Anger, disunity, suicide in Abiodun Felix Taiwo’s short story collection, Frustration

Frustration is that unique but negative emotional response to a barrier or stumbling block or resistance against the achievement of a goal or realisation of a dream. If an act is also against someone’s expectation, it could lead to frustration especially when the act is sustained for a long period of time. Frustration breeds anger, annoyance and disappointment.

Frustration is a collection of three short stories published by OAK Initiative, an arm of OAK Foundation, a charity organisation aimed at supporting indigent students, widows and the fatherless in Africa. All the three stories end in tragedy. While the first story ends in distorted progress, the second and the third stories end in shocking death.

The book, which is a 2022 production, explores other themes such as friendship, relationship, heartbreak, failure and pressure.

The stories in this collection are entitled, ‘The Water Pump’, ‘Irony’ and ‘Failure’.

While the first story is written in first person narrative, the other stories are written in second person. ‘The Water Pump’, which has its setting in a village,is divided into four chapters. In this story, there are three main characters – Adio, Tola and Alani with Adio as the narrator. They are intimate friends who usually meet under the tree at the water pump area of the village.

While Adio and Tola have just finished their secondary education in the same school in the village, Alani only has a primary education in another village and lives with his grandmother.

The event that brings the three of them together is disgusting as Adio and Alani have to engage in a big fight at the water pump area. After the fight, which also involves Tola as the mediator, they become friends meeting regularly under the tree.

They become the proverbial cooking tripod that never spills the soup. But later in the story the soup spills. When Adio receives a letter of admission into the University of Lagos, which means that a leg of the tripod is about to go, the two other legs, Tola and Alani become so angry and envious of Adio. Just as they gang up against the first leg, Adio, another leg, Tola prepares to travel to Lagos to stay with his uncle. The last leg of the tripod, Alani vents his spleen on Adio and Tola for abandoning their fraternity. Adio’s admission letter is torn into pieces while the tyres of the vehicle that is meant to convey Tola to Lagos are deflated.

‘Irony’is divided into three chapters with Bishop Oyekan as the protagonist. He is notorious for prophetic predictions which always come to pass. They always happen the way and manner he says they would happen. He is nicknamed ‘Prophet Talk and Do’.

His last prophetic prediction in the story goes thus: “I have only one prophecy for you today and what the Lord is telling me is that there is a famous figure in this country that is going to suffer a major loss within seven days”.

Every member of his congregation knows who the famous figure is. The famous figure is no other person than Governor Adams. According to Bishop Oyekan, the famous figure has offended the body of Christ and man of God and unless he apologises, the prediction will come to pass. All efforts by the council of elders of his church to make Bishop Oyekan change his prediction meet a brick wall. And before the expiration of the seven days’ ultimatum, Bishop Oyekan’s son passes on.

‘Failure’ is divided into four chapters and a liner epilogue. It is a classic story of examination failure and how parents usually mount pressure on their children to be successful in their various examinations.

The story opens with a telephone conversation between the protagonist, Emmanuel and his friend, Johnson. The conversation is about the results of the UTME aka JAMB, that they both sat for. Johnson gives his friend the good news of scoring 257 out of possible 400 and enjoins Emmanuel to check his own result through his mobile phone.

The twists and turns in the story start at this point as Emmanuel, who is addictive to video game, is sceptical about what his UTME result will look like. His parents, having observed his antics towards checking his result, mount pressure on him. His father at a time says, “But let me just warn you. If you fail that exam, that would be the end of your journey in life because I know that you never prepared well for the exam in the first place, so I’m not expecting the best results from you”. When Emannuel finally gets his result, he fails woefully and commits suicide.

Through stories in this collection, the author has succeeded in educating the reader about what frustration could breed in a short possible time. In the stories, it breeds anger, disunity and suicide all leading to tragic ends.

The author uses simple and direct language to drive home the important lessons of the stories.

However, there are few errors – grammatical and collocation of words. There are few typos as well. But the dialogues in the three stories make the book an interesting read. I recommend it to all and sundry.

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