55 pages • 1 hour read
Mariama BaSo Long a Letter
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Letters
As the title suggests, So Long A Letter features the act of letter writing in an especially significant way. The book itself is framed as a very lengthy letter from Rama to Aissatou, written over the period of Rama’s seclusion from society. Unable to leave her home and dependent on infrequent visitors for company, Rama has ample time to reflect upon her life, and is able to channel this self-reflection into a letter. Though phones are infrequently mentioned in the novel, they are almost always harbingers of strife—Rama receives a telephone call after her husband’s heart attack, for instance. Letter writing, on the other hand, is treated with an almost sacred significance. Rama and Aissatou communicate all their hopes, dreams, and fears through letters, rather than through phone calls. This may be a financial necessity, given their distance and the cost of international calls. But it also suggests Rama’s status as a symbol of Senegal’s past, rather than its future.
Letters require time and effort to compose, and Rama uses letters to communicate sensitive information throughout the novel. In addition to Aissatou, she writes to her would-be suitor Daouda Dieng, to carefully and tactfully inform him that she won’t accept his offer of marriage. The care with which her letter is written contrasts sharply with Daouda’s response. “He scrawled on a piece of paper the terrible words that had separated us before…” (44). Rama’s letter, in tone and content, is a near mirror of Aissatou’s earlier letter to Mawdo, in which she breaks off their marriage by “leaving this letter for Mawdo, in clear view, on the bed that used to be [Aissatou’s]” (32). Letters are women’s way of communicating what is most difficult and most important, both between themselves and to the men in their lives.
Cars
In So Long A Letter, cars are used to represent independence and freedom. Early on, cars are available exclusively to men. Modou escorts his soon-to-be second wife home in his car, as well as carting around her mother. But after Rama is abandoned by her husband, Aissatou buys her a car and Rama learns to drive. Rama takes to this instantly, feeling a sense of belonging and ownership while driving: “The narrow space between the wheel and the seat was mine” (56). After years of having very little control over her own life, Rama is finally in charge of something: “At the slightest pressure from my feet, the car lurched forward” (57). The car gives Rama mobility—she can now perform errands speedily—and independence—she no longer relies on a man to escort her. And finally, the car gives both Rama and her children a sense of pride. They have been terribly hurt by Modou’s abandonment, but in the car, Rama says, “…my children can look the affluent mother-in-law and the fragile child in the eye in the streets of the town” (57).
Tamsir, Mawdo, and the Imam
These three men appear together within the novel’s first ten pages, at the family meeting to discuss Modou’s death. Tamsir is Modou’s older brother, Mawdo is Modou’s best friend, and the Imam is the community’s religious leader. Throughout the novel, when these three men appear together, it is a harbinger of bad tidings for Rama. During the family meeting, they appear to discuss Modou’s many debts, and pressure Rama to give up more of her inheritance to pay them off (10). They appear a second time to inform Rama that her husband will take another wife. “Where had they come from” (37), she wonders, “looking so awkward?” (37) They are dismissive of Rama’s pain, oblivious to the “drops of poison” (37) their words are to her. These three men, when they appear together, symbolize the oppressive patriarchy that looms over Rama’s life.
When they appear a third time shortly after Modou’s death, Tamsir tells—rather than asks—Rama, that he will marry her when her seclusion is completed. This time, Rama cannot bear the three men’s intrusion and arrogance. “I look Tamsir straight in the eye. I look at Mawdo. I look at the Imam…This time I shall speak out” (60). She refuses Tamsir, shames him by mentioning that he can barely afford his current wives, and orders the men from her home. She speaks of the act as “revenge” (61) for their earlier, painful visits, but it is more than that. By speaking against them, Rama frees herself from the patriarchal, paternalistic society the three men represent.
