45 pages • 1 hour read
Ayobami AdebayoStay With Me
Ayobami AdebayoFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Signs and Miracles
Adébáyọ̀ uses a blend of Yorùbá and Christian signs and miracles as a motif to explore The Power of Self-Deception and The Vulnerability of Hope Amidst Tragedies. Yejide’s desire for a child is so strong that she rejects the science of her university education and instead seeks the help of Prophet Josiah, who promises her a child even if no man touches her. She believes in her transformative experience on the mountain, where ritual, thirst, and hunger help her see a real transformation of a swaddled goat into a child. Her subsequent pseudocyesis is equal parts miracle and self-deception: Even when confronted with negative ultrasounds, her faith in the miracle and belief in her own body’s signs allow her to persist in the delusion, which serves as a catalyst for Akin to ask Dotun to impregnate her.
Yejide’s belief that she has missed signs of Olamide’s illness, as well as Sesan’s death despite his foot-first birth being a sign of prosperity, undermine her faith in positive signs and miracles. She ultimately abandons Rotimi, seeing in her other children’s death and suffering a sign that Rotimi is destined to die. While signs and symbols initially support Yejide’s willingness to deceive herself and maintain hope, after repeated tragedies, they have the opposite effect, revealing the limits of hope and faith. However, the miracle of Rotimi surviving a severe sickle cell episode rekindles Yejide’s emotions and her faith in the future.
Pregnancy and Motherhood
Adébáyọ̀ uses the motif of pregnancy and motherhood to explore The Pressures and Limitations of Tradition and symbolize the traditional gender roles that Yejide and Akin must confront and overcome. Yejide’s struggles to conceive harm her mental health, while Akin’s continued reluctance to admit to his own impotence reinforces Yejide’s sense of failure.
Since Yejide’s role and worth as a woman in traditional Nigerian society are tied to her ability to have children, Yejide feels like she has failed in her feminine duties. Imagery surrounding Yejide’s pseudocyesis includes multisensory imagery of real pregnancy symptoms like morning sickness, breast tenderness, an enlarged abdomen, and even kicks. These phantom symptoms reflect both the intense pressure that Yejide is under and her deep desire to be a mother. Similarly, when Olamide dies, it is a physical symptom of motherhood that hints at the depths of Yejide’s pain: Akin does not understand the depths of her despair, but the breastmilk leaking through her shirt serves as a sign to him of the deep ways in which her thwarted motherhood impacts her.
In Part 3, Adébáyọ̀ explores a role reversal in which Akin takes on traditional motherhood responsibilities like night feedings, storytelling, and nurturing for Rotimi. The imagery in Akin’s version of the traditional story of the tortoise who seeks aide for his barren wife and ends up pregnant himself confirms the role reversal, exposing the fluidity of gender roles by showing the ways in which male characters can adopt motherly traits. When Rotimi experiences a sickle cell manifestation during the military’s occupation of Lagos, Akin gets Rotimi the help she needs.
While the consequences of strictly defined gender roles lead to much of the story’s tragedies, the success of Akin as Rotimi’s caretaker upends the idea that traditions must be followed and that parental roles are defined by one’s gender, sex, or ability to reproduce. Similarly, Yejide’s rejection of her role as mother and abandonment of Rotimi show that motherhood is both an experience and a choice, not a permanent predisposition of one’s sex.
Political Unrest
The political unrest in the novel mirrors the domestic upheaval that the characters experience in their intimate lives, forming an important motif in the novel. Just as the coups, civil unrest, and increasing crime threaten to dissolve Babangida’s regime, Yejide’s thwarted attempts to conceive and keep her children alive threaten to overturn her marriage, yet both the regime and the relationship endure far beyond the point of breaking. Like Babangida, who orchestrates the removal of rivals and manipulates the economy by devaluing the naira, Akin’s domestic scheming with Dotun has unforeseen and tragic consequences. Just as the police collude with the robbers who steal the family’s electronics, Akin and Dotun collude and carry off the value in Akin and Yejide’s marital relationship.
Although Yejide holds on to hope in the beginning, with each new tragedy, her faith erodes. Like her fatigue in facing the 1993 elections that she has no hope will succeed, Yejide faces fatigue upon discovering Rotimi’s sickle cell status. In this way, each dying child represents the promise of hope for a more equitable Nigerian future that falls apart due to circumstances, while Rotimi’s survival against the odds points toward hope for a better future.
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