That the protagonists should not be held responsible for their unwholesome experience is defensible on the premise that they are not academic failures. Each of them excels in his examination and if anything, one expects the system that dictates their expending a part of their active lives schooling to provide them a means of sustenance. But, what do we have? A situation where after journeying into the city in search of jobs, their main food items consists of,

                                                  …various kinds of fruit in various stages of decay…slices

                                                  of stale, smelly bread and a few pieces of dusty chocolate.

                 Coupled with the quality of their food, the deplorable condition of the places of abode of the likes of the protagonists is shown when it was night and when,

                                             there was no policeman in sight they sprinted across the road

                                              and hopped into the largest of the supermarket dustbins.They

                                      snuggled close to each other for warmth and immediately fell                                                                     

                                      asleep intoxicated by the foul smell of rotten vegetables.

                     And when they finally secure a menial job as farm labourers and one quarters is allocated to each of them, they find it incongruous to with their usual style to sleep separately. It is in the course of determining which of the quarters is the most suitable to accommodate them that the author takes us into the world of their bedroom. And we discover that the place,

                                                 …was flea-land, and the whole circular wall practically

                                                 plastered with bed bugs. The floor lay as when it was first

                                                 created with the rest of the world, rough corrugated and at

                                                 least a foot deep in fine dust. Evil black soot hung from

                                                 the roof like giant stalactites, so heavy that the thatching

                                                 was caving in.

                           The protagonists’ eventual choice,

                                                   …was a little better in a few respects. It was relatively

                                                   round less sooty and mysteriously, absolutely flea-free.

                                                    Mice and bed bugs there were, but these were less                                         

                                                    famished and consequently less hostile..

                         From this insightful revelation, it is obvious that it is the need to satisfy one of man’s basic needs, acting in its supreme indispensability, that forces the protagonists to choose the better of the quarters and not the because any of them befits human habitation.

                       Furthermore, the author revisits the age-long, almost legendary disparity in the employment opportunities available to an African and a European recipient of western education. This disparity is shown to us in the scene where one of the protagonists, Maina, encounters the son of his white master. In the discussion that ensues between them, we find out that Maina and Meja (the protagonists) and the white man’s son are products of the same system of education. In fact both of them pass the same examination. But while the white boy is employed in the city, the protagonists are mere labourers in the farm of the white man. To intensify the oddity, the whole farce is transpiring in the backyard of the protagonists. The import of this scene is almost lost to the touch of humour and the dramatic irony which the author employs to enliven it. However, it is implicitly decipherable that the African environment still discriminates against her own products.

                  Government’s lukewarm attitude towards the living conditions of the people and its insensitivity to the plight of the masses are other areas which the author covers. This is revealed when Shanty Land, the abode of the severely down trodden, is gutted by fire. It takes the fire incident for government, through its fire department, to intervene with the hope of stopping the inferno and restoring Shanty Land to its former glory, and not to prevent future recurrence or improving the condition of the abode. It was also at this stage (when the fire is on) that government representatives—policemen deem it necessary to move    

                                       among the people, urging anyone with any information

                                       that might lead to the discovery of the cause of the fire

                                       to step forward.

                  Obviously, the author uses the Shanty Land episode to emphasise the debased state of living of the jobless educated and uneducated like Maina, and his friend, Meja, including Razor and his gang. And it raises a few pertinent questions. At what stage is government expected to concern itself with the housing dilemma of its citizens? Is it at the stage of imminent destruction as exemplified by the raging fire at Shanty Land? Or is it at the stage where the structures of the likes of Shanty Land which consists of,

                                      shacks built of paper, tin, mud and anything that could keep out

                                       the rain, thrown together in no particular pattern

is being constructed? This reminds us of our Maroko and Ajegunle and their cousins in South Africa, Kenya and elsewhere. Similar series of questions are pertinent for other social amenities: health, education, sports, economy.

                That is not all. The identification of oppressed oppressors does not evade the treatment of the author. The black agent of imperialistic subjugation and neo-colonialist errand boys; the Chums, the Kimerias, and the Jacobos of this world are re-enacted in the form of the scrap metal buyer, Boi, and the foreman. The metal buyer hoodwinks  Maina and Meja into selling the bottles and scrap metal they scavenged from rubbish dumps to him for peanuts while he sells the same items at exorbitant price to the ‘big dealer’ in the city. And Boi after coaxing the boys into accepting employment from his boss by promising to assist them if they run into any problem sells cooking and eating utensils to them by way of fulfilling his promise! The foreman is not better, in conjunction with Boi, the cook; he exacts punishment, mostly in form of placing the culprits on half ration, ‘if any of the workers are found idling.’

             Perhaps, one pathetic social aberration inferred from the novel is that our prisons are not institutions meant to remould the character of the inmate such that the first timer, on release, may live a straight life but, a place where a minor criminal, by the time he is released, becomes a hardened miscreant, susceptible to committing more and more heinous crimes. We have heard of bizarre reports of convicts preferring to return to the four walls of prisons because three meals are ensure; so they become perpetual criminals.  It is through the protagonists’ incessant criminal activities and consequent incarceration that we acquaint this phenomenon with the Chief Warder wondering about,

                                        what went wrong with the young men who came in first time

                                        scared and sorry for their crimes. Then it seems they could not

                                        stop coming back. Most of them he was sure would be buried in

                                        the prison’s cemetery when they died of old age