"The Danger of a Single Story" - English GCSE Annotations

Pearson Edexcel iGCSE for examinations 2025.

Title - “The Danger of a Single Story”

Emotive noun conveys sense of warning, need for a solution presented.

Whole Text Structure

Speech - story telling format, tells her own stories to convey the importance of storytelling. Anecdotal tone used.

“I’m a storyteller.”

Short emphatic sentence begins speech, draws interest from audience, places herself as an authority on the topic of stories.

“although I think four is probably close to the truth.”

modesty/humility used to create believability in her stories - engages audience

“my poor mother was obligated to read.”

ironic humour, self deprecating - shows Adichie’s emotional intelligence/maturity

“I wrote exactly the kinds of stories…”

adverb emphasises how she was solely influenced by Western literature

“my characters were white and blue-eyed, they played in the snow, they ate apples, and they talked a lot about the weather…”

listing of attributes emphasises the contrast between her lived experience and what she wrote about, shows the power of stories on her perceptions as a child

“we didn’t have snow, we ate mangoes, and we never talked about the weather…”

Antithesis/contrast - shows how her reality is very different from what she has read, ironic humour would also engage the audience

“how impressionable and vulnerable…”

emotive adjectives convey the susceptibility to the ‘single story’

“…particularly as children…”

emotive noun, sense of innocence, pity?

“I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to…”

strong verb - ‘convinced’ - and modal verb ‘had’ emphasise how convinced she was about the nature of stories

“when I discovered African books.”

hyperbolic language emphasises how important these books were to her

“writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye…”

use of concrete examples to illustrate her point, makes message more believable

“girls with skin the colour of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.”

contrasting imagery to stereotypical heroines - link with prior image of ‘white, blue-eyed’ characters in novels.

“They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me.”

emotive, hyperbolic metaphors/idioms convey importance of these stories.

“the unintended consequence…”

included to ensure the audience does not apportion blame or condemn the western authors.

“it saved me from having a single story of what books are”

emotive verb used to link back to the title, saved from danger of lack of representation

“Finish your food! Don’t you know? People like Fide’s family have nothing.”

Rhetorical question and direct speech emphasise this concrete example of a single story

“I was startled. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something.”

short sentence shows shock as she had expected deprivation, shows her prejudice and how she is influenced by the single story.

“how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor.”

repetition of poor and use of strong adjective (‘impossible’) shows effects of single story.

“Their poverty was my single story of them.”

short declarative sentence, crux of the speech, demonstrates her own susceptibility to prejudice.

“tribal music”

direct speech used to display offensive assumption

“when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey.”

uses humour to convey the contrast between assumption and reality, prevents a critical tone

“She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove.”

single line paragraph of trans-literation emphasises deeply offensive message

“she had felt sorry for me even before she saw me… well-meaning pity”

non critical tone show she can empathise with the American, but also demonstrates how prejudice can be pity.

“a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe.”

parallel sentence structure links Africa with idea of catastrophe

“no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.”

anaphoric ascending tricolon, shows how single stories can dehumanise, striking problem

“If I had… if all I knew…”

conditional phrases shows how the writer puts herself in her roommates shoes, understands her (flawed) perspective.

“a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.”

listing of assumptions created by ‘popular’ stories - contrast between natural world and human world

“I would see Africans in the same way that I, as a child, had seen Fide’s family.”

connects roommates prejudice to her own

“I too am just as guilty”

ethos - we believe and trust Aidiche

“endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing.”

hyperbolic tricolon, shows complete immersion in these stories, combined with use of colloquial language, reflecting language often used against immigrants, but which might also be used to cast doubt on these kinds of stories?

“going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing.”

these verbs suggest honest work and community - contrast with prior ‘single story’

“And then, I was overwhelmed with shame.”

short emotive sentence, realises her prejudice

“so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing”

dehumanising language and use of strong verb ‘immersed’ shows power of single story

“the abject immigrant”

single tense, all Mexicans are the same? surprising - she is an immigrant herself, shows power of single story

“I had bought into the single story of Mexicans”

active tense + idiom - single story is a choice?

“that is how to create a single story,”

emphasises that people make these stories - agenda behind them

“as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again”

ascending tricolon shows immersion in single story, dehumanising nature of single story also reflected here

“Stories have been used to dispossess and malign, but stories can also be used to empower and humanise.”

antithesis shows the necessity of presenting both sides of the story

“The American writer Alice Walker…”

reference to black writer synonymous with civil rights, lends credibility to statements

“They sat around, reading the book themselves, listening to me read the book, and a kind of paradise was regained.”

quotation from a reliable source/authority - demonstrates how one can combat the single story

“when we reject the single story”

solution - this is always possible, we can avoid falling victim to this harmful idea

“there is never”

intensifier - emphasises final statement of solution

“we regain a kind of paradise”

hyperbolic language - last word of speech ends with hope, echoing the words of Alice Walker