“Pacification” and the “You Personality” in Chimamanda Adichie’s “The Thing Around Your Neck”
Conference: ISA 22nd Annual International Conference (2025)
Presenter(s): Uchenna David Uwakwe, Omeh Obasi Ngwoke
Tags: 2025 Nigeria Port Harcourt Federal University of Technology Owerri Omeh Obasi Ngwoke University of Port Harcourt Uchenna David Uwakwe
Abstract
Chimamanda Adichie demonstrates a compelling consciousness of the epochs of the African history along with its besieging conflicts. Her literary engagements come with certain symbolic echoes of the cultural values associated with Africa’s eventful past, some of which she only came to discover in their dissipating status. The focus in this paper is on “The Thing Around Your Neck” which comes as Adichie’s lead story in her short story collection. In this work, an attempt is being made to elicit the subtleties in the perception of ‘pacification’, a term which came up at the concluding part of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Adichie’s own perception is that this term translates as condescension or appeasement on the status of the different classes of migrants to the US. In experimenting with the second person narrative, ‘you’ becomes an antecedent to the protagonists name, Akunna and in a manner of extension to the audience. Perhaps, it also beckons on writings on Africa to seek compelling techniques to engage their audience. It is therefore imperative to interrogate how a symbolic reminiscence of the ‘pacification’ matter defines the connection between the African writing of the past and that of the contemporary epoch.
3 views