Helen Oyoyemi's- The Icarus Girl

The Icarus Girl is a novel by Helen Oyoyemi, which tells the story of Jessamay Harrison, an imaginative, and inquisitive girl of only 8. Her mother is an author who left Nigeria in search of an English education in literature. While studying, she met Jessimay’s father who is from England. Jessimay’s parents are concerned because Jessimay does not play with the children in the neighborhood and struggles with emotional outbursts at school. Whether it is for this reason, or because Jess’s mother wants her to experience Nigeria and her family there, they leave England to go to Nigeria. It is in Nigeria that Jess’s feelings of friendlessness subside, as she and Tilly Tilly cleverly cross each other’s paths and become friends.

Since Jess is a very lonely person, Oyeyemi tries to reveal Jess’s experience of meeting a new friend for the first time. Oyeyemi articulates Jess’s emotions through figurative language. For example, Oyeyemi writes, “it was a peering through good and pretty colored glass, this gladness, this feeling that someone had been around the compound, knowing who she was and wanting to talk to her” (Oyeyemi 50). Oyeyemi’s figurative language makes Jess’s experience more concrete.

Her word choice is exciting because it makes one stop and reflect on the true beauty of colored glass, which can bring such gladness to a person. This metaphor conveys that Jess was feeling the emotions of joy and gladness. Jess felt these colorful emotions because she had never had a close friend before, especially one she really liked. Through Oyeyemi’s metaphor, the reader is able to paint a picture in his or her mind or feel the sensations that Jess was feeling “glad that she had been eager to be friends with somebody for once” (Oyeyemi 50). 

One of the blessings I think I so often forget to count in my life is the beauty and peace within the chapel of the college I attend. Beauty lies within the stained glass windows that escalate up the sides of the chapel. I try to make a point of walking through the chapel in the afternoon just to see the sunlight pouring through the colored glass, reflecting tiny spots of colored light along the shiny wooden pews. I would say that the feeling the colored glass brings me is similar to the joy that Jess feels when she and Tilly Tilly became friends.