46 pages • 1 hour read
Helen OyeyemiThe Icarus Girl
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Names
Names play an important role throughout the novel. Many characters have multiple names or nicknames that indicate something about their identity. When Jess first arrives in Nigeria, her grandfather refers to her by Wuraola, her Yoruba name. At first Jess thinks, “Wuraola sounded like another person. Not her at all. Should she answer to this name, and by doing so steal the identity of someone who belonged here?” (21). Being part English and part Nigerian, Jess sometimes struggles with her identity. However, she eventually gets used to the name Wuraola as her relationship with her grandfather grows.
When Jess first meets TillyTilly, TillyTilly writes Jess’s name as “Jessy” in the dust. Jess remarks, “This was the second time that someone had called her something that she had never been called by anyone before. First Wuraola, now Jessy. She’d always been Jess or Jessamy, never a halfway thing like Jessy” (44). Similarly, Jess comes up with the nickname TillyTilly because she doesn’t have the accent to pronounce Titiola properly. Jess and TillyTilly’s special nicknames for each other represent the unique bond they share. However, Jess’s different names could also represent her struggle to come to terms with the various parts of her identity, as well as her supernatural connection to TillyTilly and her deceased twin sister.
Dreams
Jess first starts dreaming of the long-armed woman from the drawing in the Boys’ Quarters when she returns to England from Nigeria: “Jess thought at first that she would be afraid. But she wasn’t” (108). As the novel progresses, TillyTilly often appears to Jess at night. When Jess speaks to TillyTilly, or has other strong visions at night, it isn’t always clear whether Jess is awake or dreaming, which adds to the mystery surrounding TillyTilly’s character. One important moment is when TillyTilly tells Jess about her deceased twin sister, Fern. Fern appears to Jess as a baby under the bed in the middle of the night, but by the time Jess wakes up, the baby is gone. Another time, Jess finds herself pressing a hot coal to her mouth. Eventually the terrifying vision stops, and “when Jess next became aware of herself, the first thing she notice was that the pain had left her […] It was still nighttime and she was in bed with the door half open” (196). Jess tells herself that the moment with the hot coal wasn’t real, but TillyTilly is still in her bedroom when Jess wakes up. These dreamlike sequences often reveal important information and add to the magical realism quality of the text.
Ibeji Statue
An ibeji statue is a small wooden carving in the shape of a person. In the Yoruba culture, if a twin dies young, an ibeji statue is sometimes made to represent the deceased twin. After Jess asks her mother about her own deceased twin sister, Fern, Jess overhears her mother tell her father that they should have done an ibeji carving for her. Jess’s mother eventually shows Jess a picture of an ibeji statue in a book, and as Jess “moved her fingers over the long, long arms of the statue, she realized that she had already seen one of these; a poorly done one, drawn with charcoal, not carved” (201). Jess determines that the drawing she saw in the Boys’ Quarters of the long-armed woman was an ibeji figure. Later, when Jess is back in Nigeria, her grandfather presents her with an ibeji carving to represent Fern. When Jess ends up in the hospital after the car accident, her grandfather brings the statue to the hospital room, where “the ibeji statue (dull, unbelieved-in wood) guarded the corner for the little twin who needed its help” (330).
The text never reveals who created the drawing of the long-armed woman in the Boys’ Quarters. Nevertheless, ibeji figures are important to Jess’s Nigerian heritage, and their presence in the novel represent Jess’s connection to her deceased twin.
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By Helen Oyeyemi
