Becoming Abigail by Christopher Abani - Book Report/Review Example

Becoming Abigail” – analysis The novella “Becoming Abigail” by Abani centers on a young female protagonist, who looks like her late mother and sharesthe same name too. Her mother dies at childbirth and her father always tries to find her mother within her. She can feel the desire in his gaze and is tired of the identity crisis which builds up form her childhood. Moreover she is exploited by her cousin with whom she is forced to live and hence meets several men who us her as an object. Her life has a strong impact on the psychology and the young girl often reflects the same through her actions. The very first chapter is titled “Lay it as it Plays”. The reversal of the phrase “play it as it lays” implies that one does not take life as it comes, rather he lives in his own world in a particular situation. He/she creates images that suit his/her fantasy. Similar thing happens to young Abigail and her father. The former dreams and imagines about her mother while her father keeps on thinking about her mother and cannot accept her death. Unlike the game of golf where the ball is played from the place it is laid, here Abigail structures her imaginations and thoughts according to her fantasy about her mother who died at childbirth. The comment “And this. Even this. This memory like all others was a lie” (Abani, 17) signifies that Abigail’s memory about her mother is created within her world of fantasy. She remembers her mother holding his father’s hand and tears running down his eyes though they did not disturb her at all. The author questions how she could remember all these while it is only the coffin, which contained everything that she could have possibly known about her mother. Abigail’s (daughter) father grieves over her mother (whose named was also Abigail) and sometimes tries to find his wife within his daughter who has the same name and looks of her mother. She (daughter) can feel a certain desire in him or something he is waiting for, along with a wish that she could be her mother. The following reflects this feeling ideally: “She looked so much like her mother that when he saw her suddenly, she knew he wanted her to be Abigail.” (Abani, 20) The following chapters titled ‘Now’ and ‘then’ move between the past and the present of Abigail’s life. The chapters titled ‘Then’ are mostly on her fantasies about her mother Abigail and other mishaps, which she has to face in life. She loses her virginity to her cousin Peter with whom she has to live when her father sends her away to London. Hence he exploits her and makes a prostitute out of her. The chapters titled ‘Now focuses on her present where she is a smoker and recollects the people she met in life. The daughter, Abigail has no one who actually loves her and cares for her. The men she meets are busy trying to fulfill their lust and use her as an object. They hardly have the time and leisure to look at her closer than it was necessary to get their desires fulfilled. All the men Abigail meets in her life use her and try to get rid of her as soon as possible a if she is a foreign land to them. They never try to know her more than just her body. Unlike the wax which leaves some mark on her breast (when she writes “me” on the brown part of her breasts), the men have leaves no mark on her heart and hence her life. In fact their presence in her life is very brief indeed –“They hadn’t stopped long enough. She was a foreign country to them” (Abani, 27). Abigail has a habit of studying maps. Her way of feeling the topography depicted in the maps, for instance moving her fingers along the Himalayas, is similar to the way she feels her breasts. The way she marks her body signifies the same intimacy with which she relates her memories with her map. She identified herself with the features in the map as she recollects the memory of making tea. Similarly she writes “me” over her breast to indicate the parts she identifies herself (or her femininity) with. Wang Wei was an eighth century’s poet who was well known for creating poetry and paintings essentially depicting his poems. The poems centered on mountains and streams which also found a place in his paintings. He had a reputation for creating paintings of water and quiet beauty of landscapes without much of human figures. This is similar to “the Chinese poet with beautiful landscapes” who Abigail recollects reading about as she studied the maps (Abani, 30). While recollecting her past and fighting for a definite identity, young Abigail often burns herself with her cigarettes –“ This burning wasn’t immolation. Not combustion. But an exorcism. Cauterization. Permanence even…. Chafing. Becoming. Becoming and chafing” (Abani, 34). The burning process of Abigail is not literary the process of combustion or destruction by fire. She hurts herself often with the tip of cigarettes pressed against her skin. This could be in order to identify which pain is more or which sensation is stronger – the pain of her soul or her body. It is a process of resistance to become her mother and yet becoming the same. The daughter Abigail’s father perceives her to be her mother from her very childhood and it is this identity crisis that creates the burning sensation. Again in some way she finds herself responsible for her mother’s death since the later died of childbirth. So this could also be a way of punishing herself. Young Abigail’s actions of decapitating her dolls, shooting down six birds and devouring the pictures of her mother, Abigail are destructive in nature and symbolize her constant conflict with herself especially her identity. She is torn between the past and the present and essentially the pains inflicted by her relatives and other people she meets in life. These actions could also be interpreted as a means of undertaking her revenge and gaining some kind of sadistic pleasure by these killing and witnessing death. Despite all, she continues to live in a utopia and the way she recollects about Derek is similar to that of her mother. In her case too, she imagines most of her memories. In both cases she cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy while recollecting. Ayi Kwe Armah is Ghanaian writer and his novel Fragments is Derek’s favorite read and narrated moral values juxtaposed with materialistic world. The novella in discussion here constantly questions about these moral values when the young girl is treated badly. As she physically walks across her mother’s room, it seems as if her mother’s ghost is moving (she has the same name and looks). The room is filled with her mother Abigail’s memory. This is especially true because her father always tries to find her mother within her and she “couldn’t be the ghost he wanted her to be” (Abani, 45) At the end of chapter VIII, Abigail takes out her mother’s marriage dishes and fills them with a tampon, cherry red lipstick, frilly panties, nail polish, a photo of Tom Cruise, curls of her hair, dried chilies, a washing glove and nail clippings that looked like drops of dried blood. A tampon is meant to stop the blood running from the wound of her heart. Cherry lipstick symbolizes desire and passion, which she always feels in her father’s eyes when he looks at her (since she looked similar to her mother, Abigail). Frilly panties also symbolize seduction and femininity and this indicates the way her father longed for her mother, Abigail. Nail polish signifies beautification which relates to femininity and she keeps the polish there to signify perhaps that it went specifically with her mother’s representation unlike herself who have already cut her hair short (the lock of hair on the other plate) to look like a tom boy. She perhaps tried to identify herself with someone like Tom Cruise, as she is tired of being a girl who is always compared with her late mother. Dried chillies perhaps show the drying up of the feminine fullness of herself. She chooses to look like a boy. A washing glove signifies the waning or washing away of one identity crisis to create a new identity of her own. Nail clippings which look like drops of blood on one hand signifies the transformation where she cuts of her long nails to look more like a boy and on the other hand, shows her soul bleeding from the fantasies about her mother. Later one finds that Abigail is even more lost when her father’s gaze is no more upon her and now she has to define a new identity right from scratch. Neither is the joy lost nor is she able to discover it. She is suffering from a deeper identity crisis when she finds herself released from the constant look of her father who tried to associate her with her mother, with the same name and looks. Work Cited Abani, Christopher. Becoming Abigail, Akashic Books, 2006 Read More

