This question is based on Chukwuemeka Ike's The Potter's Wheel. In the novel the 'pad' was a symbol of

Analyze the question This is a literature-in-English question on Chukwuemeka Ike's The Potter's Wheel. It asks what the "pad" stands for in the novel.

Explain the concept In the novel, Obi Nwaifeakwu is a stubborn boy sent to Okeke's school at Umuga. The school's tough discipline is meant to shape him, much like a potter shapes clay on a wheel. Objects and incidents in the story carry symbolic meaning, and the "pad" is one of them. I cannot recall the exact passage with full certainty, so I have also reasoned by elimination.

Solution

• Success: nothing in the pad suggests achievement or reward.
• Unity: the pad is not tied to any coming together of people or groups.
• Love: it has no link to affection or family bonds.
• Failure: this fits the sense of the pad as a mark of inadequacy and shortcoming. It also matches the novel's theme that a person's faults and failures are being "moulded" into something better.

Answer: C. Failure

Tip: For symbol questions on JAMB literature texts, link each symbol to the novel's main theme. In The Potter's Wheel, the theme is discipline and reshaping a wayward child, so the symbols tend to point to faults, hardship and correction rather than to success or joy. Also revise the novel's key objects and characters, since JAMB often tests them.