Uses And Examples of Flashbacks In African Fiction

Have you been asked to talk about your most embarrassing moment and had to pause to recall one such moment? When you’d meet a new friend and the questions begin. What’s your favourite colour? How many siblings do you have? Tell me about your most embarrassing moment.

I could never give any satisfactory answer to that question, not because I didn’t fall in public now and then, but because I’ve always had a high threshold for embarrassment. Whenever I found something worthy of tagging ‘embarrassing’, I would recount the story with as much detail as possible, taking the listener (or reader, depending on our chosen mode of communication) on a journey.

This is what writers call a flashback. That journey into the past.

A flashback is a narrative technique in which the author breaks the forward trajectory of the story by taking the reader out of the present and into the past.

It is a scene that takes place before a story begins or before the current scene occurs that is brought into the present story to give a reason for the happenings in the story.

It is a jump into the past.

Flashbacks can be used to convey information.

Flashbacks convey information about a character’s background to show us why the character acts or thinks the way they do. This is because the past affects the present. Since it isn’t practical to start a story from odd but pivotal points in the past just because of this fact, flashbacks are used to give us a better understanding of the present story. An example of a flashback that conveys information about a character is in chapter one of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

Chapter one introduces Okonkwo to us as a well-respected and hardworking man who “had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had had no patience with his father”.

In the next paragraph, we are softly introduced to his father in what I call a passive flashback (because it sounds like we’re being told the story).

“Unoka, for that was his father’s name, had died ten years ago. In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow. If any money came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm-wine, called round his neighbours and made merry. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man’s mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one’s lifetime. Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbour some money, from a few cowries to quite substantial amounts.”

To further cement who Unoka was, Achebe gives us a scene that’s more active than the flashback leading to it. In this scene, we can see and hear Unoka in the flesh, and it’s easier to believe we are with him in that very moment though it happened decades ago.

“Look at that wall,” he said, pointing at the far wall of his hut, which was rubbed with red earth so that it shone. “Look at those lines of chalk,” and Okoye saw groups of short perpendicular lines drawn in chalk. There were five groups, and the smallest group had ten lines. Unoka had a sense of the dramatic and so he allowed a pause, in which he took a pinch of snuff and sneezed noisily, and then he continued: “Each group there represents a debt to someone, and each stroke is one hundred cowries. You see, I owe that man a thousand cowries. But he has not come to wake me up in the morning for it. I shall pay you, but not today. Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them. I shall pay my big debts first.” And he took another pinch of snuff, as if that was paying the big debts first. Okoye rolled his goatskin and departed.

Achebe’s use of flashback makes us understand why Okonkwo is so desperate to work and make a name for himself: he does not want to be a failure like his father. Sometimes, in a bid to explain why a character is the way they are, a writer might dump all their backstory in the current story. This is a rookie mistake, and a tell that the story may benefit from starting at an earlier point or that the character needs to be built better.

By flashing back to an event, maybe one that is at odds with what we’ve come to know of the story or of a character, authors build suspense and intrigue. These sorts of flashbacks with no apparent bridge to the present can make readers try to play detective to put two and two together and in doing so, continue to read to get closure.

This works extremely well in detective stories where hiding things is just as important as finding them.

An example of this type of flashback is Chinua Achebe’s consistent use of flashback in the novel No Longer At Ease. In this novel, we begin with a court case and go through a series of flashbacks explaining the events that led to that opening chapter.

What keeps the readers interested, at least in the beginning, is the intrigue. What did he do? Why is he being tried? For corruption? But in just page 1, we see that some people at his trial have engaged in acts of corruption to even be there. Why should we see it a mercy to him that he recently lost his mother and his fiancée?

These questions keep readers turning the pages because they know they would find the answers the more they flip.

Stories usually go from A to B to C the end. With flashbacks, authors can turn this sequence on its head and go from B to A to C if they wished. If everything in a story happened strictly chronologically, the story might end up flat.

Flashbacks bring drama from the past or just information to understand the present better, and these make for an exciting read.

Take for example Damilare Kuku’s use of flashback in Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow. We get to relate with Hassana and Aunty Jummai (and the rest of the characters, honestly) by digging into their backstories.

We see how the sisters’ experiences, trauma, and decisions have shaped who they’ve become as well as shaped their relationship—Hassana’s refusal to give Aunty Jummai any love after so many years of begging for her sister.

The story starts in the present, with Temi’s big reveal, but doesn’t stay there long, and instead, dives into the decisions and experiences that lead to this very declaration and give weight to the responses that follow it. These flashbacks were necessary for our thorough enjoyment of the story and made the story verse richer.

Like with poems and more lyrical forms of prose that make use of repetition for musicality and emphasis, flashbacks can also be used to draw our attention back to something important. It could be subtle like in No Longer At Ease when the story ends with a similar sentiment to how it began—people wondering why the protagonist did what he did; or overt like in Roko ye Ntsho by N.S. Puleng.

In Roko ye Ntsho, Kobi really wants to go to the university though his wife is against it. At the end of a conversation about this, he says ‘Those people you are paying great attention to will be dumb the day I graduate, wearing the black gown of academic achievement.’

Everything about this is normal—the desire to go to school, the hope for that graduation gown—so, we don’t pay too much attention. At the end of the story though, the narrator laments ‘My countrymen, look at the sad story; the black gown which the deceased cried out for, now worn by Mmalehu, his wife.’

Immediately, we remember his statement and suddenly, what was normal becomes something profound. He wanted to wear a black gown, but in the end, it is his grieving wife who wears one—the mourning kind.

Flashbacks are powerful narrative tools when used right. They add flavour to the story, introduce important people or concepts, explain why things are the way they are, and help in the lyricism of a story. And what’s more? This technique has been used by African fiction writers, like we say over here, since nineteen basasa.