64 pages • 2 hours read
Nikki MayThis Motherless Land
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Pearl Necklaces
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses death and self-harm.
The pearl necklaces that are owned by Lizzie and Margot symbolize the contentious relationship between the two. They were first purchased by their parents, when Lizzie picked hers out in a jewelry store. Even though Margot had already gotten a gift for her 18th birthday, she threw a fit over the beauty and cost of Lizzie’s necklace, causing Grandpa to buy her the same one. The origin of the necklaces reveals the contentious relationship between Lizzie and Margot, as well as the greedy and manipulative nature of Margot, which will become more apparent throughout the text.
After Funke’s mother and brother die, the necklace becomes an important keepsake. She secretly takes the necklace from her mother’s room—before her father’s mother can take it—and hides it, keeping it a secret for eight years in London. As Funke grapples with the loss of her mother, brother, and her home in Nigeria, she keeps the necklace as a connection to her past, wearing it for the first time at the age of 18. Additionally, after Lizzie’s death, the relationship between Lizzie and Margot no longer exists, just as the necklace is kept hidden from view.
However, after the necklace resurfaces, so too does the bitterness and resentment that continues to exist between Lizzie and Margot, even after her death. Upon discovering the necklace, Margot angrily tells Funke, “Your mother ruined my life and now you want to do the same to my children. Well, I’m putting a stop to it. I will not let history repeat itself” (135). Just as Funke has now donned her mother’s necklace, she has also become the brunt of Margot’s anger, bitterness, and greed. From that point forward, the necklace remains with Margot, then Liv, who wears it for the six years that she thinks Funke is dead.
The necklace resurfaces a final time when Liv travels to Nigeria, as she wears it to remember Funke. When Funke first sees Liv, she angrily confronts her about the necklace, assuming that Liv has taken possession of it and sides with Margot. After Liv faints, Funke approaches her, “her eyes fixed on the pearls around Liv’s neck. She wanted to check the clasp. She wanted to choke her” (311). Funke’s anger is rooted in the fact that something close to her, which once served as a way to remember her mother, has been corrupted by Margot and Liv. However, her anger is quickly assuaged when Liv willingly surrenders the necklace to Funke, reaffirming the fact that Liv only wore it in remembrance of Funke.
In this way, Liv has grown in the novel, as she understands The Importance of Support in Surviving Trauma. Something that previously held only financial value to her becomes something which connects her to Funke and conveys how important their friendship is to Liv. Her willingness to immediately surrender it to Funke reaffirms two things: First, she is not her mother, as she holds no bitterness or resentment toward Funke; second, she now values family and friendship more than the necklace, in contrast to her decision earlier to sell it and, indirectly, send Funke back to Nigeria. The symbolic return of the necklace to Funke ends the bitterness and anger between their two families, as Liv refuses to perpetuate her mother’s vengefulness and greed.
Home
One important motif in the novel is the idea of what a “home” is. For Funke, the idea of a home is one of the most important parts of her identity. After she goes to London, she becomes fixated on the dilapidated house that she is now forced to live in. She is disgusted by the Stone family’s use of water, their food, their laziness, and the condition of The Ring after years of neglect.
However, after eight years there, Funke thinks how she “couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment The Ring had become ‘home’ and Lagos demoted to ‘where I used to live.’ It had happened slowly, by degrees, with smiles, looks, assurances and hugs. But Liv had been at the center of everything good and helped her cope with anything bad” (91). Funke recognizes The Importance of Support in Surviving Trauma, as she now realizes that the idea of “home” is much less about the physical location and instead about the people around her.
When Funke returns to Nigeria, her experience mirrors that of her arrival in London. She is disenchanted by her father—noting his lack of “flamboyance” and color, a criticism that mirrors her complaints about the “gray” quality of London—as well as his home, noting how unkempt it is and being disgusted by the cockroaches she sees. These thoughts emphasize the idea of home not as a physical location, but as the people and experiences one has there. Just as she slowly became used to The Ring and began to call it “home,” she again does the same in Nigeria, growing close to her father again, respecting his new wife, and finding friends there to make Nigeria a place she wants to be.
Ultimately, the recurring idea of “home” throughout the novel reflects Funke’s search for Self-Identity Amid Cultural Dislocation. Each time she goes to a new physical home, she is overwhelmed by feelings of unbelonging. She is disgusted by each place and bitter toward the country that she is being forced to live in. However, she learns throughout the novel that her physical movement is much less important to her identity than the people around her and the life that she chooses to build. In the final lines of the text, her decision to return to London—first to confront Margot, then for Liv’s wedding, then for her own wedding—while building a home in Nigeria and starting a medical practice there reflect her discovery of this fact. Funke now admits to herself that “although Lagos was home and she’d never live anywhere else, The Ring was home too. Turned out home was where the people you loved were. And you could have two” (338).
Funke’s Bottlecap
The bottlecap that Funke catches during the car crash that kills her mother and brother symbolizes her grief and struggle to cope with their deaths and her uprooted life. The bottlecap serves both as a way to remember her family—as the cap was part of an art project that was important to her mother—but also as a way for her to deal with her trauma. Each time she is overwhelmed by feelings of grief, she “squeeze[s] until the pain [is] unbearable and her breathing ha[s] returned to normal” (60), using the bottle top as a form of physical pain to distract her from her emotional pain. As she is outcasted by her father—who suffers from his own trauma—sent to a new home, and largely mistreated by her new family, she relies on the bottle top to ground her as she adapts to her new life.
However, her bottle top is eventually discarded as Funke learns The Importance of Support in Surviving Trauma. After spending days not speaking at The Ring, choosing instead to remain invisible and handle her grief alone, she realizes that Liv is there to support her. When Liv discovers the cuts on Funke’s hand from repeatedly squeezing the bottle top, she tells Funke, “When you’re sad, you let me know, OK? And I’ll hug you so tight you won’t be able to feel anything except me” (60). After this, Funke symbolically discards the top, instead using Liv as a form of emotional support to deal with her trauma.
