35 pages • 1 hour read
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Nwamgba is the central protagonist in the narrative. Other than the state of her dress—a wrap around her waist—and the “grace in her straight back” (209), physical descriptions are few in the story. Instead, her character is her most remarkable feature. According to her father, she is “sharp-tongued, headstrong,” and he often found her exhausting because she was the type of girl who crossed gender lines and “wrestled her brother to the ground” (199). Her manner of speech, too, goes against the usual manner of the women in her clan, as Father Shanahan remarks that “she, unlike others, had not spent too much time going round and round in her speech” (209).
Nwamgba’s stubbornness and decisiveness also affect her relationships. Though rumors circulate about Obierika and his family, “she had believed that her chi and his chi had destined their marriage” and could not otherwise be deterred from her plans to marry him (198). Though her stubbornness can be a strength in her life, Nwamgba’s inflexibility unintentionally causes rifts in her family. When Obierika dies and she suspects his cousins of murder, her stubbornness and dedication to her husband drive her to reclaim his titles and lands for her son and maintain the family legacy by enrolling Anikwenwa in the missionary school. Thwarting her husband’s cousins and securing Anikwenwa’s inheritance becomes her only focus, and in the process, she alienates her son from herself and her community.
Nevertheless, this same inflexibility safeguards her from losing her cultural identity, unlike her peers. Nwamgba is entirely comfortable with who she is and the community in which she lives, to the point that she dismisses the dangers when the white men “come to stay” (205). Her ignorance of the hidden colonial education they teach her child and later, her grandchildren, stems from thinking that such people could be used for her benefit without personal cost. In the end, she struggles to connect with her son even on her deathbed, as he is fully adherent to Christian doctrine and refuses to recognize her culture as anything but sinful or devilish. At the same time, she is a model of Nigerian femininity and strength through which her granddaughter connects to her culture; at the end of her life, Afamefuna is by her side.
Anikwenwa is Nwamgba and Obierika’s only son. As a child, he is said to be “dark and solidly built and ha[s] Obierika’s happy curiosity” (202), and he takes an interest in playing the flute, learning poetry, and wrestling with boys his age. When his mother decides to send him to the missionary school, however, he undergoes a personality change. Anikwenwa is meant to be the heir to Obierika’s titles, lands, and spirit; his father’s cousins take away the former, and the missionary school takes away the latter as “the curiosity in his eyes […] diminishe[s]” the longer he remains at the school (210). His innocence is replaced by “a new ponderousness in him, as if he had suddenly found himself bearing the weight of a too-heavy world” (210).
When his mother allows him to be baptized with the name Michael by Father Shanahan, the boy Anikwenwa effectively ceases to exist. The missionary school not only successfully has him renounce his cultural identity and the customs his community practices, but they also fashion him as their spokesperson and model for others to follow. He, in turn, becomes a proud catechist, “wearing trousers, and a rosary around his neck” (212). As the story goes on, he becomes more estranged from his mother and culture.
Just as his mother fails to recognize the dangers of sending him to the missionary school, Anikwenwa does not see that his relationship with Afamefuna is collapsing because of his commitment to Christian doctrine. For him, there are no compromises to be made on the teachings he received from the missionaries. He is so deeply indoctrinated that when his daughter is sent to detention for laughing at her teacher’s assumptions on call-and-response poetry, he “slap[s] Grace in front of the teachers to show them how well he discipline[s] his children” (216). Michael the catechist cannot have a blemished reputation, even if it means harming his own child.
Afamefuna is Anikwenwa and Mgbeke’s daughter and Nwamgba’s granddaughter. Though initially named Grace by her parents and Father O’Donnell, her grandmother gives her the name Afamefuna, which means “My Name Will Not Be Lost” (214). Unlike her brother Peter, Afamefuna inherits her grandfather’s spirit and, with it, an interest in their family legacy. Though she is not physically described, Nwamgba notes her “solemn interest in her [Nwamgba’s] poetry and her stories” and her “fighting spirit.”
