Sarah’s Middle finger

settled and help Andrew to get his papers done so that everyone can know about the oil conflicts that had happened.

B. The Symbols Related in The Other Hand.

In this section, the writer identifies and explains the symbols used by the author in the novel using the theory of symbols and how to identify them. This novel depicts multiple ideas that embody the reader with symbols that could be identified by multiple aspects.

1. Sarah’s Middle finger

According to Kennedy and Gioia, a symbol is identified by the number of repeats by the author throughout the story 1999: 219. The first symbol that is mentioned quite a few times in the novel is Sarah‟s middle finger. As Chevalie and Gheerbrant explains in their book Dictionary of Symbols, a the middle finger symbolizes death. The long finger or the middle finger, is the only visible portion of the dead person‟s body. The Dogon‟s say that „by the help of this finger that the dead speak with the living‟ 1994: 376. When O‟Rourke was at the beach with her husband in Nigeria, the incident where she had to cut her finger off happened. Firstly her husband was intimidated by the hunters to order save Little Bee and Nrikula‟s life; he would have to cut his middle finger off. “White man been giving me this finger all my life. Today you can give it me to keep. Now cut off your midd le finger mister and give it me.” pg.294 The hunters only wanted the middle finger to keep because they had always faced white men throwing their middle fingers up in the air to them like they were not meaningful. The Hunter sees Andrew as a typical white man who has attitude and money because of how Andrew had reacted to the hunters by offering them money. The hunter looked at Andrew as a white man who does not help Nigeria but want to take Nigeria from them. If the Hunter took the middle finger off Andrew to keep, the Hunter would be satisfied in taking a finger which represents hate and underestimation that was oppressed to him by white men all these years. But Andrew failed the attempt to cut his finger and instead O‟Rourke did it herself. As soon as the Hunter received the middle finger off O‟Rourke, the Hunter told them that it had only meant to save one person‟s life only and that was Little Bee. Nrikula, Little Bee‟s sister was then raped and killed by the Hunter as soon as O‟Rourke and Andrew left the beach. This middle finger that the Hunter took has a connection to the explanation above about the meaning of the middle finger. O‟Rourke‟s middle finger had meant the death of Little Bee‟s sister. The only souvenir I have of that first meeting is an absence where the middle finger used to be. The amputation is quite clean. In place of my finger is a stump, a phantom digit that used to be responsible for the E, D and C keys on my laptop pg. 36. As Andrew failed the attempt, O‟Rourke had succeeded to cut her own finger because she knew that bailing out was not a choice. Andrew and O‟Rourke‟s trip to Nigeria was supposed to make things better between their relationship and all O‟Rourke had was a middle finger. O‟Rourke was disappointed at Andrew because he did not succeed to save Little Bee or O‟Rourke‟s life. It pressured Andrew himself to fail in cutting his finger because he knew that O‟Rourke had seen him even weaker. O‟Rourke had missed the presence of her middle finger because she could not do much without it. Most of her time she would be typing for her magazine, but she spent less time she had with her finger there than without because it took longer to type. The missing finger had slowed down her work, but she had to get used to having no finger at all. All there was left there were memories of what happened in Nigeria. As Kennedy and Gioia mentions in their book, an image that has acquired symbolic resonance in the course of the story will have associations to suggest as something else 1995: 219, the finger in this case can refer to something else. The finger had reminded O‟Rourke about the incident and that all this time it had made her weak because she kept on looking back to what had already happened. I pressed my left hand against the window-pane and stared at the stump of my lost finger. „I don‟t think I can just continue to deny what happened. I don‟t think I‟ll be able to‟. pg. 128 The quotation above shows that when O‟Rourke looks at her finger, it had reminded her of the horror that happened in Nigeria. For 2 years she had it missing and had claimed to people that it was just a silly skating accident that had happened. O‟Rourke had never told anybody the real truth about her finger. O‟Rourke thought it was about time to face the reality and look back to what had happened to her finger at the beach no matter how much Lawrence would tell her not to. O‟Rourke had the confidence in taking the machete off Andrew and cut her own finger off because she knew that the situation was going to better than the hunters killing Little Bee. The finger represents courage for the not denying what happened in Nigeria. It was time to take a new start because she knew that a mark would only leave sad memories and never would fix them. I arranged my fingers underneath hers, so that the only one of my fingers you could see was the one that was missing from Sarah‟s hand. I saw how it could be. I saw how we could make a life again. I know it was crazy to think it but my heart was pounding, pounding, pounding pg. 211 The quotation above shows that finger symbolizes hope to both O‟Rourke and Little Bee. Whether O‟Rourke had lost a finger and had given bad memories about death in Nigeria that lead to her disappointment to Andrew bailing out in cutting his own finger, Lit tle Bee showed hope to O‟Rourke with her own complete hand. As Brown explains in Dictionary of Symbolism “The hand is the “tool of tools”. In general it is strength, power, and protection” www.umich.edu . As Little Bee placed her hand underneath O‟Rourke‟s hand, O‟Rourke‟s middle finger was filled by the presence of Bee‟s finger. Bee showed that something missing can be replaced by something new and better. Little Bee always believed that a mark on somebody does not show weakness but it showed that somebody survived in a situation. The finger that was taken by the hunter in Nigeria was not something to be ashamed off and hold up everything in life, but instead there was wisdom there to show that they had lived until toda y. The finger had meant so much to O‟Rourke, but she realized and understood that she was not going to make her life more torturous than it was before as the finger had reminded her of death. O‟Rourke realized she had protection from Bee and that they both can gain power with each other ful filling each other‟s weaknesses.

2. Little Bee