The Danger Of A Single Story Analysis

As human beings, we tend to not understand that what we see or hear about social media, television, books, etc. can guide us towards this one piece of the puzzle. Not knowing the rest of the puzzle creates the assumption of a single story. In her TED talk, Chimamanda Adichie has spoken about the dangers of only knowing a story which leads to stereotyping. By this being said, to what extent do we as a society form a single story about others? To answer this question, there is a great extent when people create their single stories about others because we make these single stories without even realizing it. Chimamanda is a mere example, a representative of how our society thinks and is treated  when making a single

From her tone to her stories, Ms. Ngozi Adichie effectively uses Pathos to convince her audience to act on her point. Her examples of how people misjudged her and her country’s people due to a lack of multiple points of view on their part and how she has personally been affected by the problem leaves the audience with a burst of emotions that leaves them more likely to understand her problem. When she tells her audience of the contrasting stories of excellence and tragedy that the people of Nigeria experience, it helps the audience to better emotionally understand the consequences for both parties of falling for the single story.

They are matters which have literally torn our country apart and utterly divided the American people. Adichie urgently seeks an equal yet peaceful world, powerfully declaring, “The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar” (Adichie). This is imperative in regards to creating a new standard; furthermore, to persuade others to look at the world with an open mind. Adichie further urges, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a person, but stories can also repair that broken dignity” (Adichie). The significance of Adichie’s speech thus reaches a pivotal peak. Adichie is referring to the sources in which we receive our one sided story. Sources such as television, radio stations, newspapers, social media, all of which are considered normal entertainment, but are in fact broadcasting stories that are not told from all involved participants thus leaving a fixated conviction. Therefore, it is difficult to disregard the single story when it is constantly in our presence. Through words, Adichie hopes to alter the strong influence of said

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie brings into consideration to Keim discussion, by emphasizing the connection between a “single story” and “stereotypes” regarding the subject of Africa. One of the dangers Adichie includes in her discussion are individuals being denied the opportunity to tell their story. Adichie draws similarities to Keim when discussing her own personal journey to find her authentic cultural voice, and she emphasizes the many misunderstanding that society, including herself, have made. Adichie admits to not only facing stereotypes, but addresses her own opinion regarding the topic. Adichie admits that as a child, she had initial biases regarding a servant that was employed by her family. According her explanation, she believed that the capability of someone “the servants family” coming from a certain background, made them incapable of such artistry. The same misconceptions can be seen in present day society, we often are prejudiced on who or what can be cultured.

Pathos: Adichie’s also displays strongly her emotions as she shares multiple stories with her audience like the story of the helper who was a little boy with a very poor family and had nothing. She also utilizes humor to make her point on the essence of stereotyping by telling the story of her room-mate who felt pity for her before even seeing her, just because she was African. Since the speech is mostly a narration from her life, Adichie includes emotions as she talks so that the audience gets to feel what she feels.

There is more to know about a person besides the single story that most people believe is true. A single story is something we hear about another person, culture, or where they are from. This can lead to critical misunderstanding of how their lives actually are. In the book, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. His writing makes sure that most of his characters don't fit into the group of having one single story this is how.

Naomi uses some rhetorical elements in her writing, Ethos and Pathos; she grabs the reader’s emotion through her language and establishes herself as a trustworthy authority of an Arab-American. Nye uses persuasion of Pathos to appeal to the reader’s emotions, values and beliefs to understand her point of view. She makes the reader sympathize by explaining how her family members are great people and how everyone could have that if they were not stuck in their ways of stereotyping. She pulls on heartstrings to persuade your way of thinking. She gives a detailed description of her refugee Palestinian father, “He has planted fig trees.

Watching the TED talk that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave on “The Danger of a Single Story” was powerful. A single story has insufficient primary sources to have the full comprehension of the real story. Seeing Adichie verbalize issues that I have discovered in myself allowed me to reflect deeply regarding my perception of others. Adichie spoke on how her childhood was filled with English stories and how she gained a perspective on their culture through books. Books are truly powerful storytellers and is often forgotten about in a society where books are taken for granite. A book in another one of my classes was based on Adichie’s idea of how English stories only told one side of the story; this book explored the lives an Igbo society and how English stories portrayed them differently than who they actually were. This proved that I am not alone in making a single story, furthermore

