Precarious Manhood in Zadie Smith's 'Embassy of Cambodia'

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Göttingen (Englisches Seminar), course: Black British Fiction, language: English, abstract: The following term paper deals with the question in how far the theory of precarious manhood can be applied to novel 'Embassy of Cambodia' by Zadie Smith, that was first published in 2013. As the main female character Fatou, a woman from Ivory Coast, who works as a live-in maid with Pakistani family, the Derawals, in a working-class suburb of London, is a very strong character, who, apart from her gender, does not show many traits of character that are stereotypically female, the implications of the theory of precarious manhood suggest, that a male character behaves accordingly next to a strong femine hero. Therefore, the main goal of this term paper is to analyse in how far the main male character, Andrew Okonkwo, complies with this theory in his behavior and actions. Although there are also other male characters, for example Fatou's father, Mr. Derawal, Faizul Derawal, the man from Russia and several other miscellaneous male persons, but due to the limitations of this term paper and the fact that all other characters do not have enough appearances or are even mentioned only once, this paper is limited to an analysis of Andrew Okonkwo. In addition to that the behaviour of the other male characters largely could only be only be inferred by interpreting the situation they are living in or making assumptions, that go beyond what is written in the book. At first, the term paper gives a brief overview about the terms masculinity and manhood and the theory of precarious manhood is introduced. Later, the main male character in the novel is described and his behaviour is being analysed according to being stereotypically male and compliant to the theory of precarious manhood. In the conclusion, the author summarises the findings and also adresses topics for potential further research.