A psychoanalytic reading of Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John

This study aims to offer a psychoanalytic reading of Elnathan John's novel Born a Tuesday (2015). The relentless ferocity of Boko Haram, the Nigerian most deadly terrorist group, has drawn the attention of the global community to the rise of Islamic extremism in the West African sub-continent and compelled scholars in the social sciences to pay attention to the nature of Islamic fundamentalism in the African continent and its peculiarities. Born on a Tuesday is a literary interpretation of the phenomena of Boko Haram terrorism per excellence as the novel depicts a complex web of the numerous religious, political, economic, social and psychological forces involved in this particular version of Islamic fundamentalism. Psychoanalytic criticism, an insightful method of reading which utilises the theories and principles of psychoanalysis in studying literature, has been used in this study in order to analyse Born on a Tuesday critically and come up with a finding that is both original and revealing. By examining the behaviours of the characters in Born on a Tuesday under the light of the Freudian psychoanalytic concepts such as the Oedipus complex and the theory of defense mechanisms, this study attempts at answering the question: what are the major causes of Islamic extremism in Nigerian context? Even though this study does not negate the existence of other contributing factors, its findings establish the psychology of the people (the governments inclusive) as the principal source of the Islamic extremism. Finally, the study also re-affirms the paramount importance of psychoanalytic criticism in revealing the otherwise inaccessible roots and meanings of both literary texts and the poorly understood social phenomenon of terrorism.