The Icarus Girl

“Wuraola sounded like another person. Not her at all. Should she answer to this name, and by doing so steal the identity of someone who belonged here?”

Names play a significant role throughout the text. When Jess’s grandfather first calls her by her Yoruba name, Jess is uncomfortable, because she has never been called by this name before. Jess’s Yoruba name represents Jess’s Nigerian heritage, which she will start to explore more deeply as the novel progresses.

“Words describing white people, white things, every single story spun out in some place where WE don’t exist! It has no value; in my eyes, it is to confuse.”

Jess’s grandfather explains to Jess why he doesn’t agree with her mother’s choice to study English at university and become a writer.

“I don’t know who your father is; I don’t know his people, I don’t know what his name means and where it comes from. Harrison—what does that mean, Harry’s son? Harris’s son? Now that Oyegbebi—it means ‘kingship lives here.’”

Jess’s grandfather’s family, as well as his Nigerian heritage, are very important to him. Here, he explains to Jess the significance of his family’s name. Names are an important motif throughout the text that can help illustrate a character’s identity.

“But she couldn’t tell them. Because they were boys, because they were her cousins, because they belonged here and she didn’t? She didn’t know.”

After Jess sees her name written in dust in the Boys’ Quarters, she considers telling her cousins, but decides not to for reasons she doesn’t understand. Jess feels like her cousins belong in Nigeria more than she does, because they grew up there. Jess struggles to fit in and understand her place within her mother’s side of the family.

“Jessy? The second time. This was the second time that someone had called her something that she had never been called by anyone before. First Wuraola, now Jessy. She’d always been Jess or Jessamy, never a halfway thing like Jessy.”

Once again, Jess is given a new name. As Jess grows closer to TillyTilly, she will start to feel pulled between different parts of her identity. This moment foreshadows the struggles Jess will have with herself and her identity as the novel progresses.

“‘You’re being really mean, Titiola,’ she said firmly, not caring that she had pronounced it in an overly English way. Two could be mean.”

Jess originally comes up with the nickname TillyTilly because she can’t pronounce Titiola with the proper accent. Here, Jess intentionally pronounces Titiola incorrectly because she knows it bothers TillyTilly. Names and identity are important to TillyTilly as well.

“Once you let people know anything about what you think, that’s it, you’re dead. Then they’ll be jumping around in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them, yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons.”

As Jess grows closer to TillyTilly and begins having strange visions and nightmares, she has trouble sharing her thoughts, visions, and dreams with others. Jess is a thoughtful, introverted child, but it becomes difficult and harmful for Jess to keep all her secrets to herself.

“It seemed that Beth, who was far and away her favourite character in the book, was now […] kind of mean. She stayed in the house all the time and she didn’t like anybody, and she was always hiding from people and watching them and feeling jealous because they were healthy and she wasn’t.”

Jess tries to read the copy of Little Women that TillyTilly gave her, but she finds her favorite character, Beth, acting meaner than she remembers. This moment foreshadows how Jess will start to misbehave and the mental health problems that Jess will endure. This moment also foreshadows the negative impact TillyTilly will start to have on Jess’s life.

“Why couldn’t things stop changing around so that she wouldn’t feel as if she should love her mother one minute and hate her the next? It was too confusing.”

Jess has a difficult relationship with her mother throughout the novel. Jess’s mother sometimes hits her or uses physical punishments as a disciplinary measure. However, Jess’s mother also loves her very much. Here, Jess struggles with her relationship with her mother.

“TillyTilly, there’s something about Dulcie and Tunde and even the others, even Colleen, that’s too different from me. It makes me […] weird. I don’t want to be weird and always thinking weird things and being scared.”

This is the first instance in which Jess explains explicitly that she feels different than her peers, and that she doesn’t like feeling different than everyone else. It is evident here that Jess is really struggling with her feelings of fear and sadness and wants to get better.

Ever since she had come back from Nigeria, she felt as if she was becoming different, becoming stronger, becoming more like Tilly.”

Before, Jess was quiet and introverted, but mostly well behaved. But after meeting TillyTilly in Nigeria, Jess speaks out and misbehaves more frequently. Here, Jess acknowledges her own odd change in behavior and TillyTilly’s influence.

“Jess began to get the feeling that had crept up on her before that this was either not Tilly or a different TillyTilly from the one that she had first met in Nigeria. But it was only a momentary sensation.”

In Nigeria, TillyTilly had seemed like Jess’s friend, but in England, Jess starts to notice the ways in which TillyTilly can be mean or cause trouble. TillyTilly is still a mysterious character, but Jess is starting to realize that she may not be as good a friend as Jess originally thought.

