Living life and working in a city means there is a constant hustle and bustle. Cities are full of diversity, good people and bad people. Life never completely stops in a city, there are no sleepy moments. Everyone is always trying to go somewhere, sell something, and trying to make their ends meet, whether it be in an honorable way or not. A city is like a machine, every part of it is essential, working together, directly or otherwise, to keep the community moving smoothly. But as people become so caught up with their individual lives, they start to lose focus of what it really means to be a community. Chiamanda Ngozi Adichie captures the essence of city life, and the accompanying citizenship, in her story, “Birdsong”. She uses conflict, flashbacks, and mood to tell a complex story about a love affair, its negative and positive effects on the narrator, as well as the narrator’s contempt for what Lagos, Nigeria is evolving into. Gone are the days in which people genuinely care about each other, and Adichie portrays this in a beautiful and complicated manner.
We all know what a city is like. The strange smells, dubious stains on the roads and sidewalks, the tall buildings reaching up towards the clouds. A modern day city is packed with people, all consumed with their destination. Lagos, Nigeria is not unlike most modern day cities, it is bustling, full of life and diversity. As with most cities, Lagos is growing. When a city grows, more people will flock there in order to work and live. The narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the story, displays her derision for the city by saying, “consumed as I went by how relentlessly unpretty Lagos was, with houses sprouting up unplanned like weeds.” (Adichie 883). She is able to see that this city is becoming overrun by people, and, in her eyes, this is directly proportionate to the beauty of Lagos. Beauty is a hard thing to find in a city, where buildings replace trees, and trash cans replace flowers. Nature is displaced by the constant rumble of traffic, peaceful nights are but a distant dream.
In addition to a city’s grim beauty, there is crime. There are dishonest people who are looking to take advantage of others in order to gain whatever slight upper hand they can. The apathetic outlook of the narrator is apparent when she is speaking to her lover about what life is like for her, outside of the cozy little nest they built on Victoria Island. She speaks of “rituals of distrust” (Adichie 882), knowing that her lover can’t relate. She explains to him that she must “watch the fuel gauge” when she buys gas, “to make sure the attendant hasn’t tampered with it”. She asks if he knows she must do this, and goes on to tell him that there is no room for making friends, for everyone is too concerned with themselves. She believes that people are far too selfish to even begin to build a sense of community and camaraderie with each other. Chief Seattle, a member of the Duwamish tribe in the Pacific Northwest, shares a similar idea of a city as the narrator. He said, “Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench.” People begin to lose sight of what their city is becoming, and cease to care that people are being taken advantage of.
Generally speaking, it is near impossible to consistently agree with someone. People come from all different walks of life, and each person has their own set of morals to go along with it. While the narrator is aware that the affair is bad for her, she is young and decides to go through with it anyways. Her friend, Chikwado expresses her discontent for the narrator’s decision by telling her, “Have fun, oh as long as your spirit accepts it, but as for me, I cannot spread my legs for a married man.” (Adichie 874). I believe that this is Chikwado’s way of saying that she is better than the narrator, mixed with a little bit of jealousy. She doesn’t identify with the narrator, and they happen to only be friends by circumstance. They both work together, and both attended the same school. They became friends by convenience. This furthers the knowledge of the narrator on how people don’t make time for each other. They make friends based on what is easy, not for what it is worth. As cities grow, the less people seem to value the idea of friendship and community.
Adichie uses flashbacks as a way of telling two stories at once, one of which is thirteen month long affair the narrator has with her lover, and the other being that of the woman who is staring at her from the inside of her vehicle. The narrator fantasizes about the woman driver being her lover’s wife, for she feels like the woman wants to say something to her. As the story progresses, you find that certain memories from the narrator’s affair sticks out more to her than others. There is vivid detail in some parts, namely her time with her lover. She recalls in detail how beautiful her lover’s house was, and the accompanying landscape. There were no strange smells, there were flowers and birds. She remembers the smell of the tissues her lover used to wipe his glasses. She remembers talking with him, learning about each other and their similarities. This shows the effect that the affair had on the narrator, she fell in love with him. She was jealous of his wife, and she spoke of wishing to throw his wedding ring to the magpies. Her life before him was dull, and while they were together her life became vibrant.
Living life isn’t about paying taxes, going to work, going home, and going to bed. In order to truly experience life, one must search for vibrancy, things that will give their life meaning. When people lose the desire to search for something to make their life more beautiful, is when they become disenchanted. When they lose sight of the things that make their life worth living, is when they die inside. When someone dies inside, they no longer care about the world around them. This lack of caring leads to lack of participation in society, as well as the community. The disinterest in the world, the “it’s not happening to me so I don’t care” attitude is evident in this story. In order to become part of a community, one must find similarities to others, rather than building a wall around oneself. By building that wall, one is prohibiting anyone from being able to make a connection, and that lack of connection is what is destroying the world.
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