Interpreting Feelings-Deborah Rocheleau

For Ukamaka, the main character of Adichie’s story “The Shivering,” feeling takes two forms: a religious experience she had as a child, and her belief in her ex-boyfriend’s love for her. While seemingly unrelated, the story parallels Ukamaka’s developing interpretations of these two feelings to illustrate how distance changes those interpretations.

     

The beginning of the story finds Ukamaka certain of her ex-boyfriend’s love (at least in the past) and skeptical of the religious experience. Speaking of the experience, Ukamaka reflects that as a child she had “felt terrified and sure that the white-cool feeling that enveloped her was God” (145). This passage illustrates Ukamaka’s initial feelings toward her religious experience, interpreting it as a sign from God. This certainty parallels Ukamaka’s certainty of her ex-boyfriend’s feelings for her, which she always interpreted as love, albeit a love she “just [doesn’t] understand” (161). In both cases, despite her confusion about the feelings, she clings steadfastly to her interpretation of both feelings as indicative of an external reality (God in the first case, Love in the second), interpretations which only distance can change. 

     

Distance does indeed change Ukamaka’s interpretations. Looking back on the religious experience as an adult, now removed from the initial “white-cool” feeling, she concludes that “she had created the experience herself […] had indeed imagined it” (145). Distanced from the feeling, she reinterprets it, determining it originated not from God but her own imagination. Likewise, distance gradually changes her interpretation of her ex-boyfriend’s feelings for her. Despite her certainty of his love for her, her conversations with friend Chinedu eventually cause her to question whether her feelings were truly love at all (161). Having achieved distance from the relationship and her own feelings for her ex-boyfriend, Ukamaka can finally see that her ex-boyfriend might not have ever loved her at all. The story never explicitly states Ukamaka’s reinterpretation of her ex-boyfriend’s so-called “love” as it does her reinterpretation of her religious experience. However, by contrasting her initial interpretation of the religious experience and her love, the story illustrates the power of distance in interpreting feelings.