Written Task 2 The Thing Around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Adichie depicts the lives of Nigerian women, some in the United States and others in Nigeria. Her short stories deliver a powerful take on the day to day struggles women face in multiple countries. In these works, women are marginalized and silenced within the text due to the lack of equality that lies within Nigerian and American culture. In doing so, the prevalent issue of the oppression women face on a day to day basis is brought to the surface. Throughout these stories, Adichie addresses these struggles through her expert use of irony and symbolism throughout her short stories. In “Imitation”, Adichie shines the light on the concepts of marriage in Nigerian culture and how husbands marginalize their wives. Her story displays the loyal housewife in the United States Nkem and her relationship with her husband Obiora, who lives in Nigeria. Adichie touches on the distance of the straining relationship through her symbolism of the masks Obiora collects. Nkem describes her feeling of the masks as “cold” and “lifeless” in contrast to when Obiora talks about them as “breathing” and “warm”.(25) As the story progresses, these masks represent the relationship the two have. Due to his work, Obiora only comes to the United States for two months a year. His actions display the marginalization Nkem faces. Obiora treats his wife as more of responsibility than an actual relationship. During his time away, the marriage feels like
The author used women’s oppression to write stories like, “The Moths.” The narrator learns that a person can follow the rules and still not be smothered by traditions and rules. Her Abuelita was an example to her. Through symbolism and setting, the author was able to depict women’s oppression by their societal
Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.
Lacking a wider variety of stories on any given topic can lead to dangerous misconceptions and casual racism. In her TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story, Ms. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award winning Nigerian novelist and public speaker, uses personal encounters with the effects of a single story to normalize her experiences with her audiences so that they may internalize them and act upon them easier. Ms. Adichie's use of pathos, as well as her comedic tone and understanding of who her audience is makes it significantly easier for her to accomplish the aforementioned goal.
This is the other story in the collection, which is told in the second person and it is considered the more powerful one by many reviewers. This story looks back eighteen years to an incident in the narrator’s childhood, one which has had a major impact on her whole life. The narrator reflects on the last summer before everything changed – her parents divorced, she never returned to Nigeria or saw her father’s family again. The memory begins eighteen years earlier in Nigeria at grandmamma’s place where the American-Nigerian narrator, her older brother Nonso and her cousin Dozie were all staying. Grandmamma favoured Nonso as the eldest grandson and the only one to carry the ‘Nnabuisi name’
In the 1970’s the average family had a wife that would take care of all of the cooking, the cleaning, everything concerning their kids, and even caring for her husband too. They did all of this without complaining, while their husband was at work. In those times nothing less was expected from them. In the article “Why I Want a Wife” Brady uses ethos, logos, and pathos to illustrate her opinion of what a wife do in a marriage, in which she infers that wives do too much for their families.
With good intentions, John controls his wife's life and makes all decisions for her, whether she agrees with them or not. His wife is full aware of the restrictions that her husband has imposed on her, but she is recessive to his control and often agrees with him. However, she fails to see “signs of her confinement: the bars at the window, the gate at the top of the stairs, steel rings on the walls, and the nailed-down bestead” (Korb). Because she is unable to escape from the isolation that her husband has kept her in, the woman seeks relief from the yellow wallpaper and she creates an imaginary relationship it. In fact, the worst thing her husband should not of done is give his unstable wife an object that is not appealing to focus on. In doing so, he has given her an opportunity to let her mind wonder and create objects that no one else sees. John, however, does not give any thought to this because after all, he thinks he knows what is best for his wife.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Sinclair Ross’s “The Painted Door” are both stories about women protagonists who feel emotionally isolated from their husbands, who both go by the name John. Ann in “The Painted the Door” and the wife whose name may or may not be Jane in “The Yellow Wallpaper” are women who deal with emotional isolation. Emotional isolation is a state of isolation where one may be in a relationship but still feel emotional separation. In these two stories, both women feel emotionally isolated from their husbands due to lack of communication. In both stories, lack of communication results from one individual failing to disclose their true feelings and instead he or she are beating around the bush, hoping the other party will know what they want. If both parties directly disclose their desires and feelings to one another, there would be a better understanding of each other which as a result would help save marriages. This paper will look at how both women lack communication, how they both their approach their emotional isolation differently, and how their failure to communicate to their husbands and their approach, results in the failure to save their marriage. “The Painted Door” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are stories that show how both women protagonists are emotionally isolated due to their failure to communicate their feelings and desires to their husbands. Instead of direct communication to their husbands, the women find other
The themes of two short stories, Cell One and Tomorrow is Too Far, in the anthology of The Thing You Wear Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have similarity. Both these short stories have many elements in common. Both short story have a common theme of relationship. In Cell One, the narrator narrates various habits of her brother Nnamabia. She analyzes the events as if she is standing outside the circle of her family and community. Similarly, in Tomorrow is Too Far the narrator tells her experiences which portray the fact that she is discriminated by her grandmother and her mother. The narrator also lets the readers know that everyone likes and prefers her brother Nonso. In both of the short stories, Cell One and Tomorrow is Too Far,
For centuries, a great deal of ethnic groups have been disempowered and persecuted by others. However, one should realize that none are more intense than the oppression of women. In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, women living in the Mango Street neighborhood suffer from their restricted freedom. Three such women, Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally, provide great examples. All try to escape from their dreadful environment. Most of them fail, but at first, Sally seems to succeed in escaping from her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband as equally bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insuperable obstacles that limit the freedom in their women’s lives.
