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Chapter 36
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl with the Louding Voice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Education, Empowerment, and Self-Worth
Gender Inequality and Solidarity
Wealth, Poverty, and Choice
Survival
Summary
Analysis
Adunni returns to her room and finds Kofi there looking for her, as they have guests to serve. Kofi tells Adunni that her “mouth will kill [her] one day,” and that it was wrong to stir up trouble by asking for a lock. He suggests that Adunni should have found a more discreet way to fight back against Big Daddy, perhaps by installing a rat trap in front of the door to injure him, thus leaving him unable to explain his injuries to Big Madam without confessing to his digressions. Adunni tells Kofi that it was Ms. Tia’s idea to ask for the lock, and Kofi retorts that Ms. Tia is married to a rich man “and has no problems in life.”
Kofi’s comment that Adunni’s “mouth will kill her one day” discourages Adunni from trying to achieve the “louding voice” she so desperately desires. His advice encourages Adunni to physically fight back against the people who oppress her rather than trying to rise above the system as a whole. Kofi’s disgruntled response to Ms. Tia’s suggestion about the lock highlights disparity between the options for problem-solving available to the rich versus the comparatively limited options available to people like Kofi and Adunni.
Themes
Adunni goes to the parlor and finds that the houseguests Kofi mentioned are Ms. Tia and the doctor. Ms. Tia smiles at Adunni impersonally, pretending that they are not close. She says that they have come to congratulate Big Madam and Big Daddy on the engagement. Ms. Tia introduces Adunni to her husband as the girl with whom she would like to go to the market. Ms. Tia’s husband, the doctor, is tall and wears a white button-down shirt, a gold chain with a gold cross, brown shorts, and brown slippers “smelling of rich rubber.”
Ms. Tia has to pretend that she and Adunni are not close because Big Madam, who seems intent on making Adunni’s life as miserable as possible, might be less likely to agree to the arrangement if she knows the truth. The doctor’s clothes appear expensive and exist as an outward display of his wealth. He comes off as a strong, intimidating character and looks like a person whose wishes Big Madam would be more inclined to honor.
Themes
When the doctor addresses Adunni, his voice is smooth, as though lubricated with oil. Adunni leaves to fetch her employers and overhears the doctor telling Ms. Tia “that there are other women, posh, well-spoken” in the neighborhood that could go the market with her. But Ms. Tia assures him that Adunni is exactly who she wants.
Implicit in the doctor’s mention of other “posh, well-spoken” women that could go to the market with Ms. Tia is the fact that these women’s wealth makes them more valuable than Adunni, or at least worthier of Ms. Tia’s friendship. That Ms. Tia turns down the doctor’s request shows that she values Adunni despite Adunni’s underprivileged status.
Themes
