WAEC Literature in English 2025 Theory — Question 5

Model answer

The novel's central theme is racial discrimination and how it divides black and white lives. The narrator is a young Black man who arrives at Liberty Paint eager for work and a chance to prove himself, encountering a world that superficially appears orderly and productive but is, in reality, a meticulously crafted illusion designed to maintain racial hierarchies and exploit labour. The company's slogan 'Keep America Pure with Liberty Paints' subtly hints at underlying racial ideology; the 'pure white' paint (Optic White) is ironically created by adding drops of dark 'black' additive to a base of already white paint, a metaphor for the invisible but essential contribution of Black labour to the façade of American prosperity that is deliberately obscured and undervalued. Assigned to Lucius Brockway, an eccentric, deeply paranoid Black man who supervises the paint mixing, the narrator becomes entangled in Brockway's paranoia and violent outbursts, and factory politics that pit oppressed groups against each other. The narrator's task culminates in an industrial accident in the boiler room, leading to an electroshock therapy ('lobotomy') experience at the factory hospital meant to erase his memory and reshape his identity, leaving him further alienated and his sense of self fragmented.