Nairobi - Essay

Nairobi is a novel written by the author Joyce Carol Oates in 1984. The act of the text takes place in the city known by its thousand skyscrapers, New York, where a low class girl suddenly is offered the opportunity to taste the rich jet-set life, but the pleasure is only brief, during this experience. She undergoes a negative development as she feels the loss in that she has been objectified, "bought" and given a completely new identity. One of the other themes that the text Nairobi deals with is the implicit discussion on the exploitation of the Western World towards countries like Africa, which is parallel to the identity and objectifying conflict in the text. The protagonist of the story is called Ginny. She's a somewhat uncertain, ignorant and fragile girl, who lives a lower class life. This is shown by that fact that she doesn't own more clothes than the clothes she's wearing fact that she lets a complete stranger "buy's" and give her a temporary new identity only to accomplish the "buyers" own individual purpose. She says that the city has made her weak: When Ginny had been much younger - which is to say, a few years ago, when she was new to the city - she might have had some questions to ask. In fact she had had a number of questions to ask, then." The city has changed her compared to how she was just a few years back. She has experienced the drawbacks which the big city also possesses but normally isn't associated with.
During the shopping with Oliver, Ginny turns into a whole new person; a fashion icon. In the process she feels like throwing more and more of her former personality away. Now she's nothing more than Oliver's dummy which she just slowly starts to feel but never really realizes: "All she had really lost, in a sense, was her own pair of shoes". She isn't able to identify what's really happening to her, she's just absent to the objectifying of her which Oliver has started. The only thing she truly knows is that she has lost her old pair of shoes. This lack of rationality and perhaps also education is very important in the definition of her as a person and the social class which she belongs to. And because of the uncertain girl that the city has made her combined with this lack of rationality she's an easy manipulable object for Oliver.

The other main character of the story, as already mentioned, is Oliver. He is from the higher social class where he lives a stressful business existence, where outwardly appearance is highest priority. The means and costs to create and brand this successful image don't seem to be given any thoughts. To sharpen this appearance he need Ginny to be his beautiful wife. He's apparently living by a codex saying; to emerge strong you need to be in a relationship, and of course with a beautiful woman. This is also seen because he wants her to look just perfect from top to bottom, money is not a problem, and he's observant to every single detail and also the total impression of them as a couple: "But first they went into a jewelry boutique at 76th Street, where Oliver bought her four narrow silver bracelets, engraved in bird and animal heads, and a pair of conch-shaped silver earrings from Mexico"... " In the elevator... Oliver looked at Ginny critically, standing back to examine her from her toes upward and finding nothing wrong except a strand of hair or two out of place", a perfectionist to the fullest. He's proud of the wife-substitute-project that he has made Ginny. To the reader he appears very superficial because he doesn't seem to care about substantives as personality and pride at all, the total image of him as a strong person is all that counts, in his point of view it seems to be just fine to create a fictional life if that's necessary . The exploitation of Ginny could be an implicit comment on the Western Worlds exploitation of continents like Africa, South America and Asia in general. Judging from the title Nairobi and the foundation that we hear about with interest in Africa, this would be obvious. This theme would also strengthen the relevance of the title, which otherwise wouldn't have anything to do with the text at all (except the short conversation between Ginny and Herbert about the Foundation). Through decades the Western world (The USA and Europe) has been emptying these countries for resources, stealing their identities, messing with the hundreds of different cultures, using democracy and globalization as an overriding excuse. The African people is in general blinded to the exploitation because of the huge lack of education which makes the African people an easy victim, just like Ginny is. There is of course a lot more behind the whole exploitation of weaker cultures than that, but the text Nairobi still manages to put this topic into perspective in a great way.
Joyce Carol Oates takes primary subjects such as human relationship, appearance, social class and human exploitation, and uses them to create an implicit parallel to an even higher taxonomic level to interpret the text in. Very creative.