Americanah story review
How the setting influences the characters
Americanah by ChimamandaNgoziAdichie is a powerful tender story circling about the themes of love, Americanization, education as well as race and identity. Ifemelu, the protagonist of the novel undergoes a series of life-changing events in America and Nigeria before reaching satisfaction and fulfillment. The primary purpose of this essay is to showcase how various characters in the novel act in different environments. The article will dwell on what the characters learn about themselves based on different settings.
Ifemelu
Ifemelu experiences a lot of change when she moves from Nigeria to American then to Nigeria again. First, when she moves to America, life is harder than she expected. Her expectations of finding a well-paying part-time job as she pursued the harsh reality violate her studies in America. Although Ifemelu has a scholarship, the little that is left after paying tuition fees can barely sustain her. She is always worried about money and how she will survive seeing that her aunt Uju works three jobs while pursuing her medicine course. After a lot of struggle, Ifemelu gets a position, which she thinks will sustain her throughout her studies. However, contrary to her expectations, the job Ifemelu gets is more of sexual harassment than an actual job. The tennis coach told her (chapter 15), “Now what I need helps to relax. If you want the job you, have it. I’d pay you a hundred dollars, with the possibility of a raise, and you’d work as needed, no set schedule.” The coach then explains to her that “relaxing” meant to have sex with him for one hundred dollars. During the interview, Ifemelu thought, (Chapter 15), “She did not know exactly what he meant, but whatever it was, she regretted that she had come.” From the desperate state of Ifemelu, it is clear that the change of environment from Nigeria to America has impacted on Ifemelu. Ifemelu has transformed from being a bold and bright girl to being a desperate student in desperate search for a job.
Furthermore, the shift from Nigeria to America dilutes the love Ifemelu once felt for Obinze. While still in Nigeria, Ifemelu and Obinze shared immense love that began when they were teenagers. “On weekends, they watched films on video. They sat in the living room, eyes on the screen, and Obinze said, “Mummy, chelu, let’s hear,” when his mother, from time to time, gave her commentary on the plausibility of a scene, or the foreshadowing, or whether an actor was wearing a wig” (chapter 5). Ifemelu, Obinze, and his mother would watch movies together because even their parents approved of their love. When Ifemelu was leaving for America, Obinze’s mother told her, “And make sure you and Obinze have a plan,” (chapter 8). Her words implied that the two were meant to continue with their relationship despite the distance between them. However, Ifemelu did not keep her word seeing that she got into two relationships while in America, forgetting about her first love Obinze. A change of heart is seen in Ifemelu when she went back to Nigeria and rekindled her romance with Obinze. Again, the shift in setting changes the feelings of Ifemelu towards Obinze. When in Nigeria, she loves him but when in America, she forgets all about him.
Ifemelu discovers how intolerant she is to racism when she starts to work for Kimberly. Before she got the nanny job, Ifemelu was mostly residing with fellow black students and had not felt the full impact of racism. However, during her relationship with Curt, Ifemelu tastes racism and discovers she is intolerant to the norm. Ifemelu started to feel bothered about racism when Kimberly, her employer constantly apologized for unnecessary things. “At first, Ifemelu thought Kimberly’s apologizing sweet, even if unnecessary, but she had begun to feel a flash of impatience, because Kimberly’s repeated apologies were tinged with self-indulgence, as though she believed that she could, with apologies, smooth all the scalloped surfaces of the world” (chapter 16). Later, during her relationship with Curt, Ifemelu felt that Curt was insensitive about race and would sometimes say things that would offend her Nigerian identity. Ifemelu told her friend after breaking up with Curt, “There was a feeling I wanted to feel that I did not feel” (Chapter 31). Ifemelu felt incomplete with Curt because they did not share similar views on racism.
Obinze
Obinze is another character who discovers new things about himself when the setting changes. First, he realizes that his educational background and clean background are useless in London. “Everyone joked about people who went abroad to clean toilets, and so Obinze approached his first job with irony: he was indeed abroad cleaning toilets, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a pail, in an estate agent’s office on the second floor of a London building” (chapter 24). As such, despite the university education Obinze had received in Nigeria, he was working as a toilet cleaner. “The toilets were not bad, some urine outside the urinal, some unfinished flushing; cleaning them was much easier than it must have been for the cleaners of the campus toilets back in Nsukka” (chapter 24). Therefore, while in London, Obinze had to adjust from being an educated young man to a casual toilet cleaner.
When Obinze got deported back to Nigeria, he discovered his potential as a businessman. Ranyinudo told Ifemelu, “Obinze is now doing very well in business” (chapter 44). The statement implied that Obinze was now a lucrative and wealthy businessman in Lagos. In his attempt to find greener pastures, Obinze discovered that his success lay in Nigeria, rather than in America or London. When Obinze got ambushed for using a false identity, he told the immigration officer, “I’m willing to go back to Nigeria” (chapter 30). That statement implied that Obinze had realized himself and that he would succeed in Nigeria rather than London under a false identity.
References
Adichie, C. N. (2014). Americanah. Gyldendal A/S.