The Love Letter
By Sam “the brain” Catapang, Miguel “Mills” Valero, and Denver Saldhana
Typed by Seung Jae Lee
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In page 92- 96
Beatrice and Ikem are the two featured characters
The first part is owed to Beatrice.
o It’s Ikem’s insight into the world of women
o It’s Ikem’s thoughts on the role of Women in the modern times
 Perhaps Achebe’s thoughts
Women caused man to fall (Biblical Adam and Eve)
o So therefore whatever hardships women face they must accept.
 White men keep women in the corner where they are irreleavant
 Black man, when he falls, it’s the females job to wipe the shards.
Ikem believes are of course the biggest group of oppressed people in the world.
Society is being reformed.
Importance on the society as a whole
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A change in the individual will make a change in the society
o Ikem’s change of view of women.
Letter shows the revolution of Ikems thought.
o Call for personal reform
 He later calls reform in the University.
Vehicle for allowing the story to carry on.
Ikem’s importance with Beatrice.
Themes in the Letter
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Role of WOMEN.
o In the old tradition the Women were oppressed.
o In the modern times, women have become revered.
o However, women are forced to be the ‘vacuum cleaners of the society.’
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“No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering
man chose therefore to heap on her.”
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Up there, her feet completely off the ground, she will just be as irrelevant to the practical decisions of
running the world as in her old bad days
Then as the world crashes around Man’s ears, Woman in her supremacy will descend and sweep the
shards together
I can’t tell you what the new role for women will be. You have to tell us.
Women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world
The OPPRESSED people in the WORLD.
o Various racial, political, social and cultural oppression
o Also comments on the various Economic systems.
 Capitalism brings oppression through greed.
The most obvious practical difficulty is the magnitude and heterogeneity of the problem
There is no universal conglomerate of the oppressed
Free people may be alike everywhere in their freedom but the oppressed each inhabit their own
peculiar hell.
Man will surprise by his capability for both nobility as well as for villainy
REFORM
o Instantaneous reform not realistic
o Reform must be pragmatic, realistic.
 Reform within the culture, tradition.
 Reform of method not system.
 Achebe as an artist.
 Idealogy not necessary.
The sweeping, majestic visions of people rising victorious like a tidal wave against their oppressors and
transforming their world with theories and slogans into a new heaven and a new earth of
brotherhood, justice and freedom are at best, grand illusions
New oppressors will have been readying themselves secretly in the undertow long before the tidal
wave got really going
Beyond the pleasant glow…what serious benefit can it offer to the solution of our problems
Society is an extension of the individual
You re-form it around what it is, its core of reality; not around an intellectual abstraction