Nervous Conditions, How Dos Dangaremgba Explore Family Tensions in the Novel Nervous Conditions?

868 Words4 Pages
Essay on Nervous Conditions ________________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ How dos Dangaremgba explore family tensions in the novel Nervous Conditions? The novel Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga was published in 1988. It is written as Tambu’s diary, she is an african girl that is living through the choc between the english and african culture. One side of her family lives has english habitudes and the other is purely african, she is stuck between both. The first sentence of the book is “I was not sorry when my brother died.” The story covers many themes such as cultural hybridity, social classes, racial classes and family tensions. The theme studied is family tensions. Some themes uses others to be fully developed like cultural hybridity uses family tensions. Dangarembga uses positive and negative portraits to explore family tensions. She uses real facts and historical facts as well, but she mainly explores family tension through character’s attitude. Tambu’s relations with other characters are very vivid, through the book, she does not keep the same opinion about somebody and always changes. Dangarembga builds family tension from the opening of the book “I was not sorry when my brother died” the first sentence already prepares the reader for the rest of the novel by showing it will talk about family issues. Dangarembga makes Tambu the narrator, that way, her feelings are more explored and gives a bigger importance to family tensions by making the reader live in the middle of this story. For example we feel Tambu’s desire to go to school and when she finds out that Nahmo has been selling her beans, even though she is aggressing him we are really on her side. The reader will always be on Tambu’s side because she writes the
Open Document