School/Education

Throughout the novel, schooling and education are presented as an eternally consistent source of wellness and power. Education and learning are a vocation that is ideated as purely good in moral value and that has the power to allow individuals to overcome any physical hardships in their life. To Adunni, getting an education allows one's imagination to stretch beyond the reaches of one’s immediate environment and have infinite power. Schooling is ideated in this way primarily because it is an unrequited desire of Adunni’s to achieve, and by projecting an image of her future of autonomy and freedom onto a legitimate task like education, her goals of freedom become tangible.

Mother

Adunni’s deceased mother is a symbol of eternalized infinite strength and protection against the realities of hardship and oppression within a patriarchal environment. Her memory is preserved as a symbol of...