The Significance of Adichie’s Speech The Danger of a Single Story Chimamanda Adichie, in one of her eye-opening speeches, The Danger of a Single Story, provides the audience with a new insight into the negative impacts that can occur as a result of viewing a story from a single perspective and not putting in an effort to know it from all available viewpoints. Adichie in her simple, yet well-grounded speech, filled with anecdotes of her personal experiences effectively puts across her argument against believing in stereotypes and limiting oneself to just a single story using a remarkable opening, the elements of logos, pathos and ethos, repetitions, as well as maintaining a good flow of thoughts throughout the speech. Adichie begins by confessing that she is a storyteller, and through this confession she reels in the audience and prepares them for her “few personal stories” regarding the concept she christened ‘the danger of a single story’ (1). Even in the beginning of her speech, she is able to immediately connect with the audience by shedding light on how her mother says that she “started …show more content…
It simply means that they must not pass judgment based on their limited knowledge of a particular object, country, or culture. Therefore, Adichie’s speech is quite effective in delivering its argument with the use of an excellent opening, the elements of logos, ethos and pathos, repetition as well as overall flow of the speech, which all together help the speaker establish and maintain a good connection with the audience till she utters her last syllable. The success of this speech and its argument lie in the fact that both make the audience really think and reflect on their experiences and make them want to change their ways regarding how they view
She repeatedly mentions “the single story”, particularly after each story she tells. For example, after discussing a time of financial hardship in her childhood, Adichie emphasizes that “to insist only on those negative stories is to flatten her experience and to overlook the other stories that formed her.” She goes on to reiterate that “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete, and they make one story become the only story”(Ted, 12:48-13:09). This restatement of the same phrase and idea of the single story reminds us of and emphasises the main point of her speech, that single thoughts, ideas, or opinions of an individual create an incomplete generalization of said person without regard to who they actually are and what they have
The emplacement of cultural elements and themes may have restricted the speaker’s audience and lengthened the distance between the speaker and western audiences, but through the use of a first person narrative and universal ideologies a connection is still established. The use of a first person narrative may not be able to fully transcend the cultural barriers that exist in the story, but is able to shorten the distance between the speaker and the reader and create a sense of authenticity and truthfulness.
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains a single story as the complex stories of a place or people that are broken down and simplified into a single, simpler story. The single story takes away anything else that the people or place is and gives them one story to be addressed by. A single story is more or less grouping every person in a place under one life story. People lose their identity and life stories. She uses the categories of the single story of people shown in literature, the single story of her house boy, the single story of the people of Africa and Nigeria and the single story of the people of Mexico and immigrants.
“ People are not meant to be defined, words are.” This corresponds with the meaning of an identity. A person’s identity cannot be expressed correctly through a story, but it can be portrayed through ones actions. Judging, Being Prejudice and Racism are the building structures to a stereotype. This also correlates to dangers of a single story. After one is able to get passed the thought and idea that is impossible to sum up a person in just a few words, they are able to come to a resolution, which is finding ones identity.
female subjects are not to be underestimated. . . the narrative communicates a “type” that tells
Adichie goal throughout this passage was to inform people that they should not listen to one side of a story and run with it. That a person should not judge someone else but instead learn who a person is for themselves because there is never one story to every person. Furthermore, Adichie educated her audience by letting them know that everyone in their life judges someone but it is up to a person to change that. She wanted her audience to understand how dangerous a single story is; it can destroy a person and their intelligence but it can also change the worldview of countries. Her speech taught people that the world fails to give two sides of a story resulting in people making up stories about others and questioning who a person is.
In her TED talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks through the role of perception in her life and the way that it changes social relationships. We have all had plenty of experiences that surprise us in regard to perception, such as the first time we meet someone from another culture, or meeting someone from our past in a new light. We have been inundated with stereotypes and preconceived notions since we were children, through stories, media, parents, teachers, and friends. Moreover, these presuppositions that we carry are rarely, if ever, based on anything substantial, yet they show up in every aspect of our life. Adichie calls the notion of this one-sided preconceived bias the “single story.” This “single story” is interesting due to the fact that even if we can overcome it, we are still affected by it. Adichie speaks about how even though she had become enlightened to this dilemma, she is still subject to it. As for her experience, she states that,
1) A single story is defined by Ngozi Adichie as “showing people one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become” (Adichie). She defined the single story in a TED Talk in 2009. During Adichie's talk, she explained how she was embarrassed of herself and her single story understanding of Mexican culture and people based solely on her experiences with American media and political coverage of Mexico. She had stereotyped the Mexican culture because the only stories she had heard were negative representations of impoverished people. Adichie exclusively categorized immigrants as Mexican, despite herself being an immigrant into America.
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
A couple of weeks ago, the class was assigned a personal narrative essay and the prompt was to tell an interesting story of a specific experience that changed how you acted, thought, or felt. To be honest, I was awfully excited to write this essay because talking about myself is the easiest thing to write about sometimes. However, deciding what experience to talk about was challenging because I have already experienced so much in my seventeen years of being alive from dislocating my hip when I was three, to seeing my grandfather die in front of my eyes, from almost tripping off of the trail on the Grand Canyon, to meeting band members at an airport. Writing this essay brought me many challenges, I did not know what topic to choose, I had no
isn't to write a paper that will get a good grade. Now, my goal is to
When I was a Child, I have never stopped wondering what it would be to fly in the sky. I had tried to jump from sofa or bed with an opened umbrella in my hand，and imagined myself as a flying bird. As I grow up, those wonderful fantasy become faded in my brain. I still like flying, and I had experience something like helicopter tour, but never a real fly. I always have the thoughts to explore life, to experience
This is an explorative essay on the theme in Patricia Grace’s novel Potiki that ‘telling and retelling stories is an important and valuable part of being human’.
If something sounds too good to be true is usually is too good to be true. My husband and I were recently approached and offered a living arrangement that sounded perfect, to my husband anyway. I was a little skeptical but my husband was able to convince me that it was the best possible scenario for our family.