I is a Long Memoried Woman Extract Flashcards
“slow and painful picking away of the flesh by red and pitiless ants”
ants representing slaves
On line 20 of the poem ‘Ala’, in which a slave woman is tortured for having killed her own child in order to save it from growing to become a slave, Nichols describes “the slow and painful//picking away of the flesh//by red and pitiless ants” at the slave woman’s body. The “red and pitiless ants” could not only be a metaphor for the slavers and their ruthless torture of a woman who was trying to save her child, but it could also be representative of the slavers attempting to shift the blame from themselves to nature, refusing to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This is reinforced when, in lines 22-23, Nichols describes the “sun” and “his fury”, contrasting the traditional idea of nature being nurturing and feminine and using the sun as a metaphor for the slavers’ “fury” due to them having lost a potential future source of money. Nichols may have done this to emphasise the power imbalance, not only between humans and nature, but also between the slavers and the slaves.
“slow and painful picking away of the flesh by red and pitiless ants”
ants being Ala
Completely contrasting the idea of the “red and pitiless ants” representing the slavers, it could also be a link to the goddess Ala and her use of ants to do her bidding, possibly implying that Ala was collecting the “rebel woman’s” body to return it to her “womb”. Nichols could also have used this as a device to represent the slavers’ loss of power as, instead of the “rebel woman” being killed by the slavers, she was welcomed to Ala’s “womb”. Throughout this poem, there are many references to the goddess Ala, who is the goddess of fertility and birth, as well as the ruler of the underworld, in the Igbo religion ‘Odinala’. Nichols may have done this to demonstrate the idea that, for the slave women, death was not the worst consequence and that, therefore, they did not fear it as Ala would take them to the afterlife to be rebirthed.
“slow and painful picking away of the flesh by red and pitiless ants”
assonance and link to GI
Nichols uses the plosive consonants in “painful”, “picking”, and “pitiless” in order to mimic the sound of the ants “picking” away the “rebel woman’s” body, creating an even more visceral image of this scene. This links back to my global issue as it exaggerates the idea that this punishment is the consequence for her allowing her baby to escape the horrors of slavery. Nichols may have done this to instil pity in those reading the poem, creating the idea that the violent and lurid consequences the “rebel woman” is facing are nothing compared to what the child would’ve gone through if it were to have been raised as a slave.
“with a pin stick the soft mould of her own child’s head”
writers judgement and short vowels
The short, truncated vowel sounds and monosyllabic words used in lines 9 to 11, along with the precision of the “pin” used to “stick the soft mould of her own child’s head”, create a sense of haste, demonstrating the “rebel woman’s” desire to alleviate her child’s suffering as much as possible. There is an element of judgement present in the description of sticking a pin in “her own child’s head”, with the possessive nature of the word “own” emphasising the horror of what she has done as she has killed a child that she was meant to care for. Additionally, Nichols uses the truncated vowel sounds and the “pin” to create a sense that this action was calculated and that its consequences had greatly been considered in advance. This could have been done by Nichols in an attempt to, once again, promote the practice of considering the consequences of your actions, and to criticise those who make rash decisions without thinking about the effects they may have on others or themselves.
“with a pin stick the soft mould of her own child’s head”
slavers judgement
However, on top of this, the judgement present in the description of the “rebel woman” killing her “own” child, could be a way of the writer presenting the perspective of the slavers, in that they are justifying their “rage” with these circumstances by making it seem as though they care about a slave child whilst, in reality, they only care that this baby has been saved and that they have lost a potential future slave. By doing this, the writer creates a moral dilemma, once again centred around consequences, as to whether doing something immoral is justifiable if its consequences will be beneficial, reinforcing the criticism of making rash decisions. In this case, she essentially presents the moral dilemma of euthanasia, as she uses the “rebel woman” killing “her own child” to save it from a life of slavery to portray the amount of consideration that must go into such important decisions.
