Language

Style of writing

The language used by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the short story “The American Embassy” highlights the woman’s trauma of seeing her son get killed by government agents. 

Throughout the narrative, the woman is mostly silent and passive or has difficulty answering questions: 

When the man standing behind her tapped her on the back and asked, ‘Do you have change, abeg, two tens for twenty naira?’ she stared at him for a while, to focus, to remember where she was, before she shook her head and said, ‘No’. (p. 80, ll. 8-11)

The woman is silent whenever the man behind her pushes her to look around or comments on the corruption of the American embassy. However, the woman is clearly disturbed by the voices around her, which suggests that she is stuck thinking about her son: “She wished he would shut up. It was his talking that made it harder to keep her mind blank, free of Ugonna” (p. 81, ll. 37-39).

The woman’s passiveness contrasts with the imperatives that give her orders and tell her what to do and how to act: 

Don’t falter as you answer the questions, the voices had said. Tell them all about Ugonna, what he ...