EXPECTATIONS
The first
sentences of the book suggest a strong Christian or spiritual theme in the
book. The title suggests an undertone of bitterness about covert oppression.
Adah's
interactions with her immediate family are a parallel to this sense of oppression
- although she is the elder of the two children, the firstborn, she is denied
things she feels entitled to and which are then given to her younger brother,
often at her expense.
The first
conflict the reader witnesses is that between Adah and her mother, at the
police station. It is not so much resolved as Adah's father makes a decision
her mother is not necessarily okay with but must obey, and it works out in
favor of Adah. Here, the established patriarchy and power structures are bared
and the reader gets a glimpse of the struggle Adah will be forced to endure
later.
CHAPTER 1
Character
development: Adah does not display growth or change in outlook just yet - we
only see her determination, and calculated courage to take risks.
Plot: Chapter 1
chronicles the absolute beginning of Adah's academic career: her enrollment in
school. Adah was not allowed to go to school since it was considered an
unnecessary excess. Instead, her brother would go. Adah sneaked out to attend
class at the Methodist School where her neighbor Mr Cole was a teacher. She
returns to find her family and the police waiting for her. Her mother is
punished for child neglect and directed to send Adah to school.
CHAPTER 2
Narration: The
narration, although third-person, is obviously from her point of view - we
catch a glimpse of the autobiographical element in the book when in chapter 1
the narrator describes Adah's remembrance of her Ibo superstitions and her
amusement by them (page 15). The narration is not wholly dominated by Adah's
POV - readers are aware of the thoughts of a few other characters. The narrator
is not identified as a character.
CHAPTER 3
The protagonist
is Adah Eke, named after her late grandmother. She is a driven, enterprising
young girl, educating herself at secondary school on scholarship. She has been
sent to live with her cousins as a servant after the death of her father. She
is iron-willed, pragmatic yet not one-dimensional. Her dream, as a Presence,
gives her strength through the trials that the patriarchy put her through.
Essentially, the patriarchy is the antagonist of the novel - in the form of her
family's preferential treatment of her brother, the family structure that
allows the wife and children of a deceased individual to be inherited, her cousin
Vincent, Francis - all inhibit her progress and growth as an individual.
The other
characters so far are Adah's brother Boy, her husband Francis, his parents and
sisters, their daughter Titi and son Vicky, and their Yoruba neighbors.
CHAPTER 4
The story begins
in her home at Lagos. Later she lives with her cousin Vincent at Pike Street.
Upon acceptance into the Methodist Girls' School, she lived in the boarding
house for 5 years and then married Francis and led an elite life with him until
they moved to England, where Adah and Francis live with their two children in a
room in Ashdown street. It was more like a half-room - small, with a single bed
at one end, a new settee at the other and a Formica topped table occupying all
of the space in between. There was no bath, no kitchen; the toilet was outside,
four flights of stairs down, in the yard.
The story is set
in the post WWII era - Adah was born during the Second World War. Therefore,
the events in the story could have taken place between 1920 and 1960. The
timeline of the novel is straightforward – linear – the readers are
not made to process temporal fluidity.
CHAPTER 5
Style: the novel
makes for easy reading. The writing is lucid, almost conversational, and
grounded in the lived experience of oppression and injustice. The author steers
clear of lengthy philosophizing, as is true of the protagonist. The imagery in
the narration is powerful. The details are visual, olfactory, auditory, tactile
- such that the reader experiences as much of the squalor of the colored
immigrant life as Adah's dignity and pragmatism allows her to dwell upon.
Christian and
native religious symbols recur throughout the novel. The image of Mary and
unborn Jesus, the river deity Oshiba and episodes from the Bible are quoted
frequently. For the sake of perhaps universal relevance or at least
comprehension, the novel does not have any local figures of speech or sayings.
However, the motif of “cunning as the
snake, harmless as the dove” is persistent
throughout.
Tone: In the
first few chapters of the novel, the reader is alternately proud of Adah and
rejoicing with her about her triumphs and achievements or anxious about the
trials and obstacles she must overcome. Also, the reader is not infrequently
frustrated by the general incompetence and callousness of Francis and the
systems Adah is subject to.
CHAPTER 6
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