45 pages • 1 hour read
Akwaeke EmeziFreshwater
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Nzoputa”
Part 4, Chapter 20 Summary
With the ogbanje narrating, they explain that Ada is different because she is both a child of Ala and an ogbanje. Ala keeps her alive while the ogbanje push her toward death. With the world hurting her so much, they are doing the best they can. They reflect upon her childhood and talk about the neighbor men who molested her and the family members who beat her. No one helped her, so they stepped in. To cope with the hurt, they sectioned off pieces of her that hurt too much to remember, trying to save her from the pain. It created a new pain, though, in the uncertainty of what was true and what was not. The result was that she lived in multiple realities at once, not really knowing which was true. They explain that the marks on her body—scars, surgeries, and now tattoos—helped her to keep track of time. Tattoos also helped her to feel the pain and pleasure that she got from cutting. They explain that to put something back together, sometimes you have to break it further.
Part 4, Chapter 21 Summary
Ada meets a priest in Nigeria, Leshi, who changes everything for her. The ogbanje can smell the gods on him, and he sees them in Ada, too. Asughara tries to seduce him, but her tactics do not work on someone who is not human. They spend two nights in his hotel room. He sees her completely—her divisions, her gods, and her pain. The ogbanje do not divulge everything, but they say that he tests her, reads her, asks her questions, and follows up when she is not fully truthful. In this intimate process, he drags Ada out of herself, but in leaving, he leaves her lonely. The ogbanje confess at last that they are hers to control, not the other way around. The pain of the priest leaving brings the instinct of anger, but the anger doesn’t hold in the face of all the beauty. They mourn Leshi together, over and over, so as not to forget. The sadness is a result of the beauty he brought. He transformed Ada by helping her to shed a skin and come into herself, with no more births and no more power struggles. The ogbanje step back and feel pride for Ada rather than spite.
Part 4, Chapter 22 Summary
The book ends from Ada’s perspective. She reflects upon her lifelong battle with herself—how it led her to nowhere but loss, which is where she was going anyway. She enjoys the feeling of complete surrender, laying face-up in the sand. She finally, not without fear and trepidation, accepts the gods within her. A historian tells her that she must learn about her spiritual connection to this earth, which is evidenced by her name, her story, and her experience with multiplicity.
When she panics at the weight of her responsibility, she talks to Asughara, Saachi, and her lover. She feels panicked and helpless, drifting outside of her body. Her lover says that he saw her almost leave for the other side and saw in her face the peace that it brought to her.
Malena, her friend who understands, agrees with the priest that Ada has to learn more and be guided. She decides to pray to Ala, Ada’s mother, who tells her to “[f]ind [her] tail” (213). This way, Ada can make a circle and know that the beginning is the end and the death is also a birth.
Ada begins to make peace with the fact that she is alone in her humanity. She has no ancestors and no lineage behind her, but she has her brothersisters and mother on the other side. In listening, she finds clarity. She is one of them.
Part 4 Analysis
The title of this part means “salvation,” and in this section, Ada is saved. Emezi describes the obganje sectioning Ada off using vivid imagery. The obganje say that “Ada could look back on her life and see, like clones, several of her standing there in a line” (198). This image shows a literal separation for the gaps that Ada feels in herself. Clones imply that they are exact replicas, impossible to tell apart, so that Ada does not know which one is real and which is her. This image illustrates The Lifelong Impact of Trauma. The ogbanje say that they just want “wholeness,” but they say that “sometimes you have to break it some more before you can start putting it back together” (199). This a sinister way to end a chapter that otherwise traces their compassion, particularly since they describe Ada as “it,” suggesting that healing from trauma brings hope but involves pain.
Ada meets Leshi in Nigeria, representing her return home. Emezi uses the senses to illustrate the significance of this moment. They immediately smell each other—in a world of masks, scent is truer than sight. Likewise, they connect over the embodiment of their trauma as they show each other their scars, symbolizing their shared experience with their flesh. As Ada heals, Emezi deemphasizes touch and skin, and sight gains more validity. Leshi tells her, “I see you, I won’t touch you, but I see you” (203). Since Ada has used sex as a way to connect for so many years, this new emphasis on being seen rather than touched suggests that Leshi wants to pull away and witness the truth from a distance. Emezi’s description of their interaction moves from proximal to distant senses to reflect Ada’s progression toward standing alone and being one with all of her selves with a witness.
The ogbanje are forced to admit that they kept her weak to control her and that they belong to her, not the other way around. These realizations cause them pain because “when you have been hiding in a great shadow, it hurts to look at the light, to be awake, to feel” (204). This relates to Ewan’s desire for Ada to be a “moon” rather than a “sun,” reinforcing the idea that empowerment comes from the self rather than reflecting the light of others.
Ada begins to see herself as a child of Ala, as a python, and as a god. It does not come easily to her—she has to let go of her human identity—but instead of turning away, she says that she “look[s] at them and it [is] the same as looking at [herself]” (208). In praying to Ala, she begins to see the importance of the circle, “the beginning that is the end” (213). The circle lets her stay in a constant state of change and shedding. She sees herself now as the python, “the source of the spring” (214), the place from which freshwater comes, ending the novel with a sense of major character development from controlled human to powerful deity.
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By Akwaeke Emezi
