Chapter 3 Summary: The Funeral of Monife
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
Ebun attends the burial of her twenty-five-year-old cousin Monife (Mo) at Ikoyi Cemetery. The bright, rainless weather and the sound of a joyful gángan drumbeat from a nearby funeral clash with her grief. During the ceremony, Ebun’s mother pours soil onto her hand, and Ebun mechanically scatters it over the coffin. Monife’s brother Tolu remains distant from their father, and Ebun interprets his silence as condemnation. After the service, Ebun quickly leaves the cemetery, but her mother has the car keys, forcing her to wait in the heat. The baby kicks hard, and she eventually sits under a palm tree. She reflects that the past ten days since Monife’s death have felt like a millennium. Her mother later helps her into the car and remarks that the service was nice and that Monife felt loved. Ebun silently disagrees, thinking that love is what killed her cousin.
Key Events
- Ebun’s internal fury at the pastor’s phrase “gone too soon”
- The incongruous sunny weather and upbeat music from another funeral
- Ebun scatters soil on the coffin, watched by her wailing mother
- Tolu walks away from the gravesite, stepping carelessly on graves
- Ebun observes Mo’s father accepting condolences while she avoids him
- Ebun waits by the car in the heat, experiencing painful fetal kicks
- She sits under a palm tree, recalling the ten-day ordeal
- Her mother drives them home and offers platitudes; Ebun thinks love caused Mo’s death
Character Development
Ebun is pregnant and physically uncomfortable, but her emotional state is more complex: she feels numb, angry, and guilty. She criticises the pastor, the weather, and the cheerful music, revealing her unwillingness to accept the loss. Her refusal to cry suggests suppressed guilt or anger. The line “there truly was no peace for the wicked” hints that she believes she bears some responsibility for Monife’s fate.
Tolu, Monife’s brother, maintains a deliberate distance from his father throughout the funeral. Ebun reads his behaviour as condemnation—either of himself, his father, or perhaps of Ebun. His silence speaks louder than words.
Ebun’s mother is portrayed as grieving but also eager to impose a comforting narrative. Her statement that the service was nice and that Mo felt loved shows a desire to normalise the tragedy, but Ebun privately rejects this.
Monife’s father is described as “soaking in the sympathy,” which Ebun finds distasteful. She stays out of his way to avoid speaking her mind, implying a strained or hostile relationship.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Weather as emotional dissonance: The cloudless, blazing sun and the gángan drums from a joyful funeral contrast sharply with Ebun’s inner gloom. The natural world refuses to mirror her grief, amplifying her sense of isolation.
- Soil and burial rituals: The act of sprinkling soil on the coffin is mechanical for Ebun—she momentarily forgets what to do—highlighting her detachment from the ceremony and her struggle to process the death.
- The “pine prison”: Ebun’s description of the coffin as a “pine prison” suggests she views Monife as a victim of a cruel confinement, perhaps reflecting her belief that someone (or love) trapped Mo.
- Love as a destructive force: Ebun’s final thought—that love got Monife “buried six feet under”—introduces a central motif of the novel: that affection, care, or intimacy can be lethal. This idea will likely echo through later chapters.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 3 establishes the emotional core of Ebun’s grief and her simmering resentment toward the people and circumstances around Monife’s death. The funeral scene provides concrete details about Monife’s family (her father, brother Tolu, the mother), showing the fractured dynamics that will ripple through the narrative. Most importantly, Ebun’s silent conclusion that “love” killed Monife plants a crucial seed: the reader begins to suspect that Mo’s death was not natural or accidental, but caused by someone close to her. This chapter shifts the story from raw loss to an investigation of guilt, responsibility, and the dark side of family bonds.
Study Questions and Answers
Question 1: Why does Ebun think Tolu’s behaviour at the funeral is “condemnation” rather than grief?
Answer: Ebun notes that Tolu barely spoke to her or her mother and stepped carelessly over graves. She interprets his distance from his father and his silence as an unspoken judgment, possibly of his father’s role in Monife’s death or of Ebun herself. Her mother dismisses it as grief, but Ebun sees it as a more pointed verdict.
Question 2: How does the weather function symbolically in this chapter?
Answer: The sunny, rainless day and the sounds of a joyful funeral contrast sharply with Ebun’s sorrow. She would have preferred dark clouds and thunder to match her mood. The mismatch emphasises her alienation and suggests that the world is indifferent to her loss, or that her grief is somehow out of step with what is expected.
Question 3: What does Ebun mean when she says, “Love was what had gotten Monife buried six feet under”?
Answer: Ebun rejects her mother’s comforting remark that Mo “felt loved.” In her view, it was love—presumably the love of someone in Mo’s intimate circle—that led to her death. This statement hints that Mo was a victim of a violent or fatal act of love, possibly domestic abuse or a relationship gone wrong. It establishes a theme that will be explored throughout the novel.