Analysis Of Chimamanda Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck

In her collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Adichie brings to light what immigrants in America have to go through when they arrive in the U.S. All throughout her book she touches on the theme of identity. When an immigrant comes to America, he is immersed into a completely new culture, and when that happens, he has one of two options, he can either conform to the new culture or he can retain his culture and in a sense keep his identity. This is exactly what Chinaz Okafor, from “The Arrangers of Marriage”, has to decide when she arrives in America to marry her new husband who is becoming a doctor. During the short story, he is constantly telling her how to act so that she is just like an American. From the passage above, the …show more content…
If someone speaks a language different from the majority of society, he will be alienated because he is seen as different from the rest of society. All throughout the short story, Chinaz’s husband constantly corrects her English and tells her the right expressions to avoid drawing attention to the difference in her linguistics. People who speak English as their second language will always have a different way of speaking the language which separates them and makes them unique. The biggest way to take someone’s idea of identity away is to take their name, and that is just what Chinaz’s husband does to her. He tells her,” You have to use your English name here,” so he changes her name to Agatha Bell, taking the little bit of identity that Chinaz had left (Adichie 172-73). The text excerpt points out how Chinaz says she only speaks English with her husband, but every chance she gets, she not only speaks Igbo but also teaches it to Nia. Chinaz may act like a regular American when she is out in public or with her husband, but she is still clinging onto her language since it gives her that sense of identity that she cannot get from anywhere