SO LONG A LETTER, CHAPTER ONE

By Kosam

The opening line, “Dear Aissatou,” is personal and confidential. It indicates that Ramatoulaye is just about to confide in her childhood friend Aissatou, issues that affect her personally. The salutation also serves to engage readers by generating a feeling that they are the ones being addressed in the letter since the text is epistolatory in nature. This sense of reader involvement is further emphasised by the use of the first person pronoun “I” which puts the reader in the shoes of Ramatoulaye by evoking sympathy towards her. Readers can be both addressees and senders at the same time. Mariama Ba, thus manages to captivate the readers by preparing them to pursue the story of Ramatoulaye in a personal way.

Ramatoulaye starts off by establishing her childhood acquaintance with Aissatou, tracing their childhood experiences and highlighting the closeness of their parents. This flashback illustrates the retrogressive nature of women’s lives as a result of societal shackles that oppress women. Women are affected by societal limitations as far as their freedom to express themselves is concerned.

The use of repetition on the phrases “I close my eyes” , “ebb and tide” and “my friend” suggests a sense of congruity between Aissatou and Ramatoulaye. The parallelism existing between the two women is anchored on the fact that both of them have experienced calamities; Aissatou is divorced and Ramatoulaye is widowed. Going through almost similar experiences from childhood to adulthood emphasises the theme of friendship and sisterhood. The use of short sentences suggests excitement as Ramatoulaye is making connections with her friend Aissatou.

A sense of directness is established by the short sentence, “Modou is dead.” The sentence carries a sense of finality and completeness. This creates a matter-of-fact tone thus illustrating the unchangeability of the fact that Modou is dead. The direct tone also emphasises the heavy negative impact Ramatoulaye suffers following the untimely death of her husband. The mourning tone is brought out through the narration of how Modou meets with his death. The use of a rhetorical question “how am I to tell you?,” indicates that Ramatoulaye is still in a state of mourning, trying to grapple with the demise of her husband, Modou.

A series of short choppy phrases and short sentences, some of them made of just one word creates a summative effect that helps to outline with brevity the events that culminated to the death of Modou. Ramatoulaye’s failure to formulate, complete well formed sentences indicates her struggle to understand the way Modou’s death occurred. Her religious understanding of death is that death is ordained by God and as such, when he decides that one dies, no amount of effort can abort it. She views desperate attempts to avert death an exercise in futility, “ridiculous weapons against the divine will.” To her, death is “the tenuous passage between two opposite worlds, one tumultuous, and the other still.” This expression gives insight on the way Ramatoulaye views life. To her, life is a sea confusion.

Ramatoulaye’s intense grief motivates her to devote her time to prayer. She finds consolation in her belief that God is watching over her as she goes through the dark phase of bereavement. The metaphor of jelly legs creates a visual image of a weak structure. It helps to bring to the fore her emotional state which has been wrecked by the death of her husband Modou. The dichotomous principle about life is captured in Mawdo Ba’s words: “joyous miracle of birth, dark miracle of death. Death is thus viewed as a devastating experience hence the contrast between joy and darkness.

The chapter also serves to introduce Mawdo Ba, a friend to Modou. He is described as a diligent medical doctor. Ramatoulaye expresses her admiration for him and she also highlights the fact that he is a conscientious doctor. However, his failure to save his friend's life demonstrates, at least to Ramatoulaye, that death is an inevitable eventuality.