Soji Cole’s Embers and Its Implications for Critical Thinking and Development

Onyebuchi Ile & Buchi Chinedu

Abstract

Reading literary texts help to develop critical thinking skills; but this fact is taken for granted in
literary education by both teachers and students alike and this is the problem projected by the
paper. Critical thinking itself trains minds towards solving problem and the ability to solve the
problems that life presents is the key to success, according Robert Harris. The objective of this
paper was to show that with literary texts, readers and students can be taught to think critically.
To demonstrate this, Bobkina and Stefanova’s four-stage model, Situated Practice Stage, The
Overt Instruction Stage, The Critical Framing Stage and Transformed Practice Stage, of using
fiction to teach critical thinking were used. It was concluded that the human mind or brain uses
the simulation effect as in computers to orientate itself to social realities as reflected in literary
texts and that as a result literary texts are very effective in cultivating critical thinking skills in.

Keywords: Simulation effect, Situated Practice Stage, Overt Instruction Stage, Critical Framing
Stage, Transformed Practice Stage

Introduction



According to Doğanay and Ünal (2006), critical thinking as concept is derived from “reasoning”
and the root of reasoning is “reason”, which means “ratio” in Latin and “ration” in Latin means
“balance”. In other words, critical thinking leads to a balanced decision from experiences, pieces
of information available through a capacity to think.

Embers as a piece of drama enriches experiences through the pieces of information in it
and through the possibility of interaction between the reader and the contents of the text. By
reading the text, a horizon of expectation is partially established; but it also offers a horizon of
knowledge because the ideas inherent in them are in simulative association with ideas the reader
has acquired through reading other texts (Ashcroft, 2001). Discourse situations are established
through such interactions. It is such discourse situations that make critical thinking possible
because there is always a desire to understand the phenomena of the text in relation to the lived
experiences. These make practical interventions in solution providing possible because of the
progression from the stage of acquiring knowledge inherent in the text and other texts through its
intertextuality, to the knowing stage. Once the knowing stage is attained, the reader becomes
agitated and lonely because they now know more. The reader carefully evaluates the basic pieces
of information in the text. That act itself is observation as one does in empiricism: The reader
listens to what the characters say and observes what they do: a simulation effect is triggered
because ideas in the text are associated with ideas stored in the mind. The reader compares what
transpires in the text with familiar experiences.

The problem in literary scholarship is that most often students and even their teachers
take it for granted that the endeavor simply trains their mental muscles to be critical. They barely
know, if they know at all, that it is critical thinking that makes the students develop the habit of
constantly asking questions and also identifying problems and conditioning their minds to seek
solutions or answers to the questions raised.

Embers as fiction has to be observed as one observes reality because it represents or
mirrors reality. This is a major problem because it can be argued that because the text mirrors
reality, it cannot be said to be reality in all certainty. Therefore, the major task here is to show
that the text has mirrored reality to a very large extent. All the same what constitutes reality has
been a bone of contention among philosophers over the centuries. Plato believed, as Bruder and
Moore (1990) put is, that “what is truly real is not the objects we encounter in sensory experience
but rather forms, and these can only be grasped intellectually”. As Bruder & Moore (1990),
further put it, “the individual things that we perceive by sense are forever changing.”

The work initiates drama from the life of the Internally Displaced People in Northern
Nigerian also known as IDPs in their camp. Through the regular stories of Talatu to her camp
mates, Memunah, Atai and Idayat, about her life and what she has been through, the writer takes
us deep and deeper into the very inside of life. From the life of a woman, whom life has not been
fair to (2018: p.4), to the people who are supposed to take care of Internally Displaced Persons at
the camps, but who instead terrorise them, the richness of Embers is made manifest in the deep



philosophical thoughts of Talatu, who thinks that no one is created to be subjugated by another
but that it is culture that allows subjugation and that her younger friends must paint the world in
their own colour (p.3).

