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Motifs
Definition of Pathos
Pathos, along with logos and ethos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Pathos is an argument that appeals to... read full definition
Pathos, along with logos and ethos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Pathos is... read full definition
Pathos, along with logos and ethos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective... read full definition
Part 4, Chapter 35
Explanation and Analysis—Returning Home:
With fighting over in Part 4, Chapter 35, the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war allows Ugwu, Odenigbo, Olanna, and Baby to return to Odim Street. But entering the front doors evokes a far more sorrowful feeling:
Milky cobwebs hung in the living room. He looked up and saw a large black spider moving slowly in its web, as if uncaring of their presence and still secure that this was its home. The sofas and curtains and carpet and shelves were gone. The louvers, too, had been slipped off and the windows were gaping holes and the dry harmattan winds had blown in so much dust that the walls were now an even brown. Dust motes swam ghostlike in the empty room.
The moment is a homecoming with the feel of heartache. Relief and grief come paired as the novel catalogues the various acts of vandalism and destruction that have happened during the two-year absence. The sofas and curtains have disappeared, the kitchen all but gone. “Piles of feces in the bathtub were dried, obscene stonelike lumps.” The family returns to their former house to find cobwebs, dust motes, and feces in the very spaces where joy had once lived. Home still stands, but it has been ruined beyond recognition.
This sense of loss strikes most acutely through the objects and their attendant memories. What remains merely speaks to that which is no longer there. The reader feels the contrast in the silent dining room that debate and laughter once filled, the garden where the beehive once hung while Jomo tended to the plants. Olanna’s coconut perfume and Odenigbo’s Socialist Review are tokens of a distant life that they can no longer retrieve. Odim Street becomes an all-too painful reminder of everything they have lost.
Related Themes:
