Apollo

At first glance, the opening of “Apollo” seems unrelated to the central plotline: Okenwa’s budding infatuation with and eventual betrayal of Raphael. However, these first few paragraphs are crucial to the story’s overall impact. Not only do they provide important context and foreshadowing for what is revealed later, but they also subtly lay the groundwork for two of the story’s major themes: The Different Forms of Guilt and Perception, Transformation, and Loss of Innocence.

In the opening line, Okenwa says that he visits his parents twice a month “like a dutiful son” (1), framing the act as an obligation. This seemingly insignificant comment is important for two reasons. First, it suggests the sort of relationship Okenwa has with his parents. They expect him to play a certain role—in this case, “the dutiful son”—and he does his best to conform. Second, it establishes a key aspect of Okenwa’s character: his deep-seated sense of guilt. He confesses that he probably would not visit his parents so much if he didn’t feel he must “make amends” for never marrying and starting a family—a remark that also foreshadows that Okenwa is gay. Even if his parents accepted his orientation, he could not legally marry a partner of his choice thanks to Nigeria’s anti-gay legislation. Thus, Okenwa’s orientation is deeply tied to his sense of guilt, partly because he feels that he has failed to live up to his parents’ expectations.

This is the first of two key details in the opening paragraphs that the extended flashback will recontextualize. The second is the introduction of Raphael himself, who appears in one of Okenwa’s mother’s stories as a thief recently arrested by the police. Okenwa’s father comments, “It’s not surprising he ended like this [...] He didn’t start well” (8), implying that some flaw in Raphael’s character was apparent from the beginning and led him to become a criminal. However, Okenwa has established that readers should not take his parents’ words at face value. By the story’s conclusion, it is clear that his father’s statement is completely wrong. It was Okenwa’s betrayal of Raphael and Raphael’s ensuing loss of his job that set him on his downward path. This adds another layer to Okenwa’s guilt: Okenwa carries the burden of what he did to Raphael in addition to everything else he feels ashamed of.

The flashback section reveals that this pattern of Okenwa failing to live up to his parents’ expectations has been true for his whole life. His parents want him to follow in their intellectual footsteps, but Okenwa is simply not compatible with that role. He has little interest in books and academic pursuits, confessing, “[R]eading did not do to me what it did to my parents” (14). Okenwa frames this disinterest as an immutable aspect of who he is—much like his orientation—and therefore something that neither his parents nor society could change no matter how much they might want to. Okenwa does his best to conform to his expected role, but when his parents probe him with questions about literature, he senses that his answers are disappointing: “I knew that what I had said was not incorrect but merely ordinary, uncharged with their brand of originality” (14).

His relationship with Raphael offers Okenwa an escape from the stifling pressure that his parents place upon him. When he discovers their mutual love of kung fu movies, Okenwa for the first time feels that he “recognize[s] [him]self in another person” (16). Practicing kung fu with Raphael is an indirect act of rebellion, but it is also natural and unforced, as are his growing romantic feelings toward Raphael. Raphael’s status as lower-class hired help may also make him attractive to Okenwa, as it is a direct contrast to the classy world of badminton and Mateus rosé that his parents occupy: Raphael exists in a sphere vastly different from Okenwa’s, despite living in the same household. Okenwa comes to see Raphael as an all-knowing mentor, looking up to him with awe: “Raphael knew what really mattered; his wisdom lay easy on his skin” (18). When they practice kung fu together, Okenwa treats Raphael as an “experienced master,” and when they watch Bruce Lee films, Okenwa “[sees] the films anew” as Raphael points out certain scenes and actions (18).

After Raphael comes down with Apollo, the power dynamics of their relationship shift. Raphael admits that he can’t bring himself to put the eye drops in his own eyes, and Okenwa finds this unexpected weakness both baffling and amusing: “Raphael, who could disembowel a turkey and lift a full bag of rice, could not drip liquid medicine into his eyes” (44). Okenwa slips into an almost parental role for Raphael, visiting his room every day to administer the eye drops just as his own parents later do for him. Whereas before it Okenwa looked up to Raphael, during these scenes it is Raphael who looks up to Okenwa, literally: “He opened his eyes and looked at me, and on his face shone something wondrous. I had never felt myself the subject of admiration” (51). Paralleling his flipped relationship with his elderly parents in the opening paragraphs, Okenwa here takes on a caretaker role for someone whom he previously saw as an authority figure.

At first glance, this appears to be an equalizing moment between the two boys, deepening the intimacy of their relationship. However, the story implies that there is no true equality between them thanks to their different social classes. Okenwa observes how bare Raphael’s room is compared to the rest of the house—“the bed pushed against the wall, a spindly table, a gray metal box in the corner, which [Okenwa] assume[s] contain[s] all he own[s]” (44). Yet Okenwa doesn’t seem to grasp how Raphael’s class might affect his actions. When Okenwa himself comes down with Apollo, he wants Raphael to visit him despite knowing that his mother has forbidden it:

I wanted to see Raphael, but my mother had banned him from my room, as though he could somehow make my condition worse. I wished that he would come and see me. Surely he could pretend to be putting away a bedsheet, or bringing a bucket to the bathroom. Why didn’t he come? He had not even said sorry to me (69).

Previously, Okenwa’s parents forbade Okenwa from entering Raphael’s room, but he defied them. Because of this, he feels as if Raphael owes it to him to do the same: “I, too, had been asked not to go to his room, and yet I had gone, I had put in his eye drops every day” (83). He doesn’t seem to understand—or perhaps doesn’t want to understand—that Raphael would risk his job in defying Okenwa’s parents’ commands.

Okenwa’s growing resentment of Raphael explodes into rage when he discovers Raphael flirting with Josephine. Okenwa and Raphael’s romantic connection might have seemed mutual, but Josephine’s intrusion suggests that Okenwa was misinterpreting some of Raphael’s actions. While it’s possible Raphael is bi, he obviously is more interested in Josephine—something that Okenwa recognizes right away. Feeling threatened and betrayed, Okenwa immediately asserts power over Raphael, demanding in an “imperious” tone that he bring him food. When he fails to effectively assert his authority in this way, he lashes out by lying to his parents that Raphael pushed him, using his class power to punish Raphael.

As a child, Okenwa knows what the immediate consequences of his lie will be, but he seemingly doesn’t grasp the long-term impact it will have on Raphael’s life. As an adult looking back, Okenwa views his actions in a new light. In her interview with The New Yorker, Adichie says that she is “interested in the regrets we carry from our childhoods, in the idea of ‘what if’ and ‘if only’” (Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “This Week in Fiction: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.” Interview by Willing Davidson, The New Yorker, 6 Apr. 2015). The final lines of “Apollo” drive home the regret that the adult version of Okenwa still carries with him over what he did: “I could have spoken. I could have cut into that silence. I could have said that it was an accident. I could have taken back my lie and left my parents merely to wonder” (92). The result of Okenwa’s silence is the tragic future version of Raphael seen in the opening paragraphs. Although Okenwa was only a child lashing out in heartbreak over The Heartbreak of First Love, his actions’ consequences reverberate throughout Raphael’s life.