Talatu paints a gory sight of life when she recalls her suffering with her mother and how
hard it becomes after she dies: “we are all inside a grave, to come out of it, you must tread on
corpses” (2018:p. 7). This statement demonstrates the effect of wise saying in critical thinking,
because it makes you pause and ponder; and it is in pausing and pondering that we are able to
make room for understanding and enlightenment, which are the components of critical thinking.
Understanding and enlightenment further lead to finding solutions to problems.

Reading the text, the questions that come to mind are: what does the text tell me? What
do I stand to gain from reading a work that explores the humanity of terrorists, their victims;
camp officers and the IDPs in the camps? Of what use are they to my society? These questions in
themselves trigger critical thinking.

Therefore, the paper aims at showing that with literary texts, readers and students can be
taught to think critically. With that, students and teachers alike can be made aware or conscious
from the outset that training in literary scholarship is to make trainees critical thinkers, who have
to exert themselves to find answers to the questions they raise from reading texts and also make
them adopt such mental attitude toward real things in the world since the key to success is the
ability to identify problems through critical thinking and find solutions to the problems

The theoretical model used to achieve the aim of the paper was Bobkina’s and Stefanova’s
(2016) Critical Literacy Pedagogy model, which has four stages, (1) The situated practice stage,
(2) The overt instruction stage, (3) The critical framing stage and (4) The transformed practice
stage and which comes in handy in the process of trying to process information from texts with a
view to using them to develop critical thinking skills.

(1) Situated Practice Stage,

In this stage, the students' mental map on a given text is expected to be activated. Bobkina and
Stefanova (2016) expect students to recall relevant experiences and information they have. They
also expect the teacher to initiate activities in this stage by asking relevant questions and the
students are expected to share their answers with one another.

(2) The Overt Instruction Stage,

During this stage, one tries to know how much of the given text the students have been able to
understand by letting them read the given text. The teacher is expected to lead a discussion of
some important ideas in the text and even administer test. If the text has been adapted into movie,
the teacher may let the students see the film in order to make them even more motivated.
Furthermore, the students are encouraged to closely read the text in order to understand the



deeper logic of the text. In finding the deeper logic of a given text, the why and wherefores of the
text should be questioned, interpretations should be initiated and if necessary mental maps
should be created in order to relate experience which yields knowledge. Notes are encouraged to
be taken while closely reading the given text so that they could be compared in order to make it
possible for different perspectives to the ideas to be known.

(3) The Critical Framing Stage,

In this stage, students are made to focus attention on the writer’s use of language and their
semiotic implications in given contexts in relation to society.

(4) Transformed Practice Stage

Finally, during this stage, according to Bobkina and Stefanova (2016), students should be
encouraged to write something on a given text or translate a given text or paraphrase it or even
readapt it into drama, etc.

Literature Review

Reading fiction trains the mind to think critically. This position is supported by the research by
Vessali et al (2015, pp. 105-121), who conducted studies in the field of applied psychology to
test whether extended contact through reading the popular best-selling books of Harry Porter
improved attitudes towards stigmatized groups as immigrants, homosexuals and refugees among
others; and the findings from the studies supported their initial hypothesis that reading fiction
helped change perspectives and improved attitudes towards out-groups. Attitudes change
because we have the possibility to think beyond what we know as a result of the various
perspectives made available to us by reading fiction. These perspectives arise when we try to
penetrate the deeper logic of the text.

Nwosu and Udenta (2015, p.213) argue that critical thinking being deep reasoning and
reflection of thinking process, “helps make decisions, opinions about something you think
especially when you consider taking a job or making choice levels in thinking critically and not
accepting facts on face value”. In other words from the analysis of the texts as well as conscious
reflection on the analyses, critical issues are able to be isolated from them and associated in a
simulative way with everyday experiences and happenings in given societies. Deeper insight on
the nuances of phenomena is gained and possible ways out of the given problems or issues the
texts raise are also visualized.

