ABSTRACT
Most African writers direct their literary efforts towards the arousal of Socio-political and economic awareness. Marxism, in its pursuit of socio-political change attempts to redefine human existence through class. Alienation, one of the theories of Marxism has been chosen for this research using Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel.
The novel has been analyzed by focusing on three features of alienation; social, political and economic alienation. From this work, we found that alienation has oppressed, suppressed and subjected the masses specifically using Poverty Street in Lagos to represent the generality of Nigerians who were oppressed under the dictatorial military regimes during the 1990’s. It has also been discovered that not even the prison should negate the continuity of socio-political and economic struggle. Though alienation has crippled the less privileged, it has also served as an eye opener through which the masses became radical in nature in order to effect a change in the societal system.