Category: English 11

Mind Map Final Project Paragraph 

For the story “A Private Experience” I decided to choose relevant symbols that have thoughtful meaning to them to represent eight different key aspects in the story. For symbol, I decided to include the scarf because it had lots of meaning to it just for an object. The scarf was given to Chika by the Hausa lady to stop the bleeding from an injury in Chika’s leg. Throughout the story this scarf became more symbolic because by the end of the story, Chika had asked the Hausa lady to keep the scarf just in case the bleeding had started again, and she agreed. The scarf ended up being a symbol of their friendship that Chika had taken with her after they parted ways. For the setting, I decided to choose the store as my “front pager” for this aspect. The store is where it all happened. Chika and the Hausa lady stayed safe in the store and connected with each other despite the fact that their two religions had been involved in a riot against each other. They decided to put their differences aside and form bigger connections with each other and not to just assume each other as what they have heard about each other’s races. These two even managed to help each other throughout this riot emotionally and physically. For my plot, I decided to include a picture of two girls hugging to represent again, the bond that Chika and the lady had made. This friendship is the story, and it drives the story forward giving it the sense of hope that even when there is disagreement between groups you can go beyond that and form connections with each other no matter what. The theme of this story is quite like everything that has been explained already. I chose the picture of a Christian hand and a Muslim hand holding each other to display the main message of the story, it doesn’t matter how different we are, there are always ways to form deep meaningful connections together. For the conflict my picture of the word differences with an x going through it perfectly describes the problem in this story. This story is about two religions rioting against each other because of their differences. However, what everyone else didn’t do is they didn’t look past the differences like Chika and the Muslim lady did. Everyone else was portraying the religions as what they would see on the media and how they were so different, but they didn’t look to realize the similarities they had that could’ve caused bonding like it did for Chika and the lady. For characterization, I chose pictures for Chika and the woman’s appearance based on the information that we were given in the story. Chika was described as a med school student from Kano, Nigeria and the lady was described as a Muslim woman who was wearing a blouse. The two characters also had similar traits as each other such as, willingly helping and comforting each other, caring for each other emotionally and just the overall positive attitude. During the story Chika faced an injury in her leg that caused some bleeding. Throughout the story there were many problems they encountered but were able to help and comfort each other to get through the riot. Both characters displayed great cooperation and support for each other. For the Criticism lens I used a picture of some books. I decided to choose the biographical approach. I chose this approach because with a search of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s name, it gives information that we can use to connect to the story. The author was born in Nigeria which connects to the story because the story takes place in Nigeria. Another connection we can make is about her Ted talk titled “The Dangers of Single Stories.” She goes on to talk about how we shouldn’t believe all the negative we hear about certain places because they could be false and could just be doing nothing more than giving the wrong image on a person, race, place, etc. This story connects to that because this whole riot started due to the differences that the two religions thought of each other which caused disagreement within them and caused an even bigger problem like the riot. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s message was clear in this story how no matter how different we are we should always be able to form deeper connections that we value. I appreciate the message because it puts things into perspective for me and will remind me of the importance of forming connections with one another.