The Womb and the Representation of Ecological Cohesion: A Linguistic Reading of Nicole Chinelo’s Save the African Womb

Abstract

This paper examined the place of the womb as a representative of ecological cohesion. Using the selected text, the paper explored the didactic role of literature, essentially from the purview of imparting on the youth and the adolescent; and based on this background, the paper made use of a literary text, Save the African Womb, which is one of the Government recommended texts for students at the junior secondary level of education in Nigeria. The adolescent and youth stage in human development, no doubt, is critical in the social, moral, cultural, intellectual, and psychological education and formation. Again, the paper advanced from the understanding that literature as a special area of writing thrives in the indirect expression of ideas and messages. As much as a literary writer sets to communicate his or her literary messages, such are often allegorically embedded, demanding the creative ability of the reader to decode and sieve the messages from the twined knot in the writer’s language choices. To be able to do this in our paper, we adopted the eclectic approach in the selection of theoretical framework, considering the fact that the paper involves a cross disciplinary adventure. The paper thus adopted principally, the semiotic theory, and then the eco-feminist theory as relevant theories. Part of the findings of the paper is that the writer represented the importance of the womb using different manners of signification, both the literal and the semiotic. The conclusion of the paper is that the womb is central to the woman’s position as unique biological specie. The womb is also critical in the discussion of the overall human nature, and the need for mutual co- existence in the ecology of human existence. Therefore, the text can be read from the viewpoint of fostering a solution to the social tensions which often arise in the society.