Literary Analysis Essay

The Museum and The Thing Around Your Neck

For Shadia, the stress of her situation is the cultural shock of being from Africa learning statistics in a setting in Aberdeen, where she is unprepared and unready. For Akunna, the stress is winning the American visa lottery. She is sent to America to live with the brother of her fathers sisters husband (Adichie 116). He tries to rape her and off she goes on her own into the wide American world. Shadias situation is not so dramatic, but it is still similar: both women are like fish out of water; they have been promised that the West is a land of dreams and opportunities, but what they find is the same old land of grifters and hierarchies. They do not fit in or belong. They are immigrants, as Juan at the diner in Connecticut points out to Akunna. They are in a desperate plight as Shadia feels, struggling with her classes in Aberdeen. Ultimately, the stress and anxiety comes from the fact that they are both outsiders in the West: they are not insidersand they do not want to compromise or give in on their principles, play the give-and-get game that Akunnas uncle says one must do in order to survive in America. If that is America, then America is just a cona rusea vicious game of deceit. The two girls are unwitting victims in that con, which the West has wholly embraced, and which the third world appears to have bought into as well. The reality is that life in the West is not founded on anything other that a racket: it is a chisel, and everyone is trying to get his piece of the grift.

Shadia feels the sting every time she looks in the mirror of the public restroom where it is printed on the mirror: This is the face of someone with HIV (Aboulela 246). What a horrible experience to have to deal with: it is insulting and abusive, and yet that is the experience that these immigrant fish out of water must deal with in the West, where they are seen as unwelcome guests, insects that have crawled ashore to try to get in on the chisel. There is no sense of charity or kindness; no sense of respect or...…anxiety they feelthe fear they hold in their heartsstems from their own insecurities. They are not safe on their own. They lack guidance and support. They do not have friends in whom they can confide. They have no confessor. They are like lost children from a third world, having wandered for some inexplicable reason into the so-called developed world, and there they go gawking in the windows wondering how to make their lives work in this strange setting. They do not feel a part of it, and yet they attract interest from some who seem to wish them well, who seem to mean well by them. Yet what can any of this mean? That is the struggle they facethe big question, the big anxiety. They have no way to make any meaning of this situation. They have no way to locate the meaning or the strength to preserve in the face of this challenge. They have only a sense of their own weakness, and that is what overwhelms them.

Works Cited

Aboulela, L. The Museum. The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories. New York, nd.

Adichie, C. The Thing around Your Neck. Knopf, New York, 2009.