 Child Labour as Structural Violence in Northern Nigerian Society
Child labour in Born on a Tuesday is not presented as a form of individual
suffering but as structural violence - a mechanism that transforms children into
survival mechanisms in a deteriorating social structure. Elynthan John has
intentionally deprived childhood of the sentiment of protection and placed it in an
economic context of survival. Life of Dantala starts not with playing, learning, or
emotional stability but with dislocation and hunger. Poverty is not a thing the novel
enforces that children are close to; it restructures their identity.
The description of childhood as continuous unsteadiness is created by the
repetition of imagery of movement, walking, wandering, and begging. Dantala
recounts:
“We walked until our feet hurt. The bowl was
empty, and the sun was high. Hunger followed us
like a shadow.” (John 24)
The shadow (hunger) metaphor implies eternity. It cannot be separated with the
body. Hunger is a ordeal that defines perception. Labour is not something
temporary that the child has to struggle with but the air of life. It is this
normalization of suffering that makes structural violence work as it does, as no
longer being perceived as injustice.
As a tool of social exposure, the bowl Dantala carries has a symbolic use. It
identifies the child as being economically visible and socially invisible. He is
considered as a beggar, and not a child. The bowl is how the society communicates
with the boy. Such dehumanization is also in line with Marxist accounts of
commodification: the identity of the child is swamped by his economic role.
The fact that Dantala is submissive to religious, power enhances this exploitation
system when he observes,
“Mallam said patience is the key to paradise, but
patience did not stop my stomach from burning.”
(John 42)
The novel reveals suffering ideology. Spiritual language is a medium of taming
hunger instead of satisfying it. The child is made to perceive deprivation as virtue.
The reason why exploitation exists is that it is not concealed but rather it is
accepted.
The genius of this story by John is that it does not dramatize hunger. Rather,
hunger is monotonous, banal, and official. This formlessness is what makes the
violence structural. There is no individual villain, as the whole system is involved.
In Season of Crimson Blossoms, Ibrahim moves the exploitation into the inner self
of the mind. Emotional abandonment in his childhood is what influences Reza to
be forced to rely on herself at an early age. Ibrahim writes:
“No one waited for him at night. No voice called
his name. A boy without witnesses becomes his
own guardian.” (Ibrahim 71)
The words, a boy without witnesses, are unbelievable. Childhood needs to be
acknowledged, and it is to be erased. The emotional neglect is turned into invisible
labour the child has to build the identity alone. It is exploitation in the most silent
form, a kind of mining of the emotional strength out of a body that is not even a
body.
Adult violence and criminality are not born as innate corruption in Reza, but rather
it is the result of historical consequence. The deprivation belongs to his body. This
continuity is explained by trauma theory: in practicing early instability, the
adaptive behaviors that emerge later are pathological. The child that has been
exploited lives but the survival is misunderstood as deviance.
The relative power of both the novels is that they reveal how the society transforms
children into survival technologies. Dantala works economically, Reza works
emotionally. One pleads to live; the other vessels himself to suffer. They both are
influenced by a social surrounding that considers childhood to be disposable
content.
Child labour is then seen as structural violence since it is perpetuated by
institutions like religion, poverty, urban economy, family collapse, and not by
individual cruelty. The child turns out to be a place where the society pushes its
failures. This transaction is recorded in literature with forensic accuracy.
The novels declare that exploitation is not a coincidence. It is reproduced. Any
starving child is the testimony of a machine that works perfectly.
3.2 Religion as an Ideological Machine of Exploitation.
The religion in Born on a Tuesday works as a refuge and a system of control.
Elnathan John does not refute faith, on the contrary, he reveals that the religious
structures are the mechanisms where the process of child exploitation is justified
and reproduced. The almajiri in the novel is not a spiritual education system but
rather that of child mobility, hunger and obedience as the basis of its economy. The
religious language that surrounds it conceals material torment of its participants.
