Apollo

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 2015

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Character Analysis

Okenwa

Okenwa is the narrator and protagonist; he is a young, upper-middle-class man at the time the story begins and a 12-year-old child during the principal narrative action. His narrative voice is notable for its guilt, which intersects with a transactional view of relationships. He sees the act of caring for someone as an obligation rather than something done purely out of selfless love. As an adult, he takes care of his parents in their old age, but only because he feels he must “make amends.” As a child, he feels embarrassed and guilty about letting his parents care for him when he’s sick, so he tries to “will [him]self to get well quickly, to free them” (67). This is likely projection on his part. Okenwa sees himself as a burden on his parents, someone they are disappointed in and yet obligated to take care of—an attitude that stems from Okenwa’s insecurity. As a preteen first discovering his orientation in a culture that is deeply hostile to gay men, Okenwa has internalized deep shame.

In Okenwa’s relationship with Raphael, Okenwa feels free to be himself for the first time. Escaping the constant pressure of his parents’ expectations, he can enjoy kung fu openly and without embarrassment. Kung fu thus becomes a symbol of Okenwa’s attraction to men, which also goes against what his parents expect of him. When Okenwa helps Raphael with his eye drops, there is at first no sense of anything transactional about it. He helps Raphael because he cares about him and enjoys his company.

However, once Okenwa comes down with Apollo himself, he reverts to viewing caretaking as a transaction. He expects that Raphael will visit him just as he did for Raphael and grows bitter when he doesn’t. He also expects that Raphael will apologize for giving him the Apollo, even though it was Okenwa’s choice to go into Raphael’s room. Sheltered and somewhat spoiled by his class status, Okenwa feels entitled to Raphael’s affection and becomes angry when he doesn’t get it. This is the beginning of the “widening crack” between them, which is only exacerbated when Okenwa sees Raphael flirting with Josephine. Okenwa takes this as a deep betrayal of trust, and his instinctive response is to betray Raphael in turn. As an adult, Okenwa clearly regrets this moment of childish vindictiveness: The one person who offered Okenwa freedom from his internalized shame has become another source of guilt.

Raphael

Raphael is something of a mystery throughout the story. He is first introduced as a criminal who was always destined to go down a dark path, but in the flashback sections he appears to be a kind, hardworking, ordinary boy—if a bit overconfident. With Okenwa, he takes on an authoritative role despite his lower social class. At times, he acts the part of a wise martial arts expert: “[H]e told me to suck in my belly, to keep my legs straight and my fingers precise. He taught me to breathe” (17). When the boys watch Bruce Lee films together, Raphael draws Okenwa’s attention to the techniques on display: “Through his eyes, I saw the films anew; some moves that I had thought merely competent became luminous when he said ‘Watch it!’” (18). Raphael is seemingly not much older than Okenwa and has the same amount of martial arts experience that Okenwa has—namely, none. However, because Raphael speaks and acts with confidence, through Okenwa’s admiring eyes he appears to know everything.

Since the story is told from Okenwa’s point of view, it is never fully clear how Raphael sees their relationship. During the scenes in Raphael’s room, there seems to be an intimate emotional connection between the two boys: “[W]e said things that we had said before, but in the quiet of his room they felt like secrets. Our voices were low, almost hushed. His body’s warmth cast warmth over me” (54). While Okenwa perceives this intimacy as a sign of romantic connection, it’s not clear that Raphael does; Raphael instructs and corrects Okenwa as an older brother might, and when Okenwa sees Raphael talking with Josephine, Raphael’s body language is markedly different than it ever was with Okenwa. Instead of his usual cool confidence, he is awkward and shy, and he is dismissive of Okenwa while she is present. Although Raphael might have felt a strong emotional connection to Okenwa, it was only Okenwa’s infatuation with him that led him to interpret Raphael’s behavior as romantic. Okenwa’s retaliation—getting Raphael fired—is strongly implied to have altered the course of Raphael’s life, making Okenwa partially responsible for Raphael’s later criminal activities.

Okenwa’s Parents

There are two versions of Okenwa’s parents: the elderly retirees in the opening paragraphs, and the younger professionals in the flashback. Okenwa juxtaposes these two versions against one another, establishing the important theme of Perception, Transformation, and Loss of Innocence. In their old age, they have “shrunk” and “have a tendency to stoop” (1). They watch Animal Planet and tell “incredible stories” with complete credulity, supporting each other’s unbelievable claims. In contrast, the younger versions of his parents are competitive, passionate, cultured, and impatient with those who do not share their intellectual interests; they spend their time reading to each other, playing badminton, and drinking Mateus rosé. Their transformation is the inverse of Raphael’s: While Okenwa’s parents regress from worldly intellectuals into a state of childlike innocence, Raphael transforms from an innocent young boy into a thief caught up in mob violence.

Though the two versions of Okenwa’s parents seem very different from each other, they are a consistent and primary source of Okenwa’s internalized shame. In their old age, he takes extra care of them to apologize for not giving them grandchildren—an indirect apology for his orientation. In his childhood, they are dominating forces in his life, pressuring him to fit ideals that he cannot live up to. This pressure is one of the key ingredients in Okenwa’s attraction to Raphael, as he experiences a sense of freedom and authenticity with Raphael that he can’t show in front of his parents.

As a child, Okenwa often feels invisible to his parents. He says they “did not quite notice when [he] came and went” and that the books they put in his room “made [his] stay feel transient, as though [he] were not quite where [he] was supposed to be” (14). When his friendship with Raphael starts to develop, he says his parents “did not notice” (22). However, everything readers learn of Okenwa’s parents is filtered through Okenwa’s eyes and may not necessarily be accurate. He portrays them as distant and inattentive, but when he catches Apollo, his parents show a great deal of care for him, providing him with plentiful medicine and freshly peeled oranges; they also dutifully administer his eye drops every day. Instead of appreciating this, Okenwa focuses on the fact that “they did not know how well [he] could put in the drops [him]self” (68). He also reveals that when he once caught malaria, his parents sat by his side through the sickness. Once again, instead of recognizing this as a sign of how much they care about him, Okenwa projects his insecurities onto them and feels he must “get well quickly, to free them” (67). Just as Okenwa sees affection in Raphael that may not be there, he fails to recognize his parents’ affection for him when they do show it.