What is Chike's mother?

Chike's mother serves as a symbol of his conscience, his ambition, and his self-respect throughout the novel. In Chapter 1, as Chike grows increasingly uncomfortable with Colonel Benatari's ruthlessness, he looks at a picture of his mother in which she is raising her hand to the camera. The narrator remarks, "As the months passed, the hand became a warning, an accusation, a signal from beyond the grave" (7). Chike felt his mother was trying to tell him that he was complicit in Benatari's crimes. Later, the reader learns that Chike's father died when he was a boy and that his mother consequently placed all of her hopes and dreams into Chike's future success, thus he feels disappointed with himself and at a loss after fleeing the army, his sense of self obliterated.