The introduction of Dantala in the almajiri world is presented as a spiritual
responsibility, but the practical aspect of the experience does not correspond with
the promise. He recalls:
“Mallam said we were chosen boys, walking
God’s path. But God’s path was dust and begging
bowls.” (John 19)
The contrast of religious authority with divine vocation and exploitation of the
human body is unstable. Chosen boys is a term that brings out the aspect of honor,
yet the truth is one of dispossession. Religion in this case is ideological work: it
transforms exploitation into divine perseverance. The child is trained to perceive
suffering as fate as opposed to injustice.
Ideological state apparatuses identified by Louis Althusser come into play religion
indoctrinates the subjects to embrace their rank in the hierarchy. The boys inherit
the lack of something as religious drilling. Dantala does not question hunger in the
first place, he questions his patience. When victims police themselves, then
exploitation is achieved.
This criticism is heightened in the novel with the use of scenes of political
manipulation. During riots, religious leaders rally children and make them
disposable vehicles of adult confrontation. Dantala observes:
“They told us we were soldiers of faith. Stones in
our hands felt lighter when they said heaven was
watching.” (John 58)
The analogy of religious justification of stones being made lighter is chilling.
Belief anesthetizes violence. Ideology controls instinct and the child becomes a
battlefield. Terror is melted down on the altar of divine favour. In this case,
exploitation is not inert negligence, but active enlistment.
Religion is a source of weakness multiplier. Extremism provides purpose to
already stripped children. The system does not save them — feeds them with a
weapon.
Ibrahim portrays religion as less vocal and yet as dominating in Season of Crimson
Blossoms. Reza is developed in an ethical environment that is full of religious
censuring. His initial introduction to hypocrisy whereby the adults are seeking to
teach people good then go out to engage in the most unhumane acts breaks his
bond with the authority. Ibrahim writes:
“He learned early that prayers could hide fists.”
(Ibrahim 83)
This single sentence condenses the novel’s critique. Religious performance
becomes camouflage for violence. For a child, such contradictions generate
psychological instability. Authority loses moral credibility. Reza’s rebellion is not
atheistic; it is a reaction to religious structures that failed to protect him.
Both novels reveal religion as a double-edged force. It offers language for hope,
but it also supplies justification for neglect. In northern Nigerian society, where
religious institutions often substitute for absent state structures, this duality
becomes dangerous. When spiritual authority merges with economic desperation,
children become collateral.
The comparative insight is crucial: John exposes religion as an external machine
organizing child bodies; Ibrahim shows religion internalized as psychological
conflict. One system disciplines through doctrine; the other wounds through
contradiction. Together, they demonstrate that exploitation is not only material but
ideological. It shapes how children understand their suffering.
Religion, in these texts, does not create exploitation. It stabilizes it. By framing
deprivation as spiritual necessity, it prevents revolt and preserves hierarchy. The
exploited child becomes morally responsible for his own endurance.
This is the deepest violence: when suffering is sanctified, resistance becomes sin.
3.3 Poverty, Power, and the Political Economy of Childhood
Both Born on a Tuesday and Season of Crimson Blossoms insist that child labour
is not merely the product of individual cruelty or parental failure; it is rooted in a
political economy that systematically produces disposable childhoods. Poverty in
these novels is not background scenery — it is an organizing force that determines
whose childhood is protected and whose childhood is traded for survival.
Elnathan John constructs poverty as a landscape that absorbs children into its logic.
Dantala does not “enter” labour; he is born into an environment where labour
replaces childhood before he understands the difference. His memories are not of
toys or classrooms but of calculation: where to sleep, where to beg, how to avoid
violence. He narrates:
“You learn quickly which streets give coins and
which streets give kicks. Hunger teaches faster
than school.” (John 33)
The line “hunger teaches faster than school” is an indictment of state failure.
Education, which should structure childhood, is replaced by survival training.
Poverty becomes a curriculum. The city educates the child in endurance rather than
literacy. This inversion reflects a Marxist reading of labour under scarcity: children
become economic actors not by choice but by structural coercion.
Importantly, John shows that poverty is administered. It is not random misfortune.
