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In this review of Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen, Ada Chioma Ezeano
does an interesting feminist reading of the book. Finally, there is a response
to the question for a feminist reading of the text raised in our earlier review of the book. In this review, Ada Chioma Ezeano is thorough.
For a complete reading, read our earlier review of the book here.
Enjoy!
****
Ikenna, Boja, Obembe and Benjamin
are fishermen who only discover their adventurous skills when the chief
ventricle of their home leaves the home in Akure because his employer, the
Central Bank of Nigeria, transfers him to Yola. Prior to this transfer, the
Agwus fear no evil; the boys only fear their father who guerdons their skins
for even insignificant wrongs. In The Fishermen, Obioma raises a prophecy that
looks into the politics of gender while fictionalizing the society’s obtainable
stories about the dependent woman.
The book hinges its story on the
shoulders of Adaku Agwu, the mindless mother that leaves her sons to wander
away because her husband is away, and in bits, chronicles about the gossipy
hawker, Iya Iyabo, who can only raise malnourished sons because her husband is
dead, about the woman who sleeps with a mad man because her husband is dead,
and then about Abulu’s mother who raised a mad son, and a thieving son and a harlot
because her husband is away. All these women are evidences that there are
negative effects of having women depend solely on the man.
Chigozie Obioma’s story is a well
told story that depicts the dullness of the other gender in the 1990s, just
around when MKO Abiola’s raised hopes of presiding Nigeria gets annulled in
1993. It delineates the accumulated silence and passivity of the women and the
dire consequences of this inordinate virtue on the society. It is studded with
necessary pulchritudinous words and aims at leaving the reader with ultimate
satisfaction. He weaves a resplendent story that reveals the adventurous
spirits of boys, the dependent traits in women and the heroic genes in men. The
gamut of his oeuvre lies in the grand depiction of the deception garnered for
the women by the society. It also shows
the consequences of raising a girl-child to become nothing but a pride to her
groom, the beautiful bride who drops her pride to groom her groom. In the African
society, a girl-child that cooks all is preferred to the one that knows
all.
Adaku’s performative identity
reveals her to be a helpless dependent female. She is simply a helpmate who
upholds the irrational binary often invoked in regard to women. Under her nose,
her first four boys break free to become what they should not be. And breaking
free means shattering windows, hitting the crippled, skipping school, fishing
fish and then the apocalyptic prophecy.
Adaku didn’t see that the gradual disappearance of Eme Agwu from the
home caused an ebbing of her sons’ uptight discipline. And as a ‘falconer’ she
stands on the hills to watch her sons die a slow death. ‘She is only fully
realised in the presence of (her husband). Her maternal vigilance falls apart
with his (Eme Agwu) momentarily absence.’
Another remarkable thing about
Adaku is that she tells a plethora of embarrassing stories while her husband
discusses politics and banking. Her husband is a banker while Adaku runs a
fresh food store in the open market, and only tsked when her husband ordered
her to quit going to the market on Saturdays. He changed her closing time from
7pm to 5pm. Still, she only tsked. Never mind that this is the same man who
ignored his wife when she repeatedly reminded him of the consequences of
leaving his growing boys for her alone.
All the women depicted in The
Fishermen needed the umbrella of a man to be. And when there is no man, the
women, like Iya Iyabo, whose husband, Yusuf, died in the war in Sierra Leone,
swim in the seas of endless needs. She perfectly raised two malnourished sons
while hawking groundnut and stories.
There is Aderonke who kills her
husband, Biyi. Aderonke is another woman who depicts the passivity of women in
the society. Here is a woman who depends on her drunken husband for money. Her
child, Onyiladun, is sick, and instead of finding alternative means of
procuring drugs for her sick child, she prefers to sit and wait for the drunk
man to come home and bring the money as a man. But Biyi brings on something
else. He beats her and her sick child, and to save her sick child as a mother,
she commits murder.
The mad man, Abulu, has a mother
who remains nameless. Abulu’s father embarks on a journey and does not return,
and there are three children to raise. However, can she cope without a man? Her
daughter leaves home to become a harlot. Her sons become thieves. And she
mindlessly stirs the insane one with the sight of her nakedness, and he rapes
her. In her motherly presence, her son’s madness detonates after killing her
brother. She couldn’t help because her husband isn’t there to help. If only she
is conditioned to be independent.
If only all the women in the book
are conditioned to be independent…
The Fishermen is indeed one book
whose footstep can cause a stampede. Obioma reminds the society, once again, of
what is at stake if the society keeps raising girls to depend on the men in
their lives, if the girl-child is expected to be nothing but a man’s daughter
or a man’s wife. The narrative does not fail to deeply highlight the
consequences of an unequal system for both genders. In fact, it mirrors
Adichie’s statement that ‘Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice.’
And Obioma has demonstrated that gender, if unchecked and uncorrected, will
pose great dangers to the society.