Anikwenwa is more resilient than her parents in the face of Christian teachings. She is thrice removed from her cultural roots and family legacy: She is sent to boarding school as a young teenager and unable to participate in her local community; she is born into a family of devout Christians who discard their cultural identity; and her boarding school is a Christian school that teaches her how to dehumanize and view herself as a “savage” with “curious and meaningless customs” (216). But Afamefuna is the cycle breaker in her family’s cultural erosion and embarks on an academic journey to undo the stereotyped notions about her people and herself. As she witnesses firsthand the misrepresentation of her people and their history, Afamefuna sets out to reinscribe value in the “lives and smells of her grandmother’s world” (217). By claiming Afamefuna as her name instead of Grace as an adult, she signals the resolution of her journey to rediscover and reclaim her cultural identity and her family’s legacy.
Obierika is Nwamgba’s husband, Anikwenwa’s father, and Nnamdi and Afamefuna’s grandfather, though he dies before they are born. Though Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does not give him much textual presence before his untimely demise, Obierika nevertheless embodies the family legacy Nwamgba tries so hard to retain for her son and to glimpse through her grandchildren: a mixture of honors attained by his forefathers, his own achievements, his happy curiosity, and the lands that keep them fed and prosperous. When Nwamgba speaks of him in memory, it often details her fondness for him, as she remembers “his stubby fingers curled around his flute when he played in the evenings, his delight when she downed his bowls of food, his sweaty back when he returned with baskets filled with fresh clay for her pottery” (198). The memory of him makes her feel “as if she were surrounded by light” (198).
Obierika is also known to be industrious. Throughout his married life, he “took titles and widened his compound and sold his yams to strangers from afar” (199). As a result, his legacy materializes into a physical inheritance for Anikwenwa. But Obierika’s overall good nature also sets in motion the struggles that beset Nwamgba and Anikwenwa and spell his own doom. Obierika knows his cousins are taking advantage of him, but he overlooks it because he prizes his connection with them. When he dies, Obierika signifies the cultural loss that haunts his family.
Okoye and Okafo are Obierika’s maternal cousins and the main antagonists in the story. Both cousins, while loved as brothers by Obierika, nevertheless have “a grasping envy in their eyes” for everything Obierika possesses (199). They are lazy and unproductive individuals who would rather siphon resources and goods from their industrious cousin than work for themselves, and “Nwamgba loathed them at first sight” (199). When Obierika dies, Nwamgba believes they are at fault and seems justified in her accusation when they “[take] his ivory tusk, claiming that trappings of titles went to brothers and not to sons” during Obierika’s funeral, then “empty his barn of yams and led away the adult goats” (203). Their actions and the threat they pose to Anikwenwa cause a chain reaction and become the catalyst that pushes Nwamgba to seek more power and interference from white men in their family matters. Reclaiming what they stole becomes the reason Anikwenwa is sent to the missionary school, turns away from his cultural identity and adopts a Christian lifestyle, and endorses the institutions that devalue Nigeria as a whole.
The missionaries are a group of individuals working for a Christian institution who have come to Onicha to convert the population and educate children in Christian doctrine and to European standards. Father Shanahan, Father O’Donnell, and Father Lutz are the three men from the mission who most interact with Nwamgba and her family. Whereas Nwamgba sees them as necessary allies in her fight to reclaim Anikwenwa’s inheritance, the missionaries deliberately act to remove the traditional cultural identity in Nwamgba’s community. Father Shanahan is a specific proponent of cultural erosion, as he joined the Holy Ghost Congregation because its “special vocation was the redemption of black heathens” (209). He enforces a colonialist mindset in his interactions, as he actively seeks out individuals within the community who can be used for the mission. Initially, he believes “this Nwamgba woman would make a marvelous missionary among women” (209), but he eventually focuses on stripping the cultural behaviors from children under his care. He and his colleagues are successful, as Anikwenwa goes on to become a catechist for their mission.
Ayaju is a Nigerian woman who is friends with Nwamgba but comes from a different, poorer clan. She is married to a man she does not love, Okenwa, and has children, but neither she nor her children can earn titles because her father was a slave. Ayaju, however, is resourceful and has found other ways to earn respect in her community through her trading journeys beyond their lands, which account for her “long-limbed, quick moving body” (201). Because of her journeys, Ayaju is also the central figure who provides news of the outside world by retelling the stories of what she hears and sees on her travels. As a result, Ayaju informs Nwamgba of the white men, their courts, and their schools, and how Nwamgba can benefit from Anikwenwa’s learning English from them. She effectively provides the solution to Nwamgba’s family inheritance issue, though she is unaware that the institution will disrupt their family unity and corrupt his personhood.
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie