To Make the Money...

You want to be rich and you're willing to give a quarter of your life for that purpose.

Think on that sentence again.

Do you know that a 9- 5 for 30 years can do that for you?

However, it hardly can grant you the wealth or satisfaction you desire.

This is what Havfy tries to point out in her poem which asks the question “how much time do you have left?”

The poem has been analysed below using the Carl Jung's perspective of the psychoanalysis theory, and cultural criticism.

Carl Jung's perspective on psychoanalysis concentrates on the psyche which consists of the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious is also known as the ego, while the unconscious can be divided into the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious. These concepts would be used to analyse the poem below in line with the theory of culture in literature which analyses how culture is portrayed within a literary text.

Carl Jung's collective unconscious, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, “[represents] a form of the unconscious (that past of the mind containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware) common to making as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain.” It contains archetypes or universal primordial images and ideas. The personal unconscious on the other hand arises from the experiences of the individual. It contains temporarily gotten information and repressed memories. An important feature of the personal unconscious is the complex. A complex is a collection of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and memories that focus on a single concept. (McLeod, 2023) The more the elements, the greater the influence of the influence of the complex in the individual.

This ideologies can be applied to the poem under study. In the poem, the poet persona laments the struggles that she has to face – the battles of survival which involve trying to dream as well as make a living. We can see that her line of thoughts comprises of the collective unconscious which suggests the desire to survive, the drive succeed, and the instinct to live; and the personal unconscious which recounts times of pain and lack. There is also her ego which is fully aware of the needs that she has and her lack of opportunities. It is what pushes her to try to start juggling a “9-to-5 and anxiety the size of vanity”.

The poet persona struggles to bring a balance between her ego and her unconscious. The weight of the complex around success is too heavy that she begins to struggle with depression when she sees that her “dreams do not pay bills” and with all the pressure, she begins to try too hard. The culture of the world around her tells her to abandon her aspiration and face reality. She makes that “[her] world has tied a noose around her passion… [and] set her world at a standstill.” This posits that the source of the dillemma are the culture and Society she finds herself connected to. The society and culture has presented a system where the means of sustenance are tied to neo-slavery where a woman has to work herself to death to survive. This way, she is pushed to work and work that she forgets to “live, love”... The society tries to structure her personal unconscious and put her ego at a conflict.

When the poet persona asks “but isn't thiss all our stories?” It denotes that the struggle is general and the the society is suffering as a result of the culture it created. After crafting aspirations and setting the standards so high, they all “race to the finishing line” until the realize that they have been spending so much time trying to make a living and it is already time to die.

This is true of the fast-paced society we find ourselves in. The economy is at a state where it is “everyone for himself”. The political system is now very oppressive and everyone is trying to make it and relocate to a better life. Therefore, there is a tendency to online be busy trying to make some naira or dollars, that people forget to appreciate the gift of life itself. This is what the poet persona is trying to point out, that we should not let society choke out our desires to dream but we should hold on to the aspiration and use them to make a life for ourselves.