Political elites manipulate religious institutions, urban economies, and patronage
networks while children absorb the consequences. The riots that sweep through the
novel expose how adult power struggles trickle down as childhood devastation.
Dantala witnesses destruction without understanding its cause:
“The men shouted names I did not know. The
houses burned the same way.” (John 65)
The child cannot decode political ideology; he only experiences its material result
— fire, displacement, hunger. This gap between adult rhetoric and child suffering
is the essence of political exploitation. Power operates at a level invisible to its
youngest victims, yet it determines the architecture of their lives.
In Season of Crimson Blossoms, Ibrahim frames poverty less through street
survival and more through social stratification. Reza grows up in an environment
where economic instability produces emotional brutality. Financial scarcity breeds
domestic tension, and that tension is transferred onto children. Ibrahim writes:
“In a house where money was counted louder than
prayers, tenderness became a luxury.” (Ibrahim
52)
The metaphor equates economic scarcity with emotional scarcity. When survival
consumes adult attention, children inherit neglect. Exploitation here is subtle: the
child is not forced to beg, but he is denied the emotional infrastructure necessary
for stable development. Poverty erodes care.
Reza’s later involvement in crime is framed as an economic continuation of
childhood deprivation. His adult choices echo early survival lessons. He enters
informal economies because formal systems never included him. The novel
suggests that society criminalizes the very behaviors it trained children to adopt.
Survival becomes illegality.
The comparative significance of both texts lies in their portrayal of poverty as
generational architecture. Exploited children do not disappear; they mature into
adults shaped by scarcity. Dantala’s vulnerability foreshadows political
manipulation; Reza’s hardness foreshadows violence. The exploited child becomes
the unstable adult. Society then punishes the adult without acknowledging its role
in creating him.
This cyclical structure is central to understanding child labour as a societal
investment in future instability. Poverty reproduces itself by recruiting children
into its machinery. Each exploited child is both a victim and a future symptom.
Neither novel romanticizes resilience. Survival is not triumph; it is damage
management. The boys endure, but endurance leaves residue. Their bodies
remember hunger. Their minds remember abandonment. Their adulthood carries
the imprint of childhood labour.
The political economy of childhood in these texts reveals a disturbing truth:
exploitation is efficient. It extracts value from children while postponing the social
cost until later generations. Literature interrupts this efficiency by forcing
recognition. The novels refuse to let exploitation remain invisible; they insist that
every hungry child is evidence of a system working — just not for the child.
3.4 Psychological Aftermath: Trauma, Memory, and the Ruins of Childhood
If child labour in both novels is structural violence, its most enduring damage is
psychological. Hunger ends when food appears. Beatings stop. Streets change. But
trauma persists as an internal architecture. Both Elnathan John and Abubakar
Adam Ibrahim portray childhood exploitation as an event that does not stay in the
past; it migrates into memory and reorganizes the self.
Dantala’s narrative voice in Born on a Tuesday is striking for its emotional
restraint. He reports suffering without dramatic protest. This stylistic choice is not
accidental; it mimics trauma’s numbing effect. The child learns to survive by
muting emotion. He states:
“After some time, the fear becomes small. It sits
quietly inside you.” (John 74)
The critique of the novel can be summarized in this single sentence. Religious
acting turns into disguise of violence. Such contradictions bring about
psychological instability to a child. Power becomes morally disgraced. The
rebellion of Reza is not an atheistic one, it is a protest against religious institutions
which did not defend him.
In the two novels, religion has shown as a two-sided sword. It provides speech of
hope, and it also provides an excuse of negligence. This duality is perilous in the
Nigerian society in the North where there are religious structures that tend to
replace the missing state structures. Where spiritual authority is combined with
economic desperation, children are the collateral.
The point of comparison is essential: John reveals religion as the exogenous
system of child bodies; Ibrahim reveals religion as a psychological conflict. One
school chastises by dogma; the other by inconsistency. The combination of these
two proves that exploitation is not purely material, but ideological. It influences the
way children interpret their misery.
