In these stories people struggle to overcome the effects of violence and loss.

Disk us.
Chimimanda Adichies anthology, titled Thing Around Your Neck, explores
facets of Nigerian life, their relation to conflict and the themes that come with
that conflict. Some of these stories share a recurring theme of dealing with
situations that afflict the lives of the people within Adichies short stories. Some
of the characters are forced to deal with the effects of the violence around them
through denial, while others do so through hallucinating. Sometimes, its not
even violence nor loss being dealt with, but rather a lack of belonging. Adichie
explores these themes of loss and the struggle to overcome through her short
stories.
Adichie shows that through dealing with the effects of violence leading into the
subsequent loss of family member can lead into denial. The denial stems from
the unwillingness to accept the truth of the violence in the world around the
character in question. In one of the anthologys short stories, The American
Embassy, Adichie shows the reader, through various literary techniques, the
way the protagonist of that short story deals with the loss of her sons life. She
does this to give her protagonist more three-dimensionality while making her
believable as a person at the same time. She differs from her son in the fact that
although most of the story contains the unnamed protagonist, her son is the
focus of it, with most of the themes of loss and violence relating back to him
rather than to his mother. Though she is the protagonist, the mother is unnamed,
to give her the feeling of an everyday commoner person that can be reflected as
a generalisation of the Nigerian people. Her son, on the other hand, is named to
portray the care the mother has for her child while making no attempt to explain
herself. Adichie does this to enlighten the reader about how common the
situation that happened to the protagonist happens in Nigeria. The protagonists
denial can be seen through many different ways as well. One such way being the
disjointed time skips of the narrative, constantly flipping back and forth, between
the tense situations concerning the death of her son, juxtaposed with the calm of
the American Embassy in the present time. The parallel narrative not only serves
as a literary device to leave the reader asking questions but to also show the
reader what kind of trauma the mother endured. The trauma she endured had
been covered up with a layer of a cultural motif, namely, palm oil. Palm oil is a
Nigerian product often used in cooking, a familiar anchor to keep the mothers
mind from straying into the territory of the unfamiliar occurrences. The mother
tells herself that her sons blood really was palm oil and he was now playing a
fainting game to struggle with the denial. This gives the reader the impression
of a truly clouded mind in the voice of the third person limited. The voice may
give insight into the mothers thoughts, but being limited, even the voice of the
narrator isnt sure about her psyche, providing uncertainty to the reader and
building up the tension. The story goes on into more uncertain territory when she
explains the way her son got stained by palm oil and not blood after knocking
the bottle from a shelf he could not have possibly reached. This displays the
effects of the loss of her sons life. In Adichies stories, she shows the reader how

the characters within are affected by violence and how they deal with the
struggle of violence.
Adichie shows that when loved ones die, the people that had loved them create
hallucinations to deal with the loss of the loved ones. Such hallucinations take
the form of the loved ones as a way to deal with the loss of them and their
relationship to the victim of loss. People in Nigeria have been subject to much
loss, with war killing many through its heavy hand. In one of Adichies stories,
Ghosts, the main character is subject to the loss of his wife. He deals with his
lack of wife with a hallucination that forces him to believe that his wife still visits
him, even from beyond the grave. James Nwoye, the protagonist of Ghosts, still
has an attachment towards his wife, even after her death. This attachment
shows itself as a hallucination depicting the wife herself. She visits [James]
often, to massage [James] with Nivea lotion. Through this, it can be implied
that James had truly gone mad when Ikenna Okoro plays it off too brightly.
With James loved one dead, he had to do something to cope with the loss.
Adichie shows off James madness in a tone that suggests supernatural
benevolence to make up for the fact that he had probably lost some sanity. She
also wrote Ghosts in first-person to give the reader the insight into James mind
and to see how truly insane his hallucinations are. This is the way he deals with
the loss of his wife. When loved ones die, the victims of that loss would make up
a story to keep themselves in check with the rest of the world, taking the form of
a delusion.
The characters in Adichies short stories not only deal with the struggle of
violence and loss, but also the pain of ignorance and lack of cultural
understanding. When people are misunderstood, they feel great pain that proves
difficult to be expressed. Adichie portrays a lack of understanding in the title
story of The Thing Around Your Neck, The Thing Around Your Neck with the
main character, Akunna, being subject to not only stereotyping, but ignorance as
well. In terms of the story itself, no true physical struggle is obvious, but lying
under the surface is a debilitating affliction told through the second person,
achieving a much greater impact on the readers thoughts and feelings. The
reader is forced to vicariously experience Akunnas through the consistent
anaphoric use of you rather than she. Sometimes [Akunna] felt invisible to
the point where people were so blinded of the Lion King Africa stereotype that
they had no ability to see past it. The lack of cultural understanding goes so far
as to be not only ignorant, but also offensive, using Akunnas name like [her]
father will actually sell [her] to a husband when told what its meaning was.
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