53 pages • 1 hour read
Tola Rotimi AbrahamBlack Sunday
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Twins
Bibike and Ariyike’s existence as twins appears in the earliest pages of Black Sunday. Later in the same chapter, Bibike explains how “Taiwo” and “Kehinde” are traditional Yoruba names to refer to twins. These names are used again and again through the novel, with both Bibike and Ariyike being referred to as Kehinde and Taiwo respectively—even when the other is not present.
The girls slowly grow apart throughout the novel. In the first chapter, they share the same feelings of worry when their mother loses her job; however, their paths diverge from there. Bibike teases Ariyike about her belief in the New Church. Bibike feels the separation when Ariyike admits to not liking Aminat. When Dexter asks Ariyike what she would change about her life, she replies she would not be a twin. In thinking this, Ariyike begins to understand her need for independence from Bibike. By the end of the novel, she will not have spoken with her sister in three years, but she will wonder if this consequence of her choices was worth it, suggesting the potential for reconciliation.
This motif is a useful tool for thinking about both Bibike and Ariyike’s character development.
“How to” Live in Lagos
Many of the chapters in Black Sunday begin with “How to”: “How to Build a Chicken Coop,” “How to Wear Mom’s Jeans,” and “How to Lose Your Lagos Lover” are a few examples. As the siblings learn how to navigate the world without parents, they essentially craft their own “how-to guide” in the form of this book.
Periodically throughout the book, there are sections referencing life in Lagos. For example, in “How to Be the Teacher’s Pet,” Peter says:
There was nothing lazy about wanting free, unregulated time in a Lagos boarding school [...] At six a.m. and every thirty minutes after until your nine p.m. bedtime, some person unlucky enough to be appointed timekeeping prefect rang the bell, telling you all it was time to do something else (130).
Here, he offers instruction about what life is like in Lagos and a way to navigate that experience.
Additionally, even in chapters without the explicit “How to” title, parts of the narrative explain life in Lagos. In Peter’s first chapter, he describes the hope his family has played in him; he is explaining what it is to be the youngest, giving the readers a description of what the role entails. Later, as Peter walks with his mother in the market, she asks him if he thinks all of the perfumes are real at a store having a sale. Peter replies, saying, “Not sure. Probably not. At least expired and repackaged. You know how things are in Lagos” (208). His answer supposes a specific detail about “how things are in Lagos,” indicating again that this book tries to paint a portrait of what life is like in a specific geographic location.
Control
Throughout Black Sunday, Bibike, Ariyike, Andrew, and Peter all have and lose a sense of control over their lives. Each must wrestle with their effects of their parents’ respective departures, and each one grapples with this in different ways. However, a common motif within each of their narratives is the desire to regain control when they have lost it.
Andrew first feels this loss of control over his life when his father leaves and he becomes dependent on his grandmother who often complains about having other mouths to feed. To take control, he and Peter try to build a chicken coop. Andrew again feels out of control when he and Nadia are caught by the men and he leaves her to be sexually assaulted. Later, when his mother returns, this feeling returns and it is Stacy who comforts him. She reminds him of stability, which helps him to accept his mother’s return.
For Ariyike, one instance of this loss of control occurs when her show at Chill FM is cancelled. She tries to seize control back by seeing Pastor David. Bibike, too, tries to take control of her life in choosing to shape her own values rather than relying on storytelling.
Overall, this motif draws heavily on the theme of survival without one’s parents as each sibling grapples with how they will make it in the world without a firm foundation on which to fall back when they feel out of control of their lives. Instead, each must grow and make independent choices to find stability.
