The Thing Around Your Neck (Analysis)

An analysis of The thing around your neck by Chimamanda Ngogi Adichie The title story exemplifies the prevailing theme of homesickness as a physical, as well as a metaphorical, malaise. The novel depicts the condition of postcolonial Nigerian women. The ways through which these women resist patriarchal domination in postcolonial Nigeria are analyzed in detail. Adichie foregrounds the Nigerian females’ experiences in the narrative. Most of the stories revolve around a main female character that has faced hardships due to patriarchal exploitation. Most females’ identity formation has been affected by poverty, superstition, ignorance and subsequently that leads to their exile and alienation. The collection has got twelve short stories entitled “Cell One”, “Imitation”, “The Private Experience”, “Ghosts”, “On Monday of Last Week”, “Jumping Monkey Hill”, “The Thing Around Your Neck”, “The American Embassy”, “The Shivering”, “The Arranges of Marriage”, “Tomorrow Is Too Far” and “The Headstrong Historian”. As a collection of short stories, the collection reflects the different strata of the Nigerian people’s lives in the country and aboard. Through the stories of the collection, the Nigerian females’ victimization is exposed. The collection of those short stories was published in 2009. The loneliness and depression that the main female characters face throughout the collection are “thing around her neck” and, notably, this comes from their silence. Adichie deals with the issue of depression in other works of hers as well. She specifically deals with the depression among immigrants coming to America. A major theme across the collection of these stories is the idea of cultural identity. The loss of connection to one’s culture can have detrimental effects on his identity. All the characters have a strong connection to their Igbo heritage which empowers them. Grace, a headstrong historian is seeking success through her paternal heritage. Chicka’s affiliation to the West complicates her positioning. She faces the issue of delinquency due to her estrangement from her Igbo roots. Issues of misogyny and sexual abuse are addressed. Sex is not depicted as pleasurable but instead as an act of coercion, an act of domination on the female body. It is a highly performative act. Chinaza’s perception of sex is unhealthy. She is constantly patronized and she is expected to fulfill the sexual mandates of her husband at all times. In A Private Experience, a student hides from a riot with a poor Muslim woman. In Tomorrow Is too Far, a woman describes the painful secret about her brother’s death. In Imitation, a young mother deals with the revelation of her husband’s adultery. The Thing Around Your Neck details the loneliness that a Nigerian girl who moves to America experiences. The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of stories from Nigeria that pose a strong postcolonial feminist voice. These stories map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them. The characters find resilience and inner strength by taking actions and overcoming obstacles by themselves. They might have experienced disillusionment however; by the end of the narrative they overcome the restrictions that impede them from reaching selfactualization. What is remarkable is that Adichie dramatizes the determination of women to survive in the face of violence, sexual assault and extreme starvation they constantly face.