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    The short story "The Girl Who Can" by Ama Ata Aidoo explores the internal and external conflicts faced by the 7-year-old protagonist Adjoa living in Ghanaian society. Internally, Adjoa struggles with communicating her thoughts and questions to elders for fear of being laughed at. Externally, she faces criticism from her grandmother Nana about her thin legs limiting her ability to bear children, which is seen as a woman's primary role. Adjoa further challenges societal expectations by going to school and winning a race using her thin legs, gaining acceptance from Nana. The story highlights how Adjoa builds her own identity beyond societal constraints but still faces conflicts from community expectations of

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    The short story "The Girl Who Can" by Ama Ata Aidoo explores the internal and external conflicts faced by the 7-year-old protagonist Adjoa living in Ghanaian society. Internally, Adjoa struggles with communicating her thoughts and questions to elders for fear of being laughed at. Externally, she faces criticism from her grandmother Nana about her thin legs limiting her ability to bear children, which is seen as a woman's primary role. Adjoa further challenges societal expectations by going to school and winning a race using her thin legs, gaining acceptance from Nana. The story highlights how Adjoa builds her own identity beyond societal constraints but still faces conflicts from community expectations of

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    173 views2 pages

    Conflict

    Uploaded by

    avishek saha
    The short story "The Girl Who Can" by Ama Ata Aidoo explores the internal and external conflicts faced by the 7-year-old protagonist Adjoa living in Ghanaian society. Internally, Adjoa struggles with communicating her thoughts and questions to elders for fear of being laughed at. Externally, she faces criticism from her grandmother Nana about her thin legs limiting her ability to bear children, which is seen as a woman's primary role. Adjoa further challenges societal expectations by going to school and winning a race using her thin legs, gaining acceptance from Nana. The story highlights how Adjoa builds her own identity beyond societal constraints but still faces conflicts from community expectations of

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    conflict

    Ama Ata Aidoo’s short story, “The Girl Who Can” tells the story of a seven year-
    old-girl, Adjoa. The story indicates the suffering and the struggle of Ghanaian women to
    find their place in society. In this short story, we find that there are two types of conflict—
    internal conflict and external conflict.

        The internal conflict is felt in Adjoa herself. Adjoa has a difficulty in
    communication so it is hard for her to speak up her mind. She always thinks what
    reactions she will get if she says something to the elders. She does not know whether she
    should keep quiet and should not say any of things that comes into her mind, or say them
    and get laughed at. She is just a seven year-old-girl with many questions in her head but
    she cannot speak them up to find the answer.

      Adjoa is subjected to external conflict also. Adjoa was born with long and thin legs.
    Nana constantly disputes and debates with Maami regarding Adjoa’s long and thin legs. She
    says, “… if any woman decides to come into this world with all of her two legs, then she
    should select legs that have meat on them: with good calves. Because you are sure such legs
    would support solid hips. And a woman must have solid hips to be able to have children.”
    For Nana and for the entire society, a perfect and powerful woman is one who
    can bear children and be a perfect wife and mother. Adjoa struggles to find a rightful place
    in the society. She goes to school even though Nana was not originally in support of that
    decision. Adjoa lives in a society which does not believe that women should go to school
    and express their opinions.

    Adjoa is selected by her school for running at the district games. She runs and
    she wins a cup. Nana’s outlook has changed when the legs that she so criticized have
    become the source of Adjoa’s athletic talent. Adjoa has proven to her grandmother that she,
    with those too thin legs, can do something great.

    We see that Nana’s other concern is Adjoa’s father. There is also a conflict
    between Nana and Maami. Adjoa’s mother is made to feel guilty by her mother regarding
    her husband. We see that Nana always gets the upper hand and Adjoa’s mother is not able
    to voice her concerns.

    “The Girl Who Can” highlights that a girl can build her own identity apart from
    being someone’s mother or someone’s wife. The liberation of Adjoa thus becomes an inter-
    generational liberation. Adjoa has created her own definition of perfection. However, the
    conflicts in this story mostly come from the expectations of the society. The society really
    plays a big role to build up the conflicts in a person.

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