Characterization of the woman
Outer characterization
The unnamed woman is the main character in the short story “The American Embassy” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is Nigerian and is married to a journalist who is publicly against General Abacha’s rule preceded by a coup d’état. The woman has a four-year-old son named Ugonna, who was killed by government agents looking for Ugonna’s father.
The woman also worked as a journalist and attended the university in Zaria, “where she had organized a rally to protest General Buhari’s government’s decision to cut student subsidies” (p. 84, ll. 38-39). Before getting pregnant, she used to write for the Evening News in Lagos (p. 84, l. 40).
Inner characterization
The woman is traumatized by seeing her son getting killed by the government agents who were looking for her husband. The shock of the moment makes her second-guess the event and imagine that the scene she witnessed was not real:
It was th...