Reading as Close Encounter: The Intimacy of “You” in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Thing Around Your Neck”

Abstract

Compared to first and third person narration, second-person narration has held a less frequent presence within modern prose fiction. Due to its rare occurrence, scholars have given it little critical attention. It was not until the early 1990s that second-person narration came to be recognized and discussed by critics in more extensive ways. A distinctive feature of the second-person voice that differentiates it from other modes of narration is that it creates a peculiar kind of experience for the reader. It invites active reader involvement by making the reader feel as if being addressed. Drawing upon the insights of recent critical work on second-person voice and its impact on the way the reader comes to relate to the story’s character, this essay examines how second-person narration in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story, “The Thing Around Your Neck,” offers an innovative means for exploring the precarious nature of contemporary migratory life experienced by women in the Nigerian diaspora. I argue that the intimacy of second-person narration allows the reader to closely engage with the female migrant’s affective state and internal struggles. In “The Thing Around Your Neck,” the text emerges as a powerful medium through which the reader is able to connect with a figure that holds a rather invisible and highly marginalized place in society.