Critical thinking has shifted away from the traditional method of analysis or problem
solving and included, as Walters (1994, p.63) puts it, “the cognitive acts such as imagination,
conceptual creativity, intuition and insight”. In other words, while it is good to logically dissect
structures and analyze components, it is also equally important to reflect on thinking processes



and reason, see things in perspective, allow for deep insight, associate ideas in context and out of
context, etc. And to be able to think critically in the above-mentioned template, certain core
skills relevant to critical thinking such as, observation, analysis, explanation, interpretation,
inference, evaluation, imagination, perspective, intuition, creativity and insight are consciously
engaged.

Robert Harris defines critical thinking “as an approach to ideas from the standpoint of
deliberate consideration”. What we do according to him is to hold an idea at arm's length and
examine it before accepting it into our mental framework. He, furthermore, defines critical
thinking “as a habit of cautious evaluation, an analytic mindset aimed at discovering the
component parts of ideas and philosophies, eager to weigh the merits of arguments and reasons
in order to become a good judge of them”. For him, “analysis is the ability to break arguments or
claims down into parts and to discover the relationship between the parts. The arguments can
then be evaluated. It follows that sometimes the evaluation and judgment will be positive …
Critical thinking, then, is not a cynical, negative force”.

For Halpern (2010), critical thinking is the use of cognitive strategies to improve the
expected ideas. Paul and Elder (2007, p.4) believe that critical thinking is a “four-self-
incorporating concept” being that it is “self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored and self-
correcting thinking.” For Facione (1990, p.2) critical thinking is “purposeful, self-regulatory
judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well
as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual
considerations upon which that judgment is based”. Ennis (1993) sees it as reasonable reflective
thinking that focuses on decision of what to believe or do, while Jones et al. (1995)
describe it as interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, presenting, arguments, reflection,
and dispositions during thinking process; furthermore, for Paul and Elder (2007) a critical thinker
is someone capable of formulating relevant questions, accumulates appropriate information and
evaluates it for drawing sound conclusions. In fact, Bloom (1956) argues that the acquisition of
critical thinking skills happens in a hierarchical order, whereby evaluation, synthesis and analysis
of ideas belong to the higher-order thinking skills, while application, comprehension and
knowledge belong to the lower order of cognitive process. He believes that these skills need to
be integrated into school curricula so as to cultivate in our children critical thinking skills.

Facione (1990), for his part, acknowledges six critical thinking skills that literature helps
to cultivate in us. They are analytic skills, interpretive skills, evaluative skills, inferential skills,
explanative skills and self-regulative skills. He also believes that critical thinking trains us to
develop two sets of dispositions: the disposition to have elaborate and specific approaches to
issues and questions.

In fact, Seiter (2021) argues that it is literature that helps us develop critical thinking skill. She
believes too that, in fact, literature helps us cultivate empathy. It also helps us to understand our
fellow human beings. As Seiter (2021) puts it:



To put yourself in the shoes of others and grow your capacity for empathy, you can
hardly do better than reading fiction. Multiple studies have shown that imagining
stories helps activate the regions of your brain responsible for better understanding others
and seeing the world from a new perspective. When the psychologist Raymond
Mars analyzed 86 fMRI studies, he saw substantial overlap in the brain networks used to
understand stories and the networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals.

As she further puts it

…when we read about a situation or feeling, it’s very nearly as if we’re feeling it
ourselves. As Fast Company reports: Two researchers from Washington University in St.
Louis scanned the brains of fiction readers and discovered that their test subjects created
intense, graphic mental simulations of the sights, sounds, movements, and tastes they
encountered in the narrative. In essence, their brains reacted as if they were actually
living the events they were reading about.

For Lazere (1987, p.3) “literature...is the single academic discipline that can come
closest to encompassing the full range of mental traits currently considered to comprise
critical thinking”.

The Pedagogical Template for Embers in Critical Thinking Development: A Critical Analysis

To teach Embers for critical thinking development, the stages outlined by Bobkina and
Stefanova (2016) may be deployed. The first stage, which is the Situated Practice Stage, requires
the mapping of the minds of the students or readers. In order to begin mapping the minds of the
students, critical questions about the text under study must be asked. And that is the beginning of
the critical thinking process. For example,

(a) What is the text, Embers, about?

