The Girl with the Louding Voice Book Analysis Essay Example

18 percent of young girls in Nigeria are married before the age of 15 (Sasu). How would you feel if you had little to no control over the rest of your life in the blink of an eye? Adunni, the protagonist of the novel The Girl with the Louding Voice, expresses an increase of acrimony for her father after being unwillingly married to a taxi driver named Morufu. This is just the beginning of her journey. Tellingly, “Adunni watches her wedding unfold but feels entirely disconnected from the world. The spectacle of the wedding is separate from her reality” (Dare 25). The abuse and violence shown through a young girl in Nigeria shed light on the bigger picture of modern-day slavery and abuse existing today in developing countries. The abuse and suffering showed through Adunni’s frame of reference paint a dark portrait that cries to be heard.

The normality of girls being married without their consent in Nigeria is sickening and preposterous. “Enitan asks Adunni which color lipstick they should prepare for the imminent wedding to Morufu. Adunni thinks to herself that she should select ‘the black of a mourner’. Her choice reveals the silenced terror felt about her situation. Adunni compares the marriage to Morufu to death. The wedding is a symbolic funeral at which she mourns the loss of her dreams for her future. Adunni keeps these thoughts to herself, however. She is already beginning to plot how she might escape from her situation” (Dare 16). Adunni’s hopes, dreams, and expectations of a life that she should be able to live are crushed in an instant because of long-standing unimaginably horrific traditions in which she has no say. She has seen the pain and suffering of other young women. She saw the fear and emptiness of youth stolen. She understands this too will be her experience. We see these thoughts and fears play out during her plot to escape as a powerful symbol of her antipathy toward the life that has been chosen for her. “Some girls interviewed said they have tried to escape their forced marriages. One girl married at fourteen had run away six times in three years, but family members returned her to her husband each time” (“Child marriage remains prevalent in Nigeria”). The distrust and distaste these girls have for their own family relate to Adunni because her parents willingly gave her to Big Daddy and Big Madam, whilst most likely knowing the outcome. “Given out by their widowed mothers, while others are victims of human trafficking, whose parents fell prey to the deceit of agents who promised their children better living conditions” (“Maids as glorified slaves in Nigeria”). This life shows a history and future of deception as well as the deep-rooted, long-standing corruption & lack of education within these communities. This leads to the underlying issue that upholds the normality and corrupted beliefs or rules repeated generation after generation. 

The family dynamic in Nigeria is presented as a supportive family but, more often than not, the women get the short end of the stick. “Adunni grows up in poverty. Her family may be poor, but they are proud people. A broken television is positioned in their home to give the impression that the family is wealthier than it is. The ownership of the broken television reveals the importance of appearance in the community. The family is about to be thrown out of their house, and their most prized possession is broken. However, they retain their pride and maintain the illusion that they are successful” (Dare 7). Families are willing to do anything to keep up the facade that they are stable and even ethical, whilst selling and cooperating in giving their children away for the smallest amount of Naira (money), convincing themselves it is not a poor decision. “I have been here for five years now. Now he is saying he will not give my family food until I give him a boy-child. I am just tired of everything. I know this one is a boychild so I can rest” (Dare 43). A young girl is being blackmailed into having a child with an older man so she can help her family. A child is being held captive by her morality, desire to make her family happy and to survive. Surprisingly, some kids have a more rapacious family. “Blessing was only six years old when her mother arranged for her to become an unpaid housemaid for a family in the Nigerian city of Abuja, on the promise they would put her through school…But when Blessing arrived in Abuja, instead of going to school, the family worked her round-the-clock, beat her with an electrical wire if she forgot one of her chores, and fed her rotten leftovers” (Ukomadu). There is a contrast between the familial perspective of right and wrong. Some families have children of their own who are treated like kings and queens, while on the other hand, they get “housemaids” in many kinds of unethical ways where they are unpaid and abused while sharing the same environment and age.

Violence is a criminal result of exploitation in Nigeria. There are a lot of contributing factors including family, poverty, and forced relationships. “I want to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than the men” (Dare 294). Rightfully so, Adunni is distraught about why she is not given the same chances for school, work, and life in general as a man in Nigeria. This leads to the dehumanization and cruel environments she is forced to work in. “Then she begins to pick sand from the floor and paint my body with it. I never feel shame like that. Khadija’s children gather around us and were laughing as Labake was using sand to scrub my body and curse me. I am giving her respect, so I didn’t fight back“ (Dare 52). Through Adunni’s abuse, she still gives respect to her abuser. If she does not she will be beaten more and more. The dehumanization Adunni is experiencing is abhorrent leading her to further realization of the exploitation system in place. “They are also subjected to physical violence by their guardians, which leaves indelible scars on them. One of such victims was a five-year-old boy, Seun, whose mother died while giving birth to his younger sister. At age four, he was taken to a relative’s place in Delta state, as he was considered too tender for his father to take care of. By the time he was seen a year after, he looked a shadow of his bubbling self, with marks of violence all over him” (Ukomadu). Families are led to believe that children are safe with their relatives but this is far from the truth. This relates to Adunni in the sense that just like Seun, she was taken away from her immediate family and taken to her future abusers as a result of desperate measures. An immense amount of this stems from poverty and the necessity for money.

Poverty and the hunger for money is the underlying issue in a lot of the exploitation in Nigeria. Although Nigeria is the wealthiest country in Africa, this continues to this day. “Another girl. Good one. Her name is Adunni. Yes. The Same price. Small girl, yes” (Dare 129). Adunni here is being portrayed as an item in a store being auctioned off, with no second thought. “Lagos, the big, shining city? The Lagos of plenty airplanes and motorcars and monkeys? The Lagos that me and my friend Enitan, we were talking about all the time? And dreaming of going when we have small moneys?” (Dare 128). The false narrative of Lagos being “the big shining city” is very grim knowing that this is far from the truth for her. The story revolves around money and wealthy classes playing a major role in education and her family dynamic. “Findings revealed that most parents release their children to relatives and people they do not know, due to their impoverished states, as a result of which they are unable to feed or send their children to school… For others who never had the privilege of going to school, they are stuck at home with unending chores as well as taking care of the children of their busy bosses. They are treated as slaves” (Ukomadu). This results in children being abused, assaulted, and many more distasteful acts, with lasting effects that pass on through generations. Poverty is one of the main reasons for the horrific acts implemented in society. The greed and need for money cause people to act irrationally and outright appalling.

Abuse in developing countries, such as Nigeria, is on the rise and Adunni is a great example of a first-person point of view of the situation. Almost every day young girls in Nigeria are being married without their consent for materialistic and other revolting gains. More often than not, the victim's family plays a major role in the child's fate, for money to merely survive or to get rid of their child. Violence plays a major part in all these topics, as a result of bad parenting, normalization of it, and even passed down through generations. The hunger for money drives people to do despicable things and work in abhorrent working conditions. Adunni’s perspective helped to better understand the abuse, neglect, exploitation, and mental abuse these girls experience. The striving for education to no avail because of something out of someone's control makes one grateful for the opportunities presented to them.