Family and Lies Theme Analysis

For many of the book’s characters, love and family are driving forces in their lives. While several of the stories are concerned specifically with romantic (and often married) relationships, Adichie also explores the inter-generational relationships between parents, children, siblings, and grandparents. Specifically, she explores the instances in which individual family members lie or tell stories in order to preserve their family, break it down, or attempt to earn the love of other family members. These lies more often than not lead to grief and disillusionment rather than happiness and fulfillment.

The prevalence of cheating spouses throughout the collection suggests that lies between romantic partners are both common and dangerous, though the way women see their husbands' infidelity shows that many of them believe lying to be typical of marriage. Taken together, the stories suggest that the types of lies that people tell often break down by gender. Men lie (either outright or by omission) about the lives they lead, including the existence of their extramarital relationships, while women lie about whether or not they're happy. Further, while the men in question are mostly successful in pursuing their extramarital relationships, their wives have no such luck feeling happy. When Kamara experiences feelings for Tracy, the mysterious artist mother of her nannying charge, she's initially given reason to believe that the attraction is mutual. She soon finds, however, that Tracy is simply a magnetic person and habitually asks women to model nude for her. Kamara isn't special, and Tracy's modeling request didn't come from a place of sexual desire. Similarly, the tomorrow narrator lies about the particulars of her brother's death to try to earn her mother's love, but she is likewise unsuccessful in achieving happiness and the coveted role of the favorite child. For both of these women, their attempts to look outside their proscribed familial roles (wife and female second child respectively) are thwarted. This suggests that it's often impossible for women to find happiness by violating strict familial roles.

To preserve their marriages, women, particularly Nkem, tell themselves stories about their husbands that allow them to ignore infidelity and maintain a happy-looking façade despite their unhappy marriages. Though Nkem doesn't fully acknowledge that her husband is conducting extramarital relationships until a friend tells her, she realizes that she's always known about his affairs but ignored the signs. Chika uses a similar thought process to help herself believe that her sister hasn't been killed in a riot. Though she comes to realize she'll never see her sister again, the mental narrative that her sister is still alive allows Chika to keep herself alive and find her way out of the riots and back to the safety of her aunt's house. This shows that lying to oneself can be used as a method of preserving and maintaining a relationship, even when the relationship itself is broken or wholly absent. The storytellers tell the stories of these vibrant, living relationships to placate and allow themselves the opportunity to continue living. Though for characters like Chika this method of storytelling is wholly necessary to survive, for other women, the lies only trap them more tightly in their unhappy relationships.