The Bite of the Mango

Closely related to Mariatu’s struggle with her disability is her struggle to balance a desire to die, in order to escape her suffering, with a powerful will to stay alive. From the moment she is captured these two drives are in conflict. Although she prays for death several times when the rebels capture her, she is still driven by a desire to keep herself alive by playing along with them. After her mutilation, these drives remain in conflict. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, it is her will to survive that keeps her going, carrying her forward with the refrain of “I will stay alive” (45).

However, when the enormity of her trauma overwhelms her, Mariatu repeatedly becomes severely depressed and wonders if, like she once thought of the injured weaver bird, it might not be better simply to die rather than live in pain with a terrible injury. Despite this, Mariatu’s will to survive always carries her through. Often, it is her family that gives her the strength to do this, either directly through care (or, in the case of Mohamed, jokes) or through Mariatu focusing on the love they share. As the book progresses, Mariatu also draws increasingly on a desire to help others to achieve this, too. Once she begins to consider that she might be able to assist other people wounded or displaced by the war by helping to “raise awareness of my country’s problems” (121), Mariatu gains an extra purpose and drive that turns her will to survive into a will to truly live, to grow and develop and better herself so that she can use her voice to help others. 

Just as it is only the opening of the book that shows Mariatu as uninjured, this is also the only point where we see Mariatu living the life of a carefree child before horror and tragedy rob her of her innocence. Two key events work to take this innocence: the rebel attack, which both takes Mariatu’s hands and exposes her to brutal, traumatic scenes, and Salieu raping her, both in the sense of the original trauma and in the way it forces her into an adult role of bearing and caring for a child. The later responsibility to financially support the adult members of her family, first through begging and then by moving to a foreign country and getting a job, also pushes her into difficult adult roles that move her away from childhood and innocence.

As her story progresses, Mariatu does manage to reclaim her childhood spirit to some extent. There are occasional flashes of it in her interaction with her family, especially with Mohamed, who remains a playful joker throughout most of the book. However, she connects with it most strongly when she joins the theater troupe at the amputee camp, and especially when she dances with the other young participants. Mariatu informs the reader that “[e]very village girl in Sierra Leone learns to dance as soon as she can walk” (113) and, when she dances with the theater troupe, the activity serves as a bridge back to those early experiences. As she begins to move to the drums, she reconnects with both her body and her playful, innocent past and, as a result, feels “really alive for the first time in ages” (120).

As the book progresses, the theme of loss of childhood innocence becomes more complex, showing that this loss is not always a negative thing. For much of her life, Mariatu obeyed her elders and “always gave in to what older people wanted” (156), sometimes with results. However, as she gets older and more confident, she starts to actively embrace some of the more positive aspects of adulthood, becoming more assertive and able to “speak up for what I needed and wanted” (157). Only by abandoning the passivity and obedience that came with her childhood innocence is Mariatu able to take control of her life and, among other achievements, insist that she moves to Canada, where she knows she belongs.