In the story “Apollo” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, we see the author exploring and comparing the lenses of childhood with adulthood to explore how relationships take shape and develop over time as the character that narrates the story, Okenwa, feels the pressure of parental expectations, yet complicates his character to include interaction with Raphael, a houseboy of another social class.

Adichie introduces an undercurrent of attraction between Okenwa and Raphael from his recounting of their experiences together and perhaps suggest how this unlikely relationship stemmed from Okenwa’s desire to disobey and go behind his parent’s back. His interactions with Raphael are almost an escape from the traditional expectations of academic excellence in African families in the 1900s, and although the theme of family connection is quite strong at the start when he is an adult, we gain insight in how he viewed his parents as harsh and strict when he was a child. This represent’s the author’s choice to structure the story in two parts; the present the past. Both parts deal with similar themes, but for me, it is the idea of the lenses, that he views issues differently now than he used to, yet his guilt and revelation about his lie about Raphael allow us to learn something from earlier on in the story right at the end, and this does not follow a traditional story structure.

The cultural reference of Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies reveal how this character has tried to break out of conventional stereotypes and expand out into the rest of the world, and it represents the start of his branching out from conforming to traditional Nigerian beliefs to become more independent in his thoughts are perhaps become more Westernized. We can see this when through his condemnatory thoughts of his parents’ stories and his expectation for supernatural elements within their descriptions, which suggests that he does not believe in these ideas.

Although the story is quite plot-driven, we do see character development, but it is interesting how the author uses flashbacks to reverse traditional character development to explore themes of relationships and how they evolve and naturally erode over time.