Previous
Adah’s Pa
Boy Ofili is Adah’s younger brother. When their Ma and Pa send Boy to a prep school and keep Adah home, it motivates Adah to sneak off to school—which forces her parents to pay for her education. Though none of Adah’s family attends her wedding to Francis when she is a teenager, Boy does come to the wharf to see Adah off when she takes the ship from Nigeria to England. Later, when Francis writes a complaining letter to his parents that Adah has gotten a contraceptive device behind his back, Boy—who always thought Francis was a good-looking good-for-nothing—sends Adah his savings and asks her to come home.
Boy Quotes in Second Class Citizen
The Second Class Citizen quotes below are all either spoken by Boy or refer to Boy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2: Escape into Elitism
Quotes
Boy was now all alone. He had to work very hard to keep the family name going. Adah had dropped out of it. She had become an Obi instead of the Ofili she used to be. Boy had resented this, but his presence at the wharf showed that he had accepted the fact that in Africa, and among the Ibos in particular, a girl was little more than a piece of property.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5: An Expensive Lesson
Quotes
She told herself to stop being over-romantic and soft. No husband would have time to ask his pregnant wife how she was feeling so early in the morning. That only happened in True Stories and True Romances, not in real life, particularly not with Francis for that matter. But despite the hard talking to herself, she still yearned to be loved, to feel really married, to be cared for.
Get the entire Second Class Citizen LitChart as a printable PDF.
Boy Quotes in Second Class Citizen
The Second Class Citizen quotes below are all either spoken by Boy or refer to Boy. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2: Escape into Elitism
Quotes
Boy was now all alone. He had to work very hard to keep the family name going. Adah had dropped out of it. She had become an Obi instead of the Ofili she used to be. Boy had resented this, but his presence at the wharf showed that he had accepted the fact that in Africa, and among the Ibos in particular, a girl was little more than a piece of property.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5: An Expensive Lesson
Quotes
She told herself to stop being over-romantic and soft. No husband would have time to ask his pregnant wife how she was feeling so early in the morning. That only happened in True Stories and True Romances, not in real life, particularly not with Francis for that matter. But despite the hard talking to herself, she still yearned to be loved, to feel really married, to be cared for.