(b) What ideas can be learned from it?

(c) What can be known about terrorism and Internally Displaced People living in camps in
Northern Nigeria?

(d) It must be found out if the students have read or watched movies of terrorism?

All this entails making the students to recall relevant experiences and information within
their experiences with regard to the text and properly contextualizing them. One of the
experiences that could be recalled to them for authentication is the destruction unleashed on
Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorist group and other terrorist groups that have joined them since
they began to terrorize Nigeria. They should be made to also know that Boko Haram terrorists
have metamorphosed into bandits, kidnappers, etc. the consequences of terrorism should also be



made known to them in the process of mapping their minds and stimulating association of ideas
in the text and society. They will immediately know that one of the consequences of terrorism in
Nigeria, especially Northern Nigeria, is the displacement of ordinary citizens, especially the
vulnerable, children, women and old people. The consequences of the displacement are the death
of many, the destruction of homes and livelihoods and then the eventual coming into being of
IDP camps, that is, camps for the Internally Displaced People. By initiating that question and
taking the minds of the students to their experiences through reading other texts, through
watching movies about terrorism and direct experiences, they will automatically become aware
that those are what the text is about.

In considering the second question about what ideas can be learned from the text, specific
details about what can be learned from the text could be outlined; for example, it could learned
that

 Talatu, a character in the text, is a victim of sexual exploitation by both Boko Haram
terrorists and IDP camp officials, and besides that she was also raped as a child by her
uncle and cousin. This knowledge makes the students be aware of what might be
happening in IDP camps.

 That Memunah, another character in the text, is one of the girls abducted by Boko Haram
insurgents and who suffers rape and exploitation in the camp with other girls. She is
eventually discovered to be working for Boko Haram and she is raped to death by
soldiers.

 That Idayat, yet another character in the text, is also a victim of abduction by Boko
Haram insurgents. She was raped as a child by her teacher, who was later killed by
Idayat’s first love. Like Memunah, they see the camp officers, soldiers and politicians,
who exploit; rape and kill them, as the terrorists. They compare their experiences in
captivity under Boko Haram and in freedom, which is captivity too under the camp
officers and soldiers, and feel they fared better in captivity under Boko Haram. She works
for Boko Haram too. All this is able to stretch the minds of the students to the
contradiction experienced by the character and they will immediately begin to imagine
that these are also the contradictions most IDPs are living with. This is very important
because it heightens their emotional intelligence, which is also very critical in the
cultivation of critical thinking skills.

 That Atai, another character in the text, is also a victim of rape and exploitation like every
other girl, and so she works as informant for the camp officers and the soldiers. The
desire to stay alive makes her try to survive by any means, even if it means informing
against her friends. The students will know that these were possibilities in the camps



 That the soldiers are all disgruntled and despondent and feel also exploited by the
politicians.

All these pieces of information are necessary for the students to be able to associate the
discursive formations in the text with the equivalent realities in society. And to stimulate more
ideas, the students have to grapple with the third question, which is about what they know about
terrorism not only in Nigeria but also all over the world as well as what they know about
Internally Displaced Persons, who are victims of terrorism. The students’ minds should be
stretched as far as the September 2011 terrorist attack on the twin tower in New York. Their
minds should be taken to the onslaught of the terrorist Talibans in Afghanistan and the havoc
they wreaked on the society as well as the displacement suffered by their victims, who are
ordinary citizens. Their minds should also be taken to the activities of the Boko Haram terrorists
operating in Northeastern and Northwestern Nigeria that have killed and maimed thousands of
civilians, both male and female and even children. Their minds must be stimulated by the
graphic pictures because their terrorist attacks are no longer news in Nigeria. Recently, the
Fulani Herdsmen menace has exacerbated the matter. Most people do not see them differently
from the Boko Haram terrorists. They have been accused of being part of the grand plan to
Islamize Nigeria. This is believable judging from the way they attack communities in the
Northeast, Northwest, North central. They kill, rape, maim and burn down everything in sight.
Above all, they occupy villages once they attack them. This situation has brought about massive
displacement and dislocation of people from their homes, hence the creation of IDP. If possibly
show them newspaper news about these things or even clips from social media in order to
properly stimulate their minds and make the class lively. They should also be made to see how
they had taken all these for granted until literature defamiliarizes their familiar experiences and
awakens a keen interest in the matter and triggers thinking, especially critical thinking.
Furthermore, sample their opinions on books or movies on terrorism they have either read or
watched. Possibly draw their attention to a particular text on religious extremism by Elnathan
John’s Born on a Tuesday (2015). Stimulate their minds on ideas in the text, how the text can
help them understand the making of an extremist, who may eventually become a terrorist. They
should be made to understand that the text can help them understand the psychology of terrorists
and even how the politicians help in grooming them, how unsuspecting Muslims get incited in
the Mosques, etc. by making them read such texts, they will certainly appreciate Embers better
because it is about the consequences of terrorism, and as Keith Oatley (2016, p. 618-628) puts it,

