Car Symbol
Within Opokuya's marriage the car is a symbol of the eternal struggle between husband and wife for power in the marriage. Opokuya holds down a busy job as a nurse, with long hours, and has many other errands to complete once she gets off work for the day. She needs the car to complete these but her husband always professes to need it more than she does, even though he does nothing vital or even important, and drives to nowhere in particular, if he drives anywhere at all. This symbolizes many things in their marriage. The car is a symbol of Opokuya's subordination to her husband, and shows that unlike Esi she does not have her own car and is therefore still dependent on her husband's permission to go where she wants. It is a symbol of her husband's control over her, and of her own secondary position in the marriage.
Car Symbol
The car is also a symbol of control. Esi's car is a beaten up rust-bucket that barely gets her from A to B, yet she loves to drive it because it symbolizes her control over her own life, and the fact that only she decides where she is going to go.
When Ali meets Esi for the first time, he is not impressed by her car and offers to drive her home, a symbol of his attempting to get in the driving seat in their burgeoning friendship / relationship, and once again exert control by providing her with better transportation than she has provided for herself.
After they have been married for a while, Ali buys Esi a brand new car, again using a flash gift, a car, to apologize for the way he has been neglecting her. The car is again a symbol of control because with the gift of it Ali is expecting Esi to