The Significance of Adichie’s Speech The Danger of a Single Story Chimamanda Adichie, in one of her eye-opening speeches, The Danger of a Single Story, provides the audience with a new insight into the negative impacts that can occur as a result of viewing a story from a single perspective and not putting in an effort to know it from all available viewpoints. Adichie in her simple, yet well-grounded speech, filled with anecdotes of her personal experiences effectively puts across her argument against believing in stereotypes and limiting oneself to just a single story using a remarkable opening, the elements of logos, pathos and ethos, repetitions, as well as maintaining a good flow of thoughts throughout the speech. Adichie begins by confessing that she is a storyteller, and through this confession she reels in the audience and prepares them for her “few personal stories” regarding the concept she christened ‘the danger of a single story’ (1). Even in the beginning of her speech, she is able to immediately connect with the audience by shedding light on how her mother says that she “started …show more content…
It simply means that they must not pass judgment based on their limited knowledge of a particular object, country, or culture. Therefore, Adichie’s speech is quite effective in delivering its argument with the use of an excellent opening, the elements of logos, ethos and pathos, repetition as well as overall flow of the speech, which all together help the speaker establish and maintain a good connection with the audience till she utters her last syllable. The success of this speech and its argument lie in the fact that both make the audience really think and reflect on their experiences and make them want to change their ways regarding how they view
Last but not least, O’Connor confirms that even a short story is a multi-layer compound that on the surface may deter even the most enthusiastic reader, but when handled with more care, it conveys universal truths by means of straightforward or violent situations. She herself wished her message to appeal to the readers who, if careful enough, “(…)will come to see it as something more than an account of a family murdered on the way to Florida.”
The character is emphasising the moral and educational value of stories in human development and understanding by saying that there is always something to learn from stories, even when they are retold repeatedly.
She repeatedly mentions “the single story”, particularly after each story she tells. For example, after discussing a time of financial hardship in her childhood, Adichie emphasizes that “to insist only on those negative stories is to flatten her experience and to overlook the other stories that formed her.” She goes on to reiterate that “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete, and they make one story become the only story”(Ted, 12:48-13:09). This restatement of the same phrase and idea of the single story reminds us of and emphasises the main point of her speech, that single thoughts, ideas, or opinions of an individual create an incomplete generalization of said person without regard to who they actually are and what they have
By retorting with, “I had just read a novel called American Psycho … such a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.” Adichie appealed to Americans’ knowledge of themselves, showing the audience how absurd this claim was. Her sarcasm not only serves to make an absurd idea amusing, but also reverses the single story on the audience. She proves to the listener that it is through accurate knowledge and multiple stories that our opinions should be formed. In the same way, Adichie uses levity yet again when she says, “I learned, some years ago, that writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods to be successful, I began to think about how I could invent horrible things my parents had done to me. But the truth is that I had a very happy childhood, full of laughter and love, in a very close-knit family.” Her humor again draws attention to the danger of just one story. For instance, Adichie says, “writers were expected to have had really unhappy childhoods to be successful.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains a single story as the complex stories of a place or people that are broken down and simplified into a single, simpler story. The single story takes away anything else that the people or place is and gives them one story to be addressed by. A single story is more or less grouping every person in a place under one life story. People lose their identity and life stories. She uses the categories of the single story of people shown in literature, the single story of her house boy, the single story of the people of Africa and Nigeria and the single story of the people of Mexico and immigrants.
female subjects are not to be underestimated. . . the narrative communicates a “type” that tells
In her TED talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks through the role of perception in her life and the way that it changes social relationships. We have all had plenty of experiences that surprise us in regard to perception, such as the first time we meet someone from another culture, or meeting someone from our past in a new light. We have been inundated with stereotypes and preconceived notions since we were children, through stories, media, parents, teachers, and friends. Moreover, these presuppositions that we carry are rarely, if ever, based on anything substantial, yet they show up in every aspect of our life. Adichie calls the notion of this one-sided preconceived bias the “single story.” This “single story” is interesting due to the fact that even if we can overcome it, we are still affected by it. Adichie speaks about how even though she had become enlightened to this dilemma, she is still subject to it. As for her experience, she states that,
Watch this Ted Talk, The Danger of a Single Story: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en (Links to an external site.)
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
Adichie goal throughout this passage was to inform people that they should not listen to one side of a story and run with it. That a person should not judge someone else but instead learn who a person is for themselves because there is never one story to every person. Furthermore, Adichie educated her audience by letting them know that everyone in their life judges someone but it is up to a person to change that. She wanted her audience to understand how dangerous a single story is; it can destroy a person and their intelligence but it can also change the worldview of countries. Her speech taught people that the world fails to give two sides of a story resulting in people making up stories about others and questioning who a person is.
A couple of weeks ago, the class was assigned a personal narrative essay and the prompt was to tell an interesting story of a specific experience that changed how you acted, thought, or felt. To be honest, I was awfully excited to write this essay because talking about myself is the easiest thing to write about sometimes. However, deciding what experience to talk about was challenging because I have already experienced so much in my seventeen years of being alive from dislocating my hip when I was three, to seeing my grandfather die in front of my eyes, from almost tripping off of the trail on the Grand Canyon, to meeting band members at an airport. Writing this essay brought me many challenges, I did not know what topic to choose, I had no
The word danger probably makes you want to turn away and stop doing whatever it is that you are doing. Well, what do you do when you see the words, “The Danger of a Single Story?” These words had me nervous about what I was going to be watching. However, there was a lot of information that was explained throughout this 20-minute TED talk from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This paper will explore compelling ideas she mentioned that relate to things I have experienced when I went to another culture, the risks of telling a single story narrative in intercultural interactions, ways to protect myself from single story misconceptions, and how I was able to see how a single story might affect the way I communicate with others in different cultures.
isn't to write a paper that will get a good grade. Now, my goal is to
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