The Thing Around Your Neck –going deeper into the text TITLE CENTRAL CHARACTERS KEY QUOTES SIGNIFICANT EVENTS, SYMBOLS OR MOTIFS CENTRAL THEMES AND IDEAS ‘Cell One’ Nnamabia (lacks agency); his unnamed sister “Boys who had grown up watching Sesame Street, reading Enid Blyton, eating cornflakes for breakfast, attending the university staff primary school in smartly polished brown sandals, were now cutting through the mosquito netting of their neighbour’s windows, sliding out glass louvers and climbing in to steal TV’s and VCR’s.” (p.5) “When, at eleven, Nnamabia broke the window of his classroom with a stone, my mother gave him the money to replace it and did not tell my father…”(p.6) “Cult wars had become common…it was so abnormal that it quickly became normal” (p.7-8) “It [Enugu Prison] was where the police could do what they were famed for when under pressure to produce results: kill people” (p.10) “My father said something about how it was irrelevant whether or not the man knew where his son was”(p.15) “I saw my brother’s eyes fill with tears—my worldly brother—and I felt a tenderness for him…”(p.16) “It would have been so easy for him…to make a sleek drama of this story, but he did not”(p.21) Unnamed daughter (the narrator) The Purple Rain and Thriller videotapes the protagonist’s father brings back from America Nnamabia’s developing rash (p.11: “new, pimple-like insect bite on his forehead”, spreading across his face” p.12-13, “scratched at his bumpy face” p.16) The jollof rice Cell One (p.11) The cracked windscreen, as a result of the protagonist throwing a stone at her parents’ car (p.14) The treatment of the old, retired servant (p.15, Violence and corruption; siblings/family; religion; agency
‘A Private Chika (lacks agency); unnamed Hausa woman “Even without the woman’s strong Huasa accent, Chika can tell she is a Northerner, from the narrowness of her face, the unfamiliar rise of her cheekbones; and that she is Muslim, because of her scarf…she wonders if the woman is looking at her as well, if the woman can tell, from her light complexion and the silver rosary her mother insists she wear, that she is Igbo and Christian” (p.44) “Later, Chika will learn that as she and the woman are speaking, Hausa Muslims are hacking down Igbo Christians with machetes” (p.44) “Riots do not happen in a vacuum” (p.48) “She wonders what purpose this lie serves, this need to draw on a fictional past similar to the woman’s” (p.50) “She cries quietly…not the kind of loud sobbing that the women Chika knows do…The woman’s crying is private, as though she is carrying out a necessary ritual that involves no one else” (p.51) [Hausa woman praying] “…she does not look. It is like the woman’s tears, a private experience, and she wishes that she could…believe in God…when the woman rises, Chika feels strangely energised”(p.52) After her experience, Chika “change[d] her mind about telling her mother that offering Masses is a waste of money” (p.52) Chika’s silver rosary (p.44) Chika’s Burberry handbag from London (p.43) The Hausa woman’s scarf at the beginning (p.44) and at the end, when Chika ties it around her bleeding leg (p. 54, 56) Burned cars after the riot (p.45-46) Chika’s T-shirt embossed with the Statue of Liberty (p.47) and the Hausa woman’s green wrapper The Hausa woman bearing her breast to Chika, requesting medical help (p.49-50) BBC radio’s description of the riots as “religious with undertones of ethnic tension”(p.54) The stone covered in blood Chika keeps as “a ghoulish souvenir” (p. 56) Religion; violence and conflict; identity; cultural difference; common humanity and connection
will read in The Guardian that ‘the reactionary Muslims in the North have a history of violence against non-Muslims and… she will remember she examined the nipples of a woman who is Hausa and a Muslim” (p.55) ‘Ghosts’ James; Ikenna “…Perhaps I should have bent down, grabbed a handful of sand, and thrown it at him, in the way my people do to make sure a person is not a ghost. But I am a Western-educated man…and I am supposed to have armed myself with enough science to laugh indulgently at the ways of my people”(p.57) [Men under the flame tree, carpenters, gardeners] “…of course they nurse resentment, as they well should, but it has somehow managed to leave their spirits whole” (p.59) [about Ikenna]: “There was an uncertainty about him, a diffidence that seemed alien, unlike the man who so easily got people to act” (p.62) “Speaking of in English has always had, for me, a disquieting finality”(p.64) Description of Ikenna: “A man who carries with him the weight of what could have been” (p.66) “…thinking of the lives we might have had” (p.71) “…landscape of ruins” (p.65) “…a time immersed in possibilities” (p.66) daughter Nkiru living in America: “a life cushioned by so James being unable to obtain his pension for years (p.58-59) ‘dry winds’ of the Harmattan season (p.59) The whirling dust and wind in the trees (p.65 and p.71) “Dried-up looking clerks” (p.57) Ikenna Okoro (“the coming to life of a man who died thirty-seven years ago”, p.60) Ikenna’s “discoloured”, “hollow” laughter (p.62) Desecrated items in the house in Nsukka in 1970 (p.63) Ripped photographs and broken photo frames (p.63) The blood on the backseat of the car (p.65) Nostalgia and grief; national identity; violence and war
