Imitation Game

Nkem is an immigrant who moved from Nigeria to America with her husband Obiora. Despite the luxurious life Nkem was promised and had dreamed of, she lived a lonely life in America. Her husband took business trips to Nigeria for months on end, leaving Nkem alone. In America, Nkem was physically separated from everything that she had considered home, except for her Nigerian maid. Because Nkem felt so out of touch with her Nigerian culture, she grew closer to her maid. Despite Amaechi working under her, she was the closest thing Nkem had to a friend because of their similar cultural background. 
Nkem struggled with the cultural differences she faced in America. This short story was focused on the “imitations” she found in her new life in America. For example, the unauthentic American produce. “Here there are hardly any yams at the African store—real African yams, not the fibrous potatoes the American supermarkets sell as yams. Imitation yams, Nkem thinks, and smiles” (33). She felt that America was an imitation of her life back in her home country. She became very dissatisfied with her marriage because her husband had a girlfriend in Nigeria. Her marriage became lifeless and superficial. She was so devastated by the news that her husband had an entirely different life in Nigeria that she no longer cared about maintaining the image of a perfect wife. “She would wear whatever heady perfume he’d brought her to bed and one of the lacy nightdresses she wore only two months a year” (38). Nkem used to groom herself to her husbands liking when they would be reunited after his long business trips, but she stopped trying and did not try to maintain her image for him. She felt as though her marriage became an imitation; one that had lost meaning. 

Many of the short stories in The Thing Around Your Neck show the internal struggles that the protagonists face from the cultural divide between Nigeria and America. Nkem especially struggles with this divide as one of the only familiar parts of her home in Nigeria was her husband, but slowly, Nkem lost him to his work in Nigeria, which caused a divide in their marriage. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Clarissa: A Peculiar Protagonist

Clarissa Dalloway is an interesting protagonist because she does not have many redeeming qualities and is not made to be completely loved by the readers. Although she is not made to be lovable, she does trigger compassion in the reader. Clarissa struggles to fit in with the social standard she is held to as an upper-class individual in England. Although Clarissa detests most upper-class culture, she finds herself identifying with some of the upper-class ways of life. For example, she obsesses over her dinner party, doing everything in her power to ensure it is a success. She also is very materialistic, which can be seen in her high concern of material things while walking the streets of London and peaking in shop windows. Perhaps pretending to fit in with the all of the social class elites has caused her to become part of what she despises. She triggers sympathy in the reader because she struggles internally and never acts on her complex thoughts that the reader is exposed to. After re
Read more

Elesin in Death and the King's Horseman

Elesin seems to be a very ironic character in the sense that he is very confident and self-centered, yet he is completing a very selfless act by sacrificing himself for the better of his tribe. Perhaps this is because his suicide has been set into his culture and because to Elesin killing himself is not his choice because it is something he must do: his duty to his tribe. Elesin demands to have another beautiful wife before he commits suicide, despite the fact that she is already promised to Iyaloja's son. This shows that Elesin cares little about other people and how his actions affect other people, but him committing suicide shows that he does care for other people (his tribe). Elesin is known to be very noble in his tribe and the praise-singer refers to him as an honorable man, perhaps because of how well people refer to him, he has gotten overly confident. It seems as though Elesin is mainly selfish, with the exception of one, very large selfless act he is meant to commit. The
Read more

Prospera vs. Prospero

In the Disney movie adaptation of The Tempest , Prospero is replaced by a woman, Prospera. For my school of literary criticism, I studied the feminist approach and examined Prospero, the most powerful character in the play, and his relationship with the other characters in the play, specifically Ariel and Miranda. Prospero becoming Prospera changes my approach and lense of the movie through the feminist approach. First, the argument of a patriarchal society being reflected within the Prospero's manipulative and controlling position between Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda is not valid. A patriarchal society is when men are predominately in power positions, but in the movie a woman, for once, is finally put in the ultimate power position. However, Prospera's actions do not suddenly become ethical just because of her gender. For example, putting Miranda to sleep, manipulating her marriage to Ferdinand, and the enslavement of Caliban and Ariel. The actual story and plot do not change j
Read more