Okoboshi Obidi
Okoboshi is the child having good limp whom matches with Chike (Aku-nna’s husband to be) more Aku-nna. Afterwards, Okoboshi’s relatives kidnaps Aku-nna, an authorized community customized, in order to make the girl Okoboshi’s partner. Shortly after kidnapping the girl, Okoboshi tries to “devirgin” Aku-nna. Whenever Aku-nna basic notices him immediately after she’s got been kidnapped, she observes you to their look “got a type of crookedness regarding it; in place of gracing this new heart [sic] from his face, the new smile is actually removed lopsidedly on the one of his ears. It was brand new smile out of an enthusiastic embittered young man. The guy hated the lady, anywhere near this much she may see.”
He’s stronger than she is, however, she outsmarts your. She eyelashes aside which have spoken assaults so you can their pleasure. Which world between Okoboshi and you can Aku-nna was a crucial part of the story. It is the first-time one Aku-nna takes a very good updates within the shielding by herself, using all things in the woman power to allege the life she wants, as opposed to the lifetime one the woman culture features attempted to push for her. Okoboshi, within esteem, stands for precisely what Aku-nna finds out repugnant regarding the the girl typically male-dominated society.
Aku-nna Odia
Aku-nna, the fresh new protagonist within this novel, are thirteen yrs old and you will staying in the fresh new Nigerian city Lagos if the story reveals. She is an intelligent girl you never know, without getting advised truly, you to definitely this woman is “too unimportant” regarding eyes out of this lady parents. She’s, whatsoever, simply a girl. The woman is and additionally thin and at minutes most at the mercy of disease. This lady moms and dads relate to the girl while the an enthusiastic “ogbanje”-an income deceased. This lady mother usually chides their because of the inquiring Aku-nna and work out up the woman mind if she is going to alive otherwise die. They have a tendency to seems that the thing their moms and dads expect so you’re able to, in respect so you can Aku-nna, is the fiance rates, the price her future husband will pay for the girl.
Aku-nna, right from the start of the storyline, has many questions about the lady family, https://hookupsearch.net/milf-hookup/ her culture, along with her part inside community. She considers such concerns, however, she never ever voices him or her because in her own society it is sensed worse than simply crappy manners to ask her or him, especially coming from a girl. But it’s this type of concerns you to drive Aku-nna during the it story. She is towards the a pursuit of solutions.
Since if lifetime during the Lagos, which was still a little dependent on antique Ibo people, is not difficult enough, on her dad’s passing Aku-nna are forced to face also stricter interpretations of them life style whenever she is drawn back to this new family’s ancestral village, Ibuza. Indeed there Aku-nna can be slammed on account of her modesty. She cannot including soaking up the newest nude in public places. She is including slammed because the she actually is allowed to remain the girl schooling. However it is the lady friendship which have Chike, a beneficial descendent away from a slave, that’s her latest undoing.
It’s having Chike one Aku-nna seems the most safe into the inquiring those questions which have haunted this lady. She refers to with Chike’s part, that’s one another a portion of the Ibo culture but oddly taken off they meanwhile. Chike is actually the lady professor in more ways than simply from the missionary college one to Aku-nna attends, and you may she falls crazy about him. But to say that the lady reference to Chike is actually their finally undoing is too simple. There are other cutting-edge activities involved.
By the time Aku-nna transforms ten, she’s got person used to some thing on Ibuza community. She finds out in regards to the European implies at school and you can goes family and you may confronts the newest “unchanging lifestyle off [her] own some one.” Yet , she is never ever capable of making herself feel at ease inside possibly people. Each other Aku-nna and her sibling are like “helpless fishes caught for the an online: they could perhaps not … go back for the water, to own they certainly were involved … yet , they certainly were however alive given that fisherman try active debating in this themselves whether or not it is actually worth destroying her or him.” Finally, it’s Aku-nna’s incapacity in order to totally free herself throughout the tangled net from the lady culture you to definitely, at the least on the an effective a symbol peak, explanations her dying.