Social Realism in The Sun by Night- A Novel by Benjamin Kwakye

Abstract

Drawing on Benjamin Kwakye's The Sun by Nightthis paper presents a sociological analysis of the Ghanaian society as presented in the literature produced by its members. Communication, verbal or non-verbal, is a sine qua non in human interaction. Human groups and societies depend on communication to perpetuate themselves. By analysing human communication, therefore, in this case the written literature of a society, knowledge is ultimately generated on the kind of social interaction characteristic of human groups and their way of life. Literature is a society's sublime means of self-expression that exposes its make-up and is, thus, essentially sociological. The paper suggests that the Ghanaian social milieu is the womb, which conceives and ultimately externalises it through literary works such as The Sun by NightThe novel depicts writing as intervention, active in society, spanning the Ghanaian experience of freedom and repression, wealth and poverty, the spiritual and the secular, being themes explored in the novel.