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Dramatic Irony
Part 1: Esi
Explanation and Analysis—Before the Castle:
After a hellish opening scene—in which piles of captured enslaved women languish amid their own feces and urine—Esi’s flashback takes the reader to a place that may offer the closest approximation to a refuge. Trying to escape her present misery in the Castle, she occupies herself with thoughts of the past:
Esi learned to split her life into Before the Castle and Now. Before the Castle, she was the daughter of Big Man and his third wife, Maame. Now she was dust. Before the Castle, she was the prettiest girl in the village. Now she was thin air.
Esi was born in a small village in the heart of the Asante nation. Big Man had thrown an outdooring feast that lasted four nights.
At the prompting of a single phrase—“Esi was born in a small village”—the flashback whisks the reader back to the sunnier memories of Esi’s childhood. It rewinds time back to the “bliss” of being hailed as a mango-like beauty and daughter of the village’s most powerful figure. Through this prism of the past, Esi’s flashback helps her relive the comfort of cooking with Maame and Big Man’s military triumphs.
In this moment, flashback builds to the tragic sense of loss. It juxtaposes Esi’s present with her past, revealing what a difference a matter of just weeks can make. Before the Castle, she was the “prettiest girl in the village.” Now, she is “dust.” The shift to the past casts Esi’s reversals of fate into sharp relief, and it helps translate the life-shattering experience of slavery into narrative form. Through flashback, Homegoing pushes against the thin but violent partitions between “Before” and “Now.”
Related Themes:
