Okoboshi tries to push Aku-nna with the sex which have him

Okoboshi Obidi

Okoboshi is the young buck with a beneficial limp just who fights which have Chike (Aku-nna’s future husband) more than Aku-nna. After, Okoboshi’s members of the family kidnaps Aku-nna, an approved community custom, in order to build the lady Okoboshi’s partner. Just after kidnapping the girl, Okoboshi tries to “devirgin” Aku-nna. Whenever Aku-nna earliest notices your shortly after this lady has become kidnapped, she notices one his look “had a kind of crookedness about this; as opposed to gracing the hub [sic] away from his face, the fresh new smile is actually taken lopsidedly into the one of his true ears. It absolutely was the fresh new smile out of an embittered young buck. The guy disliked her, anywhere near this much she often see.”

He’s more powerful than she’s, but she outsmarts him. She eyelashes out with verbal assaults to help you his pride. That it scene anywhere between Okoboshi and Aku-nna was a crucial part of the story. It’s the first time you to definitely Aku-nna takes a very good reputation inside safeguarding herself, having fun with everything in the girl capacity to claim the life span she wishes, rather than the lifetime you to definitely this lady people features tried to push on her. Okoboshi, in this respect, means everything that Aku-nna finds out repugnant throughout the the girl typically male-reigned over community.

Aku-nna Odia

Aku-nna, brand new protagonist inside book, is 13 years old and staying in the fresh Nigerian area Lagos if the facts opens. She actually is an intelligent girl who knows, without having to be informed yourself, that she’s “as well insignificant” on sight of their mothers. This woman is, at all, simply a female. The woman is and additionally slim and also at moments really at the mercy of problem. Their moms and dads consider the lady due to the fact an enthusiastic “ogbanje”-a full time income deceased. Their mom commonly chides this lady of the inquiring Aku-nna and work out up this lady notice when the she is going to alive or pass away. They have a tendency to appears that the only thing the woman moms and dads get excited so you can, in respect in order to Aku-nna, ‘s the fiance price, the price the lady future husband pays for the lady.

Aku-nna, from the comfort of the start of the storyline, has some questions relating to the lady family relations, their community, and her part in the people. She thinks about these questions, but she never sounds her or him once the in her culture it’s thought worse than simply crappy ways to ask them, particularly coming from a female. However it is these inquiries you to definitely push Aku-nna throughout that it facts. This woman is on a pursuit of answers.

As if lifetime inside the Lagos, that has been still somewhat dependent on conventional Ibo people, isn’t difficult adequate, through to this lady dad’s demise Aku-nna is actually compelled to face actually more strict interpretations of these way of living when she actually is drawn back into the fresh family members’ ancestral town, Ibuza. Here Aku-nna might be criticized due to their modesty. She does not including soaking-up the fresh naked publicly. The woman is in addition to criticized since this woman is allowed to continue the woman schooling. But it is the woman relationship that have Chike, a good descendent out-of a slave, that is the woman finally undoing.

It is which have Chike you to definitely Aku-nna seems the essential comfy inside asking men and women concerns having troubled the lady. She refers to with Chike’s character, which is one another area of the Ibo people but unusually taken out of it meanwhile. Chike was her professor in more indicates than simply within missionary college or university you to definitely Aku-nna attends, and you may she falls in love with him. However, to declare that their relationship with Chike try her final undoing can be as well effortless. There are many more state-of-the-art things on it.

By the time Aku-nna converts fifteen, she has grown used to one thing about Ibuza town. She learns concerning European ways at school and you may happens home and you may face the fresh new “unchanging lifestyle off [her] own people.” But really this woman is never able to make herself feel at ease in often culture. One another Aku-nna along with her cousin are just like “powerless fishes stuck into the a websites: they may perhaps not … return to your water, for they were swept up … but really they were nevertheless alive due to the fact fisherman was active debating in this himself in the event it was well worth killing them.” Ultimately, it’s Aku-nna’s incapacity to free herself about twisted internet of their community one to, at the least to your a good a symbol top, explanations this lady passing.