Eclipsed Maima Character Analysis

Like the other four women in Eclipsed by Danai Gurira, Maima struggles to survive Liberia’s civil war without losing who she is. Maima’s resilience is in her ability to make herself believe in her life as a soldier, and that belief allows her to maintain her sanity while committing the atrocities inherent in the war. Maima struggles to reassure herself of her cause, and she must convince herself over and over of what she is doing because the alternative, becoming a refugee once more, causes her too much pain and fear to consider. Her relationship with Helena is bitter and tainted by Maima’s attack on the former Number Four. Maima’s relationship with The Girl, in whom Maima sees herself, is both caring and controlling. Maima’s relationship

Maima is a survivor. She convinces herself of the inhumanity of her enemies so she does not have to question her actions, and, in doing so, she enables herself to survive the brutality of the civil war. Maima tries to help The Girl survive as a soldier by instilling in her the belief that allows Maima to kill others indiscriminately. She tells The Girl the enemy is “Charles Taylor’s monkeys … You understand, de enemy, de enemy is no longer human” (38). She tries to use the phrase “no longer human” to convey to The Girl that Charles Taylor’s men, because of the atrocities they have committed, have dehumanized themselves. Instead, she reveals a change in herself. The phrase “no longer” suggests once she saw those she fights and kills as other people, but now she has made herself believe that her enemy is inhuman, a belief she reinforces by repeating her list of plans for Charles Taylor. When she tells The Girl “you understand,” she commands both The Girl and herself to forget the personhood of their

During my research, I also found information on camps where internally displaced persons (IDPs) lived. Understanding the inhumane conditions that were prevalent in the IDP camps helps me begin to understand the terror that Maima feels when she thinks of returning to one, a terror so great that she would rather continue fighting than face an uncertain future with the possibility of going back to an IDP camp. During my research, I learned about instances of soldiers killing IDPs, kidnapping children and forcing them to fight, and raping women in IDP camps. While not all camps shared the same conditions, hunger, disease, and sexual and gender-based violence were all widespread. At the end of the play, as Maima rages to Helena and Rita about why she will not stop fighting, she asks, “YOU TINK I GONNA BE LIKE MY MODA begging at de refugee camps, pleadin’ around for a cup a rice den dey just jump ha till she dead when dey supposed to be protecting ha?” (54). Based on Maima’s statement that her mother was raped and killed by people “supposed to be protecting ha,” those people were likely members of the ECOMOG force that was sent to Liberia as a peacekeeping force in the 1990s and was associated with rapes and human rights violations. Maima’s words give an individual view into the horror that historically occurred in IDP camps and the dehumanizing effect experiencing that horror has had on a young