In a struggle to retain what they believe is tangible, two very different, yet so analogous women are introduced in the diverse domains produced by two authors. The first, Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” where the narrator is a woman from an upper middle class upbringing who’s taken to a house by her husband for their summer vacation where she begins to feel confined and the later, William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” where Emily is the daughter of an influential man who does become confined to her house after her father passes away. Although their stories are written by two very different people, the women share an eerie resemblance as they begin to fall into an insanity driven by fixation. To explore and understand these connections, one must look into themes and symbolisms to further magnify the foundation of their stories.
Elaine Potter Richardson, more famously known as Jamaica Kincaid, is recognized for her writings that suggest depictions of relationships between families, mainly between a mother and daughter, and her birth place, Antigua, an island located in the West Indies. She is also familiarized with Afrocentrism and feminist point of views. Kincaid’s work is filled heavily with visual imagery that produces a mental picture in readers that helps them connect stronger to the reading. An example of this really shines through in her short story piece, “Girl.” This short story describes the life of a lower class woman living in the West Indies, and also incorporates thick detailing between the relationship between her and her mother. Jamaica Kincaid structures the story as if her mother is speaking to her. She writes broad, but straight to the point, allowing readers to imagine to picture her experience. Kincaid uses visual imagery and repetition consistently throughout “Girl” to reveal the theme and tone of the story; conflictual affair between a mother and daughter.
In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist symbolizes the effect of the oppression of women in society in the Nineteenth Century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author reveals the narrator is torn between hate and love, but emotion is difficult to determine. The effects are produced by the use of complex themes used in the story, which assisted her oppression and reflected on her self-expression.
Andrea Dworkin, a prominent radical feminist, tries to explain why women fail to put themselves out from where they are: “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge.” Women are often conditioned by different factors in their life to stay in their position, especially from societal norms and expectations of them from the men in their lives. However, over time, this could be emotionally and mentally burdensome to a woman’s state of mind, leading them to nowhere. This theme of oppression is prevalent in the feminist short stories titled “A Jury of her Peers”, written by Susan Glaspell, and “Sweat”, written by Zora Neale Hurston. In these works, Glaspell and Hurston elaborate on how powerful female protagonists are able to decide for themselves, but explain their mentally-taxing processes and reasons in accomplishing such a feat. In these short stories, women are able to rise over oppression, but primarily to overcome a grief or insecurity that stems from within and after being pushed to their limits and accustomed to their roles by men.
The author emphasizes the drastic contrast in the speaker's emotional state through the setting she finds herself in. She is taken from the comfort of her home and thrust both an environment and mind state of isolation. However, the setting also helps fuel the hatred that develops in the wife's mind for her husband. The speaker is ambivalent of her feelings for her
Modern literature is known for questioning society and its various conventions. One question that these works often ask is, “What is real?” Some modern authors explore this question by placing their characters within self-constructed illusions that are later shattered by the introduction of reality. Marriages are frequently at the center of this theme, with one spouse crafting an illusory impression of the other. Modern literature demonstrates that a marriage built upon illusion will falter when exposed to reality.