Saying the Truth about Us: A Cultural Study of Ama Ata Aidoo’s: The Dilemma of a Ghost (2024)

FAQs

What is The Dilemma of a Ghost culture? ›

The Dilemma of a Ghost is concerned with the arrival in Africa of a black American woman married to a Ghanaian and the struggle she has in coming to terms with her cultural past and with her new home.

Ama Ata Aidoo's 40 year-old play unravels its tangled themes of tradition, assimilation and gender with clarity but rather too much speed. Shonel Jackson's Eulalie finds that her fantasy of African life runs quickly into the sand, but her decline into alcoholic rage is implausibly sudden.

Dilemma of a Ghost When Ato returns to Ghana from his studies in North America he brings with him a sophisticated black American wife. But their hopes of a happy marriage and of combining 'the sweetness and loveliest things in Africa and America' are soon shown to have been built on an unstable foundation.

“The Message” follows the attempts of a panicking mother to return from her small village to the Cape Coast hospital where her only child was born – the baby had to remain in the intensive care unit after the birth, while the mother couldn't stay with her.

e)Childbearing In addition to the theme of marriage is the theme of childbearing. As is there were no other reasons people get married except to raise children, The Dilemma Of A Ghost stresses this issue in such a way that one might want to think that the African woman is a machine built on producing children.

Ato is the ghost..... the novel's main character and protagonist. His dilemma was trying to find a way to bridge the gap between his past and the man he has become.

The focus is on women's education, sexuality, marriage, and marital rape. The three women protagonists, Esi, Opokuya and Fusena, find the institution of marriage challenging and hold the view that it hampers their career development. Esi is highly educated compared to the other female characters.

Aidoo's climax in the story had been when Eulalie and Ato's family had gotten into the dispute of each of their ways of life and who's side Ato would take.

In The Dilemma of a Ghost, Ato Yawson returns to Ghana with his African-American wife, Eulalie after having completed his education abroad. Ato Yawson is in many ways the epitome of the 'been-to' character who is conflicted between his status as a Western-educated scholar and his traditional African roots.

Anowa is disturbed by the presence of slaves. She has no desire to stay behind with no work to do. The greed and reliance on slaves seems to sap the husband's “manhood” and drive the childless wife mad. Conflict between a daughter and her parents becomes conflict between husband and wife that escalates into tragedy.

What happened at the end of The Dilemma of a Ghost? ›

In the ending of Ama Atta Do's play Dilemma of a Ghost, Eulalie and Ato have a fight wherein Ato slaps Eulalie and she goes away for the night. Throughout the play Eulalie has been seen to be the superior one between her and Ato. In the end, however, Ato regains the upper hand when he hit her.

The character of Anowa can be seen as a triumph—if a tragic one—of feminism, in that she makes her own choices and earns the right to her own failures. But for the more conservative, it is also possible to read Anowa as a cautionary tale of the price that will be paid for breaking with tradition.

Aidoo was Ghana's foremost woman writer and her distinguished career spanned several decades. Her literary contribution places her among the first generation of African women writers of the post-independence era. After independence in Ghana in 1957 she became a leading feminist voice within postcolonial writing.

Her writing won many awards: in 1962, Prof. Aidoo won the Mbari Club prize for her short story, “No Sweetness Here.” As a student at the University of Ghana in Legon, she wrote and staged her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost and when it was published 1965, Aidoo became the first published African woman dramatist.

Mpalive-Hangson Msiska notes that while the play "focuses on the dilemma of a man caught between two histories and two cultures, Aidoo is also concerned with the predicament of women who are not so much caught between cultures and histories as no longer having a place in either world.

Raina: Cystic fibrosis is a disease that directly affects a person's ability to breathe, and breathing is a huge theme in the story: ghosts don't breathe, so Maya feels like she can relate to them. And Cat's anxiety means that she sometimes forgets to stop and breathe deeply, herself.

The major themes of the play Ghosts are morality, duty, reputation, and hypocrisy. Pastor Manders represents both morality and hypocrisy. Additionally, Mrs. Alving's desire to preserve her reputation and uphold her duty to her husband and son are featured heavily throughout the play.

His dad is in jail for trying to shoot Ghost and his mom. Ghost gets teased at school. Ghost wants to stay on a city track team run by Coach. But, he keeps getting into altercations and can't seem to stay out of trouble.

A Ghost Story is a 2017 American supernatural drama film written and directed by David Lowery and starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, with Will Oldham, Liz Cardenas Franke, Sonia Acevedo, and Rob Zabrecky in supporting roles. It is about a man who becomes a ghost and remains in the house he shared with his wife.