Aunty Nabou’s Journey Symbol Analysis

Aunty Nabou’s journey to her ancestral village of Diakhao symbolizes and enacts a kind of passage through time—particularly a passage backwards in time. As Nabou moves further inland, further from cosmopolitan Dakar, she immerses herself more and more intensely in the old customs of Senegal, and in an older, more rural way of life. Her final destination is the tomb of her ancestors—another symbol of the past, of nostalgia and tradition and precedent—and it is here that she finds the resolve to scheme for her son Mawdo’s second marriage.