Fiction is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world
effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances
of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with
complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories
and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.



In other words, the things that might have initially been seen in the news or read in the paper
becomes dramatized in a novel or drama piece so that some of the intricacies of the condition can
get clearer through critical engagement with them.

In the second stage, which is The Overt Instruction Stage, which might start in the week
following the treatment of The Situated Practice Stage, the teacher may want to know how much
of the given text the students have been able to understand. In this stage, the teacher is expected
to lead a discussion of some important ideas in the text and even administer test. If the text has
been adapted into movie, the teacher may let the students see the film in order to make them
even more motivated. Furthermore, the students are encouraged to closely read the text in order
to understand the deeper logic of the text. In finding the deeper logic of a given text, the why and
wherefores of the text should be questioned, interpretations should be initiated and if necessary
mental maps should be created in order to relate experience which yields knowledge. Notes are
encouraged to be taken while closely reading the given text so that they could be compared in
order to make it possible for different perspectives to the ideas to be known.

(3) The Critical Framing Stage

In this stage, one focuses attention on the writer’s use of language and their semiotic
implications in given contexts in relation to society; for example, Talatu thinks that no one is
created to be subjugated by another but that it is culture that allows subjugation and that her
younger friends must paint the world in their own colour (3). To paint the world in their own
colour is a metaphor of encouragement for them to live in the world on their own terms. Culture
allowing subjugation can be understood within the context of religion as part and parcel of
culture, especially in Northern Nigeria, where Boko Haram is very active. The idea that an
infidel is worth nothing is already an example of culture allowing subjugation. All this must be
brought up in the course of teaching the text.

The teacher must point out salient statements in the text; for example, it is stated in the
text that in Nigeria, democracy is “government of the cunning minority for the foolish majority”
(2018: 26). The students must be allowed to air their views on that so that the deep abyss of
decay, wickedness, callousness and man’s inhumanity in the society can be appreciated. Even
Idayat doubts if there is God; for “if there is God then he wouldn’t allow the rustling eruptions of
evil thoughts that come from the hearts of men!’ (2018: 22). The teacher must find out what the
students think about that and ensure that there is a balanced perspective.

Memunah herself agrees that there is a divinity that shapes our existence; but that this
divinity shapes our lives in ways that raise questions; for it makes some rich and others poor; it
makes some healthy and some sick; it makes some happy and brings others into the doom of
sorrow right from birth (2018: 21); this was also demonstrated in Obioma Chigozie’s The
Fishermen, where tragedy dogged a family from the beginning till the end, demonstrating the
tragedy life is to some, who are also part of God’s creation. The teacher must expand the horizon



of the students after he or she listens to their perspectives. He or she must make them know that,
perhaps, Memunah’s views can be anchored on some theoretical concept as existentialism.
Arthur Schopenhauer considers what Memunah sees as divinity, das-Ding-an-sich, the thing-in-
itself, “as a blind and purposeless impelling force that is manifested in humans as a will to live; it
is this drive, this will, that determines human behavior, not reason. Thus the human being is not
fundamentally rational but willful … The conflict between individual will is the cause of endless
strife and suffering (Bruder and Moore, 1990: 98). Therefore, if, probably, man dares to be
rational and not willful, pain and suffering may reduce greatly or be eradicated in the view of
Schopenhauer.

