Category Archives: English 11

A Private Experience – Mind Map

The short story “A Private Experience” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a story that have the plot turn around an ethnic and religious conflict, a worldwide occurrence very common in today’s world. With a third person narration, Adichie has written ‘A Private Experience’ illuminating a harmonious encounter between two women sharing in a store during a riot in Kona, Nigeria. My understanding about this short story is Chika and unnamed woman climb into a small store through the window. Chika is shaking and wants to thank the woman for grabbing her and leading her to this hiding place. Chika and the woman talk about how they lost things as they field. Chika lost her Burberry purse; the woman lost the necklace of plastic beads. Chika can tell the woman is a Hausa Muslim, and thinks that it’s understandable that she herself is an Igbo Christian. The narrator says that Chika will soon learn that as she and the woman sit in the store, Hausa Muslim are slaving and clubbing Igbo Christian outside. Chika thanks the woman for leading her to the store, and the woman says that this store is safe. Chika agrees, though she knows nothing about riots, She’d only ever attended a commonwealth rally at the university with her sister Nnedi. The items the two women lost indicate their relative socioeconomic status: Chika is wealthy enough to own a designer purse, while the unnamed woman’s prized control is a cheap piece of a plastic jewelry. However, they both seem to mourn the loss of these items with equal emotion. Chika primarily notices the differences between herself and this woman. Chika views herself as being wholly different than her friend; she knows little about how to insure her safety during a riot. The narrative style of this story strengthen this sense of separation and difference as it shifts from describing the experience in the store and what’s happening outside. In a way, this sense of disconnection from the violent reality of one’s immediate surroundings reflects “Cell One,” when Nnamabia would dramatize his experiences in prison as if they were part of a story, and not happening to real people. The description of the many languages gives the impression that moments before the riot began, people from a variety of backgrounds were coincide without issue. At this point, with only this understanding, the violence of the riot seems particularly senseless and tragic. My learning about the short story “A Private Experience” that the two women in the story are helping each other during the riot and they care for each other. So this short story is interesting for reading, the story is about help and care each other. It is great but I don’t like because I don’t understand it so much about this short story. It has many hard words that I have to translate to English or my language.