What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky

This futuristic tale examines the theme of How Privilege and Suffering Shape Perception, asking readers to explore questions of humanity and grief. The world of this story has experienced catastrophic environmental events that reforged political entities. However, former superpowers did not disappear; they either formed new though unequal alliances, such as Biafra-Brittania, or forcefully took over former colonies or allies, such as the French in Senegal. Likewise, societies remain internally stratified along class lines. In Biafra-Brittania, people bear even tattoos identifying their class, suggesting that inequality has actually become more entrenched. This world-building underscores that dynamics of power, class, and the aftermath of rapacious colonialism are still very much a part of Arimah’s fictional world.

The apparent intractability of these social ills is all the more pronounced when juxtaposed with the other major speculative element of the story: the miraculous Furcal’s Formula. This formula has enabled humans to do all kinds of fantastical things, but it has not “solved” class inequality, imperialism, etc., suggesting institutions lack the will to address such problems. To underscore this point, the story immediately introduces doubt about the formula’s efficacy by recounting the story of a man who uses it to fly but fails.

The failed flight foreshadows the limitations of things like Nneoma’s griefwork, but the practical consequences of such work—e.g., the tendency of grief workers to consume themselves, as Kioni seems to have begun to do. Kioni’s fate underscores the inadequacy of the formula’s promise in the face of the mass traumas of environmental devastation, economic exploitation, and genocide: “Ten thousand traumas in her psyche, squeezing past each other, vying for the attention of their host. What would happen if you couldn’t forget, if every emotion from every person whose grief you’d eaten came back up?” (173). This is precisely why Nneoma would rather not deal with the trauma of the victims of genocide, war, or extreme oppression. Her clientele is wealthy, and their grief tends to be on the scale of losing a child, as opposed to losing entire communities or experiencing unrelenting daily brutality. Her political disengagement is clear when she buys a sandwich made with French bread: “The French didn’t get money directly, yet she couldn’t stop feeling like she was funding the idea of them” (157). Still, she eats the bread, feeling just a “twinge of guilt” (157). Her activism does no more than her work to address the root causes of suffering; she feels guilty but does not change her actions.

Though Nneoma is in a position of relative privilege and comfort, the story does not deny that she has suffered. Nneoma and her father are deeply affected by her mother’s death, with her father “in full lament, listing to the side of ruin. How could Nneoma tell him that she couldn’t even look at him without being broken by it?” (167). However, the story suggests that Nneoma nurses her sorrow, using it as an excuse for avoiding the larger, uglier issues in the world. Nneoma’s ex made such an accusation when they broke up, calling her “a spoiled rich girl who thought her pain was more important than it actually was” (173).

This makes Nneoma’s exchange with the critical student all the more ironic. In response to the idea that suffering is an integral part of human experience, she responds that the boy’s father “and those people protesting outside have no concept of what real pain is” and are therefore in no position to judge (164). However, Nneoma too lacks real perspective. When she eats the Senegalese girl’s trauma, she gets a taste of what all-encompassing grief can be, but it is only in her final confrontation with Kioni that she recognizes how “pale” her father’s grief is compared to all the suffering in the world. Notably, this is her last coherent thought before she loses herself entirely.