At this stage, the students are able to appreciate better what happens in the Internally
Displaced Persons’ Camps in Northern Nigeria. They become aware experientially how the lives
of citizens rarely matter to the politicians, the lies the government tells the world every day about
what they provide for the displaced people, the fact that camp officials take most of the things
made for the IDPs’ camps as well as how the camps have become places of captivity in the
supposed freedom they offer. In fact, they become aware that the country needs urgent change,
may be even a revolution, because these pains and suffering are as a result of leadership failure
in Nigeria as Chinua Achebe had once insisted in his small pamphlet, The Trouble with Nigeria.
However, this failure of leadership derives from ignorance, which itself derives from lack of
critical education. As Idayat puts it,

…How do we define a life of freedom when it bears all signs of captivity? The real Boko
Haram is here, not in the forest of Sambisa.The Boko Harams are those government
people who brought ten bags of rice to the camp and announced in the news that they
came with hundred. The Boko Harams are those Camp Officers who steal seven out of
those ten bags of rice and leave us with three to share for food. The Boko Harams are
those in uniforms whose job is to keep us safe here but drag out the girls every night to
have a fill of their lusty … ( Cole, 2018: p.19-20).

Such sublime moments, which are edifying, abound in the drama piece and this is made
possible by the writer’s use of language; all the same one encounters degrading moments such as
the rape incidents by camp officials and soldiers under whose care the displaced persons are. For
example, Atai, who manages to escape from Boko Haram captivity, where she is a sex object,
falls into the hands of camp officials who are mainly soldier and who take turns abusing her
sexually (2018: 56-59). Or even Memunah, who is caught for working with Boko Haram. The
punishment the soldiers mete out to her is to rape her till she dies and they hide their hideous act
and get it published in the newspapers that she died of cholera (2018: 88).

(4)Transformed Practice Stage



Finally, in the Transformed Practice Stage, it is expected that learning becomes more practical.
As Bobkina and Stefanova (2016), put is, students should be encouraged, after they have read
Embers, to write about the text so that the depth of their insight could be appreciated as well as
their capacity to see the ideas in the text from different perspectives. Even the reader can do the
same. The students should be encouraged to ask relevant questions and share their views with
their mates. The reader is also expected to ask relevant questions and seize every opportunity that
presents itself to discuss such questions with anyone who has read the text so they can share their
ideas.

Conclusion

Embers dramatized the human condition in the IDPs’ camps. It revealed to us the inhumanity of
camp officials and soldiers who embezzle provisions meant for them and take sexual advantage
of the women and young persons among them.

The study looked at the role of critical and strategic thinking and development in studying the
text as well as the consequences of that for the society. It showed that critical analysis of texts is
indeed critical thinking which has to be made conscious to students in the course of studying
texts and which society must also understand in order to place commensurate value in literary
and critical education.

There is no doubt that the human mind or brain uses the simulation effect as in computers to
orientate itself to social realities as reflected in literary texts and that as a result literary texts are
very effective in cultivating critical thinking skills in us.

Lastly, it is recommended that literature should be a critical component of development
discourses. This is important because of the discursive formations of texts or their various units
of signification. There is no doubt that meaning can no longer be the exclusive preserve of the
writer: the reader participates in determining the meaning of the text; however, it is important to
also hear the writer’s perspective if the writer is still alive. To insist that the author is dead is to
lose a perspective or perspectives, because in critical thinking, perspectives matter.

It is indubitable that critics raise issues in given texts in spite of the writer. Those issues they
raise ought to be the focus of discourse. If this happens, policy makers are sure to be enriched to
be able to make policy decisions and give expert advice to government based on the knowledge
they have gained.

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