Saving Mr Ugwu
The short story „Saving Mr. Ugwu“ is written by Lin Anderson in 2012. The main character is Mr. Ugwu, a black man, but he feels like he is a white western man. The main plot is about him and the changes in his life. The story deals with equality and different cultures.
Mr. Ugwu is the main character and the story is from a third person narrator, with focus on Mr. Ugwu. He is a black guy, but he feels as a white man. He and his family live in the bush in Nigeria. He belongs to the Christian Igbos, this one of the biggest tribes in Nigeria. His family moved from the biggest city Lagos, what also was the capital in Nigeria until 1991, to the bush in Nigeria, because of Mr. Ugwu’s job. Mr. Ugwu doesn’t think well about the bush, but he reminds himself every time that the company has been good to him, so he would do whatever it takes to keep his job. He doesn’t feels that the bush is his home, and he wants to go back to Lagos. Every time it rains he feels a bit like he is “home”, he probably thinks about Lagos. Mr. Ugwu is not really happy with his life, “he becomes angry. Angry at the Hausa, angry at his wife, angry at his Baturi neighbour, all of whom treat him like a dog.” In this quote from the text can you see that Mr. Ugwu isn’t really happy with his life, although he have a good position in his job, and earned good money even though that he wasn’t white.
An important thing in the story is the setting, specially the garden at the Ugwu family’s house. In the beginning Mr. Ugwu says that he hopes that it will begin to rain, because the garden needs it. This could be a symbol of how hard black people have it in his country. Even if they try their best they still need help from someone else to achieve what they deserve, in this case it’s the rain. The garden is really important for the Ugwu family. It is for them a big symbol that they are something