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Yehia Hammad
Monica Brewer
ENG4U
25th February 2021
Happiness is gained by materialistic possession.
In his Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah has displayed consumerism as turning
modern man into monsters. He has shown how people will sacrifice their friends and family and
even themselves, just to get what they want. He has dehumanized some characters, to show they
are just a cog in the machine that is consumerism. The characters in the story are made to believe
that having simple goods like a new TV will lead to happiness. With all of this, the author
showed how has consumerism has made happiness equal to materialistic possession and that it is
valued more than people’s lives.
Humanity has now put materialistic possession over people’s lives, and some will
sacrifice people close to them or their own lives to own materialistic possession. A strong
example of this in the story is when the woman with the grey scarf sacrificed her daughter and
husband so that she could get a TV. “While I eat, a woman drags a TV box to the table in front of
me. […] ‘Dead,’ she says ‘BuyStuy. Trample.’ ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Right.’ ‘She was weak. He was
weak. I am strong,’ the women says as she pets the face of the box.” (Adjei-Brenyah 112). Even
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animals do not sacrifice their family like that; only a monster would do such a thing. She has put
the possession of a “high-def” TV over the life of her own daughter and husband. She also holds
no regret to it and just proceeds to call them weak for dying. Some have even died trying to get
some of these pointless items. “Duo poked her off the wall with his reach. She fell on her neck.
Another woman snatched the SkinnySretches from her dead hands.” (111) The woman is
climbing up the cubby trying to get something, and she falls on her neck and dies. She was doing
something reckless and insane just for a pair of pants. She completely disregards her life for
some cheap pants and now she is dead. This customer’s behavior shows how they value items
over people’s lives and that can be a stranger’s life, someone close to them, or even their own
lives. Ironically, some characters including the narrator himself have scars from last Black
Friday, which draws a sarcastic analogy with the wounds of war because this is the image the
authors wants to bring about in the readers’ minds.
The author has even dehumanized some characters to show that people do not matter in
consumerism and that there is only the employee and the customer. A perfect example of this is
main character and how he is nothing but just a random employee. In the story his name or
personal life was never mentioned in the story. All that we know about him is that he is a great
employee and who wants to get his mom an expensive jacket. Not having a name or any details
about his life strips him away from all the attributes that make him a human being. He is nothing
but a cog in the consumerism machine. The reactions from him and the rest of the employees are
non-human. Time and time again we see the employees just moving dead bodies or mopping the
blood of the floor and not giving any human reaction. Even after a near death moment one of the
employees experienced, they just go back to work and help more of the “people” that tried to kill
her a second ago, which brings about the war image again. “Back in the store, there’s a new body
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in the body pile and in PoleFace‫ ™؞‬a young woman is trying to kill Angela […] I punch back in
at the computer. Angela puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘Yup,’ I say, and then I
go back to my section.”(113-114) Angela does not have any emotion about almost being killed,
all she says is a thank you to the man who saved her and then goes back to work. That is not a
human reaction to a near death experience and they should not go back to help the people who
almost killed them. These employees are stripped off any emotion by the author. The author
makes the characters, heartless creatures with no emotion that serve the customers and that they
should not care about the health of the customer or their own health. The only goal that they are
after is to complete the sale.
The customers and characters in the story are all led to believe that owning a product or
buying an expensive product for someone is what will lead to happiness because consumerism
has managed to convince people that happiness is obtained by materialistic possession. One
instance of this in the story is when the father wants to get his son a product because that is when
his son loves him the most. “He howls, ‘SleekPack. Son!’ while licking his injured hand. I look
him in his eyes, deep red around his lids, redder at the corners. I understand him perfectly. What
he’s saying is this: My son. Loves me most on Christmas. I have him holidays. Me and him.
Wants the one thing. Only thing. His mother won’t. On me. Need to feel like Father!” (106). This
father believes that owning this product is the one thing that will make his son happy. This
should not be the case; his son should just be happy by being with his father and items should not
decide someone’s happiness or worth. It is worth mentioning also that this quotation stresses
again the themes of dehumanization and war when the father licks his injured hand, which is not
a human behavior. The main character also does the exact same thing. He believes that if he can
get the jacket for his mother, he will be happy. “Soon I’ll have a five-hundred-dollar jacket as
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proof to my mother that I’ll love her forever. When I imagine how her face will look as I give it
to her, my heart beats faster.” (108). Just like the father, that main character also believes that
someone will only love them and that they will be happy when they buy someone something. He
should not need prove to himself that he loves his mother in this language of buying and selling.
Here readers can see that the main character is both a victim and a victimizer at the same time.
However, The end suggests the potential downfall of consumerism when the internal conflict
resolves by the main character giving away the jacket to a woman to save another woman’s life
Consumerism has made owning and/or gifting someone expensive products to someone
the key to happiness and that these products are worth risking lives for. That buying someone an
expensive item will actually buy happiness for others. It is interesting how the author depicted
the bare truth about our age of Post-Modernism when people are void of spirituality and seek
happiness in materialistic items even if this means that they have to sacrifice their lives for a
product or engage in animal-like behaviors, which raises the question about the validity of the
current state of civilization human are enjoying now!
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Work Cited
Adjei-Brenyah, N. K. (2019). Friday black. London: Riverrun.