A Private Experience Analysis
In A Private Experience, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie depicts an Igbo Christian woman by the name of Chika. Chika is portrayed as the protagonist of the story. She comes from a privileged family who take trips across the world. Unfortunately, Chika is caught in between a religious riot, between the Hausa Muslims and Igbo Christians. She and a Hausa Muslim woman seek refuge in an abandoned shop, in fear of being killed. As the story progresses, we see that Chika is faced with thoughts of a classist behaviour, to where she contrasts the woman’s attire with hers, she assumes that the woman’s lost necklace is “probably plastic beads threaded on a piece of string” (pg.1, Adichie). However, with the woman’s kind/caring behaviour towards Chika, Chika later comes to realize that the woman is nit bad after all, and that it was her (Chika) ignorance all along. Chika’s change of behaviour symbolizes the theme of the story, which is not to judge or jump to conclusions based on one’s economic or religious background. Moving on to the elements of the mind map, I decided to use bold colours or backgrounds for my mind map because of the power and archetypal symbols that which they hold. To demonstrate, I decided to utilize the cracked background as a way of symbolizing the trauma that both Chika and the woman will have to deal with, but also symbolizing the broken parts within our society as a whole. Another example would be the use of bold colours that were used for adding depth to my presentation; using green as a tribute to the Nigerian flag. The reason as to why I used the colours of the Nigerian flag were because of what they represented: green represents natural wealth, and white represents the peace and unity that the nation embedded into their society as a way of dealing with past hardships. Aside from the elements, the images also hold great power to them as they represent the social justice issues that our societies’ struggle with. To illustrate, one of the images that I used, juxtaposing the rich and poor, relates to the story by representing the financial status of both women. Chika represents the upper-class, while the Hausa woman represents the lower class. Ultimately, the image ties into Adichie’s childhood to where they mentions that their mother would make comments based on their less-fortunate house worker. Nevertheless, this caused them to grow up believing that they were more superior than the less fortunate. As a result, they mirror the arrogance onto Chika, as a way of displaying parts of their life to the reader. In addition, Adichie’s way of contrasting both socio-economic backgrounds, is their way of criticizing political leaders for the inequities that the less-fortunate have to endure. Especially with the increase of inflation, causing prices to increase and leaving many people in a panic, as some may have been laid off or experiencing financial hardships prior to the pandemic. Without a doubt, it is unfortunate to see that many are turning a blind-eye towards the issue, even when it comes to the people that we trust.