Before Ifemelu leaves for America, she shares her weekends with Obinze in Nsukka. Here, Adichie describes Nsukka in a long paragraph for this is the last time we are in Nigeria until the end of the novel. Each sentence reveals more about the town, but I will mostly examine the figurative language that is used at the end of the passage. Page 113 reads, “The church bazaars would leave the air redolent, smoky from mass cooking. Some nights, the heat lay thick like a towel. Other nights, a sharp cold wind would descend, and Ifemelu would abandon her hostel room and snuggled next to Obinze on his mattress, listen to the whistling pine howling outside, in a world suddenly fragile and breakable.” Like the t-shirt simile before, Adichie describes the
…show more content…
These descriptions are also interwoven with hyperboles and personification. For example, Ifemelu stays with a relative in Brooklyn at first and has to sleep on the floor. This is something she did not expect, now being in America, and she describes her feelings at the end of the passage, “Ifemelu could not sleep, her mind too alert to the newness of things...Ifemelu stood there for a long time, her body unsure of itself, overwhelmed by a sense of newness. But she felt, also, a frisson of expectation, an eagerness to discover America” (130). Adichie gives Ifemelu’s body a mind of it’s own with this personification. This also acts as a hyperbole too. I have noticed this a lot in Adichie’s writing— her figurative language does not represent one thing, but a few. The next sentence heightens the last too, by giving Ifemelu control again: “But she felt..”(130). Her body is left out and this sentence and passage ends with a positive, yet curious hyperbole. Ifemelu does not feel unsure and anxious as inferred by the previous examples, but finally hopeful. Although this sentence is embellished— the excitement, expectation to discover all of America, it makes readers hopeful, too, that the protagonist will allow herself
These descriptions are also interwoven with hyperboles and personification. For example, Ifemelu stays with a relative in Brooklyn at first and has to sleep on the floor. This is something she did not expect, now being in America, and she describes her feelings at the end of the passage, “Ifemelu could not sleep, her mind too alert to the newness of things...Ifemelu stood there for a long time, her body unsure of itself, overwhelmed by a sense of newness. But she felt, also, a frisson of expectation, an eagerness to discover America” (130). Adichie gives Ifemelu’s body a mind of it’s own with this personification. This also acts as a hyperbole too. I have noticed this a lot in Adichie’s writing— her figurative language does not represent one thing, but a few. The next sentence heightens the last too, by giving Ifemelu control again: “But she felt..”(130). Her body is left out and this sentence and passage ends with a positive, yet curious hyperbole. Ifemelu does not feel unsure and anxious as inferred by the previous examples, but finally hopeful. Although this sentence is embellished— the excitement, expectation to discover all of America, it makes readers hopeful, too, that the protagonist will allow herself