Duality Of Letter

There is an innate duality of nature that exists in men and women. On one hand, the woman is the nurturer, the lover, and is often portrayed as the very Earth itself. On the other hand, there is the man. The man is the provider, the ruler and commonly seen as the farmer or the tiller of the Earth. It is the man that reaps the benefits of the Earth’s fertility and boasts of his own prowess. It is this, the intersection between these two entities that Mariama Ba addresses in her novel So Long a Letter. Through the clever use of a single perspective, Ba introduces a host of situations and critical decisions that enable the reader to establish their own version of male identity. The characters Modou, Mawdo Ba, and Tamsir work to illustrate the less favorable reality of men. Their stories are not of valor, victory, or vigor. Instead, Mariama Ba bestows images of wickedness, weakness, and wily to develop a tale that surpasses its immediate society of Senegal and journeys into …show more content…
In the reader’s first introduction to Tamsir, he bore a wide smile and bad news. He embraced Ramatoulye as if nothing occurred earlier despite his knowledge that his brother, Modou, married another woman only hours earlier. On the reader’s second introduction, Tamsir asked for Ramatoulye’s hand in marriage. With this proposal Ba solidifies Tamsir’s slyness and ‘any means necessary’ approach to survival. The reality is that Tamsir is a man who lives outside of his means. He is lazy, wily, and deceitful. As a result, he is fixed in a position where he cannot “neither the needs their needs [his wives] nor those of [his] numerous children” (Ba 60). Instead of being more laborious or honest, Tamsir has his wives perform tasks throughout town to fund his rest. Ramatoulye would simply be a new edition to the work force and a great boost to his