“Is TillyTilly […] real? All she knew, as Trish began talking and calling her other Year Five friends over, was that even if TillyTilly wasn’t real, if it was a choice between there being just her and Tilly or her and real people, she’d much, much rather have Tilly.”

At the park, Jess starts to consider the possibility that TillyTilly is simply her imagination. However, Jess still struggles to fit in with her classmates, which can help explain why she keeps returning to TillyTilly.

“On the telephone to Nigeria, Jess was seized by the fear that it wasn’t Aunty Funke she was talking to, but some thin, winding spirit that had intercepted the call, taking on her aunty’s accent and tone of voice, turning every sentence into a shrill cleaving of the nerves.”

Jess has a big imagination that often causes her to become scared. This moment also represents the influence that Jess’s nightmares about the long-armed woman, and other strange visions, are having on her everyday life.

“‘We’re twins to each other now,’ TillyTilly whispered fiercely, hugging Jess again […] ‘We’ve got to look after each other. We’re twins, best friends.’”

TillyTilly says these words to Jess right after telling Jess about Jess’s twin sister, Fern, who died when she was a baby. This can help explain the strange but strong connection that Jess and TillyTilly share.

“Three worlds! Jess lives in three worlds. She lives in this world, and she lives in the spirit world, and she lives in the Bush. She’s abiku, she always would have known! The spirits tell her things. Fern tells her things. We should’ve […] we should’ve d-d-done ibeji carving for her!”

Jess overhears her mother say these words to her father after Jess reveals that she knows about Fern. This passage helps explain some of the Yoruba folklore surrounding twins, as well as Jess’s mother’s own spiritual beliefs.

“Jess blinked. It was incredible that her mother could really believe that a mother’s dreams, a mother’s fears, were the same as her child’s, as if these things could be passed on in the same way as her frizzy hair had been, or the shape of her nose.”

Jess and her mother have difficulty understanding and relating to one another throughout the novel. This moment helps illustrate how lonely and misunderstood Jess feels. Despite Jess’s mother’s efforts, she doesn’t really understand what Jess is thinking or experiencing.

“In the old days in Nigeria, people were kind of scared of twins—some people still are. Traditionally, twins are supposed to live in, um, three worlds: this one, the spirit world, and the Bush, which is a sort of wilderness of the mind.”

Jess’s mother continues to explain some of the Nigerian folklore about twins. The way Jess’s mother describes the Bush could help explain some of the visions Jess experiences in her dreams or when playing with TillyTilly.

“What would happen without TillyTilly, and where, now, would Jess see something of herself?”

Even though Jess knows TillyTilly is trouble, she feels connected to TillyTilly because TillyTilly is her friend, and TillyTilly is one of the only people who understands Jess. When TillyTilly appears ill, Jess is suddenly frightened at the thought of losing TillyTilly.

“Jess, moving rapidly towards the bathroom door again, was trying to reconcile this Tilly with Tilly-who-was-ill. She’d changed again: two Tillys, nice Tilly, nasty Tilly, TillyTilly.”

TillyTilly’s character is never fully explained. Is she real, or is she a figment of Jess’s imagination? Here, Jess has trouble separating herself from TillyTilly and seeing TillyTilly for who she truly is.

“(I wasn’t pretending to be someone else; it was TillyTilly dragging secret things out of me like she sometimes does. I didn’t choose TillyTilly, I just couldn’t say Titiola right. Really, truly, please believe me.)”

After TillyTilly causes damage in Jess’s life, Jess struggles to explain to the adults that it’s TillyTilly’s fault. Jess is recognizing the dangerous affect that TillyTilly can have on the people she cares about.

“It was as if TillyTilly had a special sharp knife that cut people on the inside so that they collapsed into themselves and couldn’t ever get back out.”

When Jess’s father becomes inexplicably sick, Jess is convinced that it is because TillyTilly used her magic powers to make him ill. This passage describes the way Jess imagines TillyTilly made her father lethargic and depressed, but it could also explain the effect TillyTilly has had on Jess. Jess has been struggling emotionally since they met.

“When someone dies, it’s a special thing, almost secret. If someone dies badly or too young, we say that their enemy has died. There is no way to say these things directly in English. It’s a bad thing for you to have lost your sister. She’s half of yourself.”

Jess’s grandfather speaks these words to Jess during her second trip to Nigeria. This passage helps explains some of her grandfather’s personal beliefs, influenced by his Nigerian culture. It can also help explain why Jess has been struggling so much emotionally since finding out about her deceased twin sister, Fern.