“The water of the Delta is the blood of Nigeria.”
Grandma’s assertion to her young charge is philosophical and political, expressing an awareness and intuitiveness understanding of the bond between place and inhabitant. The novel tells a story about the economic degradation that indigenous peoples have been dealing with over generations long after the inflicted damage of the era of colonialism seemed to have been put behind forever. Irony persists as well: as the water becomes infected, so does the blood.
As Below, So Above
The degradation of the quality of the waters of the Delta is matched by that of the air above as a result of the pipeline spewing the chemicals of poisonous death into the atmosphere and leaving behind a taint at once familiar and grotesque out of place:
“The air smelled like a book unopened for a very long time, and smoky, as though the ground had been on fire.”
Darkness
The modern miracle metaphor of darkness pops up at various times in the novel as it does in just about every novel composed since the latter part of the 19th century. One of the softest uses of this metaphor puts the magical properties of a garden so described in context with a simple simile elegant in its economy:
“We stayed for many hours, until the insects began to sting. Darkness covered the garden like a blanket.”
Finding Light in the Darkness
In that very same dark garden the narrator finds a brilliantly illuminated light so dazzling she must close her eyes to blind herself to it. The result in a twin image. One part specific simile and part larger metaphor for the light to be found within the darkness on a grander scale:
“The stars were so bright that when I closed my eyes they remained there, behind my eyelids, as though my body had swallowed some of the sky for itself.”
The End is the Beginning
The book in a sense is structured upon a foundation of metaphorical circularity. Which is to say that it both opens and ends on the exact same metaphorical image:
“Father was a loud man.”