much convenience that it is sterile”(p.67) “…grandson who does not speak Igbo, did not understand why he was expected to say ‘Good Morning’ to strangers, because in his world one has to justify simple courtesies” (p.66) “Things have fallen” (p.68) “…calls home with her faint, vaguely troubling American accent”(p.71) The worn leather and peeled in James’ study (p.73) ‘On Monday of Last Week’ Kamara (protagonist), Neil, Tracy, Josh “Since Monday of last week, Kamara had begun to stand in front of mirrors. She would turn from side to side, examining her lumpy middle and imagining it flat as a book cover, and then she would close her eyes and imagine Tracy caressing it with those paint-stained fingers.” Kamara watched Josh slot in a Rugrats DVD and lie down on the couch, a slight child with olive sink and tangled curls. “Half-caste” was what they had called children like him back in Nigeria, and the word had meant an automatic cool, good looks, trips abroad to visit white grandparents. Kamara had always resented the glamour of half-castes. But in American, “half-caste” was a bad word.” “She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think they had the right to protect their Josh’s card that he gives to Kamara The organic and soy-based foods and ‘Guide to Vegetable Juicing’ Kamara found in Neil and Tracy’s home Kamara’s newfound tendency to stand in front of mirrors Tracy’s compliments Familial relationships, isolation, connection, belonging, the migrant experience
child from disappointment and want and failure.” (p82) “A belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if caring for one's child were the exception rather than the rule.” (p.82) “She could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs” (p.86) ‘Jumping Monkey Hill’ Ujunwa (initially agency); Edward; Chioma (lacks agency) “…the resort had the complacence of the well-fed about it, the kind of place where she imagined affluent foreign tourists would dart around taking pictures of lizards and then return home still mostly unaware that there were more black people than lizards in South Africa”(p. 95) “As for the Ugandan, Ujunwa had disliked him from the airport, and did so even more now because of his toadying answers to Edward’s questions, the way he leaned forward to speak only to Edward and ignored the other participants.” (p.99) “The thing that came to Uhunwa’s mind was to ask if Isabel ever needed royal blood to explain the good looks of friends in London”(p.98) “She sat for a long time, trying to decide whether to name her character something common, like Chioma, or something exotic, like Ibari”(p.100) The ostrich medallions Edward urges the writers to eat (p.101) Ujunwa’s character Chioma Ujunwa’s story about Chioma The unnamed writers at the writer’s workshop (eg: “The Ugandan”, “The Tanzanian”) (p.97) The names of the cabins at Jumping Monkey Hill (eg: Baboon Lodge, Porcupine Place) (p.95) The from Edward’s pipe hanging over the room (p.107) African identity; the nature of fiction; cultural imperialism and appropriation
“You Kenyans are too submissive! You Nigerians are too aggressive! You Tanzanians have no fashion You Senegalese are too brainwashed by the French!” (p.102) “Afterwards, everyone turned to Edward, even the Ugandan, who seemed to have forgotten he was the workshop leader” (p.107) “Which Africa?” [Ujunwa, in response to Edward’s critique of the Senegalese woman’s story as not “reflective of Africa”] (p.108) “The white South African said Edward would never look at a white woman like that because what he felt for Ujunwa was a fancy without respect”(p.109) [Ujunwa, in relation to women who are sexually harassed by Edward] “But why do we say nothing?...Why do we always say nothing?” (p112) “She wondered whether this ending, in a story, would be considered plausible”(p.114) ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’ Akunna (initially lacks agency); her unnamed American boyfriend “You thought everybody in America had a car and a gun” (p115) “…he bought you a hotdog with yellow mustard that nauseated you. Introduction to America, he said with a laugh.” (p.115) “…he enrolled you in community college…They gawped at your hair…You smiled tightly when they asked those questions. Your Uncle told you to expect it. A mixture of Akunna’s two fortune-cookie slips (p.121) The stain on the carpet in Akunna’s new apartment (p.117) The around your neck’(p.119 and p.125) The bruises on Akunna’s arms (p.119) Agency; identity; cultural difference
“…when the were separated and a woman teacher came to teach them how to sew, Nwambga found this silly, in her clan girls learned how to make pottery and boys sewed cloth”(p.208) “Father Shanahan told her that Anikwenwa would have to take an English name, because it was impossible to be baptised with a heathen name”(p.208) Anikwenwa: “He disliked the shorts and shirt that made him sweat…being in the same class as old men and missing out on wrestling matches…Anikwenwa’s attitude to school slowly changed…the curiosity in his eyes had diminished…as if he had found himself bearing the weight of a too-heavy world. He stopped eating her food, because, he said, it was sacrificed to idols. He told her to tie her wrapper around her chest instead of her waist, because her nakedness was sinful.” (p.210-213) “She felt her son slipping away from her”(p.211) “…a world that increasingly made no sense” (p.212) “Sister Maureen, told her…that primitive tribes did not have poetry”(p.216) “…the book she would write called Pacifying with Bullets: A Reclaimed History of Southern Nigeria” (p.217) change her name to Afamefuna”(p.218) Anikwenwa refusing to participate in his ima mmuo ceremony (p.210) The Gods had “changed”, asking for gin instead of palm wine (p.214) Mgbeke (Agnes) insisting that she keep her clothes on while bathing in the sacred Oyi waters Nwamgba naming Grace Afamefuna (meaning: My name will not be lost)