Names and Dying

“Ekwefi had suffered a good deal in her life. She had borne ten children and nine of them had died in infancy, usually before the age of three. As she buried one child after another her sorrow gave way to despair and then to grim resignation. The birth of her children, which should be a woman’s crowning glory, became for Ekwefi mere physical agony devoid of promise. The naming ceremony after seven market weeks became an empty ritual. Her deepening despair found expression in the names she gave her children. One of them was a pathetic cry, Onwumbiko—‘Death, I implore you’. But Death took no notice; Onwumbiko died in his fifteenth month. The next child was a girl, Ozoemena—‘May it not happen again’. She died in her eleventh month, and two others after her. Ekwefi then became defiant and called her next child Onwuma—‘Death may please himself’. And he did.” -page 77

Even without any explication at all, this passage stands out as one of the most important in the novel. It shows the impressive strength and defiant natures of both Ekwefi and her daughter, Ezinma, by stating how unsuccessful Ekwefi has been in birthing and raising healthy children. In addition, though, it also speaks volumes about the life and culture of the people portrayed in the book. From this passage, readers know the importance of a person’s name and the merciless power of death.

Names are spectacularly important for the characters of this book. As stated, there exists a “naming ceremony after seven market weeks” of each child’s birth, and each name (as usually occurs in the context of a novel but seems much more genuine in this case) carries a great deal of significance and will follow a child throughout life. By choosing the names that she has, though, Ekwefi gives no thought to this significance. She has not planned the child she will raise and all of the things that her child will be, things that many people in her community spend almost two months thinking of. Her only concern is of fending off the force that has come for all of her children.

This force, of course, is death. While many western cultures view it as something that can be avoided or made more pleasant by following the right moral doctrines, the people in this book view it as a someone that cannot be controlled or denied. Unless a death is caused by unnatural causes (i.e., the murders in this book, which come with a variety of consequences), it is viewed as an inevitable occurrence, especially in the case of Ekwefi’s children, who are thought of as demons who thrive in the care of death and escape the warmth of their mothers to return to it. No amount of medicine can combat it, and no moral questioning of “why?” can ever cross it. It is much too powerful, or so the book’s people think.

All of this comes through in the above passage. While these are not very happy concepts to take away, they do succeed in making Ekwefi and Ezinma more likeable characters. Giving their struggles weight and depth by bringing in cultural ideas of names and of dying, the passage makes both women complex and heroic, and this forces a reader to care and pay attention.