Throughout a lifetime people hear thousands of single stories from people, places, and things. This makes the passing of information very dangerous. A single story means, a limited viewpoint, or only seeing something from one angle. As proved in many cases, this is very dangerous in knowing the whole story from every perspective. In many cases the source you are hearing this from may have opinions or facts beyond the point adjusting your way of thinking. The dangers of singles stories was noted by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She had a first hand experience with this situation. As a child in Nigeria she was always reading english books. Appropriately, the national language of Nigeria is english, so it is likely that those were the books available. Later Chimamanda got ahold of African books and this completely changed her mindset, and realized she was only receiving stories from english perspective. This was one of her first encounters with single story. Later when she moved to America for school her she encountered a similar situation but rather someone else experiencing a single story. In her university Chimamanda had a roommate, this roommate was not from Nigeria. When Chimamanda was living with her the roommate was very surprised but her ability to speak perfect english, that she didn’t listen to “tribal” music, and that she could use a stove. Chimamanda believed this to be very odd that someone thought of her like that, but then she realized it was something similar to

Reading about chapter 2 and Joe’s personal experience with her mother was very strange to me but I can somehow understand where I she was coming from. I was born in Ghana and I have an ascent and the moment I open my mouth the first thing people ask me is where you from? Why does it matter so much where I’m from, I still don’t know answer yet, but I think most people want to find a way to relate to me. Some people from Africa try to hide their identity and I don’t know why, I believe they do that because they want society to accept them and also they want to fit in they don’t want to be looked at as the outsider.

On October,19,2017 I watched a Ted Talk Called “ Dangers of a single story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She spoke about her life in Nigeria before she studied abroad in The United States of America and the dangers of knowing 1 side of the story this is also known as ‘Bias’. After watching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted talk, I believe not everyone in Africa lives in poverty, stereotypes in Children 's books cause unrealistic ideas of reality and the media fabricates news to generate views and labels specific groups of people.

In “The danger of a single story”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues that having a narrow perspective of a community, person or a nation can create a critical misunderstanding. Ms.Adichie provides an example where she believed that only people with white skin and blue eyes can exist in literature because all the characters in the books

The short story collection, The Thing around Your Neck, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, contains twelve short stories about Nigerian characters in either Africa or America. In the collection, it is integrating to see the struggles of the Nigerian characters that straddle two worlds. It is also easy to see individuals act to control their own life, whether it is a woman or a man in the story. The protagonist of each story has the choice to choose whether they will accept, decline, or change the situation of their lives. Through the collection, Adichie emphasizes the importance of the power of individuals based on how they deal with the situation. Through this collection, Adichie attempts to go beyond stereotypes of Nigerians and tells real stories about fictional characters that could possibly exist and the real dilemmas they deal with. According to Ted Talk, Adichie explains how writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye were the cause of her metal shift in her perception of literature. She realized that people like her, who had the characteristics just like her could exist in literature, and so began to write the things she recognized. Also, a critic like John Madera explains in openlettersmonthly.com, Adichie writes, “stories of women living between worlds, struggling with identity, with mapping, navigating, and trespassing boundaries.” The main argument of this paper is that Adichie uses the protagonists to use their power to control their own lives in situations that are

Many tend to stereotype Africa and Africans as illiterate, uneducated and poor. But, frankly these views and judgements are untrue. Adichie uses various symbols to create unified messages. For example, cars seem to present itself in majority of the short stories. Cars act as a symbol of wealth, status and western influence. For instance, the American Embassy Narrator discussed that she “had driven her husband in the boot of their Toyota…who smuggled him out of the country” (Adichie 131). Although some may think Nigerians live in villages and ride bikes, Adichie writes about how Toyotas are the norm in Nigeria. Furthermore, in “Imitation” Nkem describes “Rich Nigerian Men Who Sent Their Wives to America to Have Their Babies league” who leave their wives with “Big houses and cars” (Adichie 26-28). Additionally, Obiora has cars in Nigeria as well, showcasing his wealth and power (Adichie 22). Throughout the short stories, Adichie tactfully includes what cars characters drive to prove the normality of Nigeria. Even though, Adichie showcases the wealth of Nigeria, Adichie tries to include some other truths as well. For instance, in “Imitation” it discusses the hardships some face, “Ijemamka talks about her visit to Nigeria, how prices have risen… [And] how so many more children hawk in traffic, hold-ups…” (Adichie

Ama Ata Aidoo is an outstanding black and female writer. She is a pan-Africanist and a feminist but she doesn’t use these adjectives separately. She combines her racial and sexual identity to produce a mixed ideology of feminist pan-Africanism. This is especially significant because the pan-Africanism discourse, like all political discourses, is generally dominated by the male. She becomes one of the strongest female voices in this discourse and she brings another point of view to pan-Africanism. Her point of view suggests that feminism and pan-Africanism are essentially bound together and they need to be dealt together. In order to do so, Aidoo constructs literarily strong female characters and she transmits her pan-Africanist ideas through a woman-based perspective by using her characters and