Blog Post #9: Comparing Adichie's Short Stories

One similarity between Adichie's stories was the idea of guilt. Guilt was brought up in all four of the stories that we read. In "Cell One," Nnamabia feels guilty that he was let out of jail, while the old man, who is sick and completely innocent, must say. Furthermore, the old man doesn't have money for water, and cannot bathe. The police officers make him walk around naked and make fun of his attempts to cleanse himself. There is nothing that Nnamabia can do, except to stand up for the old man, which he does. Yet it does the old man no good, and the next day, Nnamabia is released from jail. What makes Nnamabia feel even more guilty is the fact that he was guilty of his accused crime and is getting out of jail, while the old man is suffering in jail, even though he is innocent. In "Tomorrow is Too Far," the girl knows that she and Dozie are responsible for Nonso's death, but she tells her mother that it was the grandmother's fault. At the end of the story, many years have passed since Nonso's death, and the girl sees Dozie again and feels guilty for basically killing her own brother. In "Ghosts," Ikenna seems to feel some sort of guilt towards Zik's death, as well as the deaths of other characters that occurred during the war. When James explains that the war took his daughter, Zik, Ikenna rushes to explain himself. He explains that when he left the country, he continued in his fundraising efforts. Ikenna probably feels even more guilty for leaving the country in the middle of a war, leaving all his friends, when James mentions another one of their friends who died who was at least brave enough to fight. Finally, in "The Thing Around Your Neck," the idea of guilt is a little more subtle than it is in the other three stories, but when the girl finds out that her father died five months ago, she probably feels guilty for not writing to her parents and for the things she said after her father got into the car accident.

Another similarity between the four of Adichie's short stories that we read is the use of second person. Adichie uses second person in "The Thing Around Your Neck" and "Tomorrow is Too Far." In both stories, the use of second person gives the effect of Adichie talking about either her own experiences, or something that she could closely relate to. Often in colloquial speech, we use the second person to convey our own experiences that others may be able to relate to. While Adichie could be using the second person literally by talking directly to one person, "you," it is more likely that she is using it to show her own experiences. The fact that both the stories in which Adichie uses the second person have female narrators further supports this idea.