DISCIPLINE OR ABUSE? What The Potter’s Wheel Reveals About Raising Children Then and Now
When Chukwuemeka Ike penned The Potter’s Wheel in 1973, he gifted the Nigerian literary scene a deeply textured story of transformation; the kind that takes a spoiled, precocious child and molds him into a respectable, disciplined young man. It’s the kind of story many older generations nod to with approval, believing that the “Obus” of today are in short supply because no one is willing to “shape” them anymore. But literature, while rooted in its time, has a strange way of evolving with the world. What once passed for discipline is now flagged as abuse. What was once character molding is today trauma-inducing. And as modern readers revisit The Potter’s Wheel, they aren’t just admiring Ike’s storytelling, they’re asking harder questions like: At what cost did this transformation occur? And could we achieve the same result today without the same painful process? In this article, I examined how the theme of child-rearing in The Potter’s Wheel holds a mirror to generational ch...
