Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl with the Louding Voice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Education, Empowerment, and Self-Worth
Gender Inequality and Solidarity
Wealth, Poverty, and Choice
Survival
Summary
Analysis
Adunni and Bamidele hold up Khadija, whose condition is rapidly deteriorating. Adunni thinks back to Mama’s death and compares “Death” to a “iroko tree, with no body, no flesh, no eyes, only mouth and teeths.” Adunni wonders if Death is “following Khadija,” and if it will now follow her, too. Finally, Adunni, Bamidele, and Khadija reach the Kere river. Khadija lies down. Adunni asks to begin the ritual, but Bamidele says that first, he must leave to get the special soap. Promising that he will return soon, Bamidele turns and runs back the way they came.
When Adunni imagines that Death is “following Khadija,” she lends a sort of inevitability to Khadija’s demise. It’s as though Khadija, and Mama before her, are helpless to escape a cycle of female suffering; there’s nothing any single person, like Adunni, can do to stop it. It’s possible that Bamidele will actually come back with the soap, but Adunni’s thoughts about “Death” infuse the narrative with an ominousness that seems to suggest that things are about to take a turn for the worse. Throughout the novel, water symbolizes Nigerian culture’s double standards concerning purity and fertility. Bamidele’s decision to leave Khadija at the river while she suffers through her pregnancy complications might symbolize his assumed lack of responsibility for those complications.
Themes
Time passes, and Bamidele has yet to return. Two girls who are playing in the river approach Adunni to ask if Khadija is okay. Adunni tells them Khadija is sick, and the girls continue on their way. Khadija tells Adunni that the pain is leaving her. Adunni tries to cheer up Khadija by singing the lawyer song she invented earlier, but her voice is shaky with sorrow. Khadija asks when Bamidele will come back, but both she and Adunni wonder if Bamidele simply ran off, leaving Khadija to die. Adunni looks at the sky and sees “death sailing there,” ready to steal Khadija away from here. Khadija tells Adunni to take care of her children. Adunni rests her face on Khadija’s breast and cries as Khadija dies.
The contrast between Adunni and Khadija’s situation and the two girls’ is striking. At only 14 years old, Adunni should be able to play with her friends at the river like these girls, not be forced to tend to her dying friend. Bamidele’s abandonment of Khadija shows how easily men are allowed to walk away from their problems. Women like Khadija, in contrast, suffer the gravest of consequences—even death. The symbolic significance of this scene unfolding at the river implies that this uneven distribution of responsibility is particularly relevant to fertility and pregnancy.
Themes