In these texts, religion does not bring about exploitation. It stabilizes it. It avoids
rebellion and maintains order by casting the need to deprive as a religious need.
The abused child is made morally accountable of his misery.
That is the ultimate violence, the suffering made sacred, the opposition becomes
sin.
3.5 Society as Accomplice: Silence, Normalization and Collective Guilt.
The most shocking thing that comes out in both Born on a Tuesday and Season of
Crimson Blossoms is not just the suffering of children, but that it is a social
absorption that is not broken. Taking advantage becomes a scene of the landscape.
The novels depict a society that has become accustomed to not seeing the needy
children. This is the last phase of structural violence: once injustice stops being
shocking.
Street begging is omnipresent in Born on a Tuesday. The city acts as a theatre
where child hunger is acting daily and adults as ordinary spectators are passing by.
Dantala observes:
“People stepped over us like stones on the road.
Some gave coins. Most gave nothing. Nobody
stopped walking.” (John 37)
The metaphor of stones on the road is harsh in its straightforwardness. The
children are turned into landscape the objects to be moved around, not the subjects
to be identified. There is charity, though it is momentary and transactional.
Responsibility is substituted with a coin. Structural change is replaced by giving.
The story of John implies that the society is comfortable with its moral standing by
making accountability fragments. However, no one person feels guilty since
exploitation is not concentrated in one person. All are involved in the system in an
indirect way, thus no one can pride themselves in how cruel the system is.
This silence collusion is further amplified in the cases of political violence. Adults
organize children as they make pretense that the chaos is unavoidable. Once riots
cause communities to be on the run, existence normalizes at an alarming rate.
Dantala notes:
“The market opened again. The smoke left. Only
we were different.” (John 72)
The city heals cosmetically. Commerce returns. Buildings stand. But the children
are the carriers of the unseen injury. They are not included in the recovery of
society. This selective amnesia shows the collective guilt in the form of resilience.
The society puts on march by not catalogue its dead.
Social silence in Season of Crimson Blossoms works in terms of family. The pain
that Reza had experienced in his early life is not a secret. Adults see his instability
but perceive it as a character defect and not a historical hurt. Ibrahim writes:
“They called him bad as if he was born that way.
No one asked what he survived.” (Ibrahim 102)
This sentence reveals a moral simplifying culture. The society favors labeling as
opposed to investigation. The victimized child grows up the wicked adult and the
account of individual failure swarms up the account of shared accountability. The
silence is a protective action on behalf of the community - it spares the adults the
need to face their responsibility of making broken children.
The development of a comparative grasp here is catastrophic: the two novels
portray the systems of society that are modified to accommodate exploitation but
not to challenge it. When suffering exists, it does not put social order in a condition
of instability, it becomes one of the working conditions. Child labour is not covert,
rather it is incorporated.
Denial is less perilous compared to normalization. Denial invites exposure.
Normalization gets rid of urgency. Intervention becomes unnecessary when an
individual is already hungry.
The novels are accordingly acts of discontinuity. They make the readers re-view
what the society has been conditioned not to notice. John and Ibrahim turn the
hierarchical order of attention around by making exploited children narratives of
themselves. The child ceases to be a background, but rather he becomes the center
of meaning.
This moral repositioning creates moral confrontation. The readers are not able to
be in the comfortable distance that the characters within the novels are. The
indifference becomes denied in literature. It changes passive view to moral
practice.
The group guilt suggested by both texts is not the abstract blame; it is the
diagnosis. A culture where tolerance to child exploitation has been embraced has
adjusted the moral frontiers. It has been striking a deal with unfairness and has
made the price worth it. Negotiation is denied by the novels. They sneak in, and
yet tirelessly, the argument that the only thing that counts in a society is not its
prosperity, its faith, or its state affairs and institutions, but its treatment of the kind
of bodies that are incapable of defending themselves. The victimized child turns
out to be the ethical reflection of the state, and the image that the mirror conveys is
unacceptable.