89 pages • 2 hours read
The Bite of the Mango
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Symbols & Motifs
Palm Oil
Palm oil is a dark orange oil extracted from palm trees that is widely used as a cooking oil in Sierra Leone. For Mariatu, it is also symbolic of blood and death. This belief is based on a lesson from her grandmother that, “[w]henever you dream of palm oil […] blood will spill by the end of the day” (25). Mariatu reports that every time she dreamed of palm oil as a child, she would hurt herself the next day. When Mariatu moves to Manarma, she has her “worst dream ever about palm oil” (25) and takes it as a premonition that her blood will be spilt and, sure enough, the following day, she has her hands cut off by the rebels.
However, before the rebels take her hands, palm oil appears again. First, when she is sent back to the village, Mariatu carries a jug of palm oil on her head and it is still there at the moment she is captured. The palm oil here becomes a symbol of the inevitability of her capture and mutilation; she carries it as though carrying her own curse or bad luck with her, as she takes the walk that will lead her into danger. The rebels even tell her to take it off her head at the moment that they capture her, as though its work is done and the conclusion inevitable. Shortly after this, the palm oil salesman who asked Mariatu to deliver the oil turns up at the village too, for no reason that Mariatu can fathom. Not coincidentally, it is this man, the trader in palm oil, who is the first person Mariatu sees murdered, shedding the first blood that she sees that day.
Black Animals
Mariatu believes that the spirits of dead ancestors sometimes watch over the living in the form of “an animal, a bird or a reptile” (45). Black animals quickly come to be seen as guardian spirits and offer Mariatu benevolent guidance. When Mariatu encounters the first black cobra in the disused farmhouse, she is mystified by its behavior, asking it “Why didn’t you want to hurt me? […] Is it that you sensed my pain?” (45). However, by the time she sees “the second black cobra of the night” (45), she is certain that “[s]omething was going on” (45) of a more complex and spiritual nature. These snakes play a guiding role in this moment, driving Mariatu on towards the path that will eventually take her to Freetown and its hospital, just as thoughts of her living family are the source of strength that keeps her going when she wishes to give up. The same is true of the black dog that mysteriously barks “like [Mariatu] had never heard a dog bark before” (46) and sends her onto the “right” track, away from death and towards the place where her life will be saved.
Mango
The mango Mariatu eats shortly after the rebel attack is highly symbolic. The sweet, juicy flesh, which is the first thing Mariatu eats after losing her hands, becomes a symbol of life and her will to live. The only thing she receives from a man she begs to help her travel to the hospital, it also demonstrates both her aloneness and her powerful independence and determination. This is particularly true of the way she chooses to eat it. Rejecting the man’s offer to hold it to her mouth for her because she does not want to be “fed like a baby” (48), Mariatu instead manages to support the mango herself and “take a few bites of the juicy fruit” (48). In this way, the reader sees Mariatu’s absolute determination not to allow her disability to infantilize her or make her dependent on others, even in the most extreme situations.
Snow
Before she moves there, all Mariatu knows of Canada is that it is cold and, “[f]or half the year, it snows” (125). With no experience of snow, Mariatu’s only impression of it comes from Comfort’s description of it as being “like white salt that falls from the sky when it is very chilly” (126). As this is all she knows, it becomes a significant characteristic, and something she mentions frequently when she talks of Canada, describing it as “that country, which snows” (156), or “the strange place called Canada” where “salt fell from the sky” (153). As such, it becomes a symbol of hope for Mariatu, a mysterious image of a new place and new life that she does not understand but nevertheless knows is “where [she] belonged” (153).
When Mariatu arrives in Canada and actually sees snow, it takes on a new symbolic meaning. At the time, Mariatu is unsure of her place in Canada, feeling terrified of attending school, and feeling homesick for Sierra Leone, where being disabled and unschooled would not mark her as an outsider. Now, as she watches actual snow, she imagines that she “was that snowflake in the big sky of so many others, and I tried to guess where I would land” (177), reflecting her concerns, her uncertainty, and her lack of understanding of where she is going in her life.
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