Eco-Social Oppression and the Marginalised Child in Amma Darko’s Faceless and Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation

This study examines eco-social oppression and the marginalised child in Amma Darko’s Faceless and Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation through Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory. It addresses the interconnected effects of poverty, environmental degradation, social injustice, war, child marginalisation and trauma in the two novels. Drawing on Caruth’s concepts of belatedness, repetition, fragmentation, unspeakability and witnessing, the study employs close textual and comparative analysis. It argues that Faceless portrays urban poverty, environmental degradation, gender inequality and institutional neglect as conditions that expose Fofo and Baby T to homelessness, exploitation, violence and psychological trauma. In Beasts of No Nation, war, displacement, social collapse and forced militarisation disrupt Agu’s childhood and produce profound psychological fragmentation. Both novels employ repetition, silence, fragmented narration and disrupted temporality to represent traumatic experience and its social causes. The study demonstrates that the marginalised child constitutes an important site for understanding the relationship between environmental and social failure. By integrating environmental injustice, child marginalisation and trauma, the study contributes to African literary scholarship by showing how the suffering of children reveals the interconnected consequences of ecological degradation, social inequality, violence and institutional failure.