The chapters titled ‘Now focuses on her present where she is a smoker and recollects the people she met in life. The daughter, Abigail has no one who actually loves her and cares for her. The men she meets are busy trying to fulfill their lust and use her as an object. They hardly have the time and leisure to look at her closer than it was necessary to get their desires fulfilled. All the men Abigail meets in her life use her and try to get rid of her as soon as possible a if she is a foreign land to them.

They never try to know her more than just her body. Unlike the wax which leaves some mark on her breast (when she writes “me” on the brown part of her breasts), the men have leaves no mark on her heart and hence her life. In fact their presence in her life is very brief indeed –“They hadn’t stopped long enough. She was a foreign country to them” (Abani, 27). Abigail has a habit of studying maps. Her way of feeling the topography depicted in the maps, for instance moving her fingers along the Himalayas, is similar to the way she feels her breasts.

The way she marks her body signifies the same intimacy with which she relates her memories with her map. She identified herself with the features in the map as she recollects the memory of making tea. Similarly she writes “me” over her breast to indicate the parts she identifies herself (or her femininity) with. Wang Wei was an eighth century’s poet who was well known for creating poetry and paintings essentially depicting his poems. The poems centered on mountains and streams which also found a place in his paintings.

He had a reputation for creating paintings of water and quiet beauty of landscapes without much of human figures. This is similar to “the Chinese poet with beautiful landscapes” who Abigail recollects reading about as she studied the maps (Abani, 30). While recollecting her past and fighting for a definite identity, young Abigail often burns herself with her cigarettes –“ This burning wasn’t immolation. Not combustion. But an exorcism. Cauterization. Permanence even…. Chafing. Becoming.

Becoming and chafing” (Abani, 34). The burning process of Abigail is not literary the process of combustion or destruction by fire. She hurts herself often with the tip of cigarettes pressed against her skin. This could be in order to identify which pain is more or which sensation is stronger – the pain of her soul or her body. It is a process of resistance to become her mother and yet becoming the same. The daughter Abigail’s father perceives her to be her mother from her very childhood and it is this identity crisis that creates the burning sensation.

Again in some way she finds herself responsible for her mother’s death since the later died of childbirth. So this could also be a way of punishing herself. Young Abigail’s actions of decapitating her dolls, shooting down six birds and devouring the pictures of her mother, Abigail are destructive in nature and symbolize her constant conflict with herself especially her identity. She is torn between the past and the present and essentially the pains inflicted by her relatives and other people she meets in life.

These actions could also be interpreted as a means of undertaking her revenge and gaining some kind of sadistic pleasure by these killing and witnessing death. Despite all, she continues to live in a utopia and the way she recollects about Derek is similar to that of her mother. In her case too, she imagines most of her memories. In both cases she cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy while recollecting. Ayi Kwe Armah is Ghanaian writer and his novel Fragments is Derek’s favorite read and narrated moral values juxtaposed with materialistic world.

The novella in discussion here constantly questions about these moral values when the young girl is treated badly. As she physically walks across her mother’s room, it seems as if her mother’s ghost is moving (she has the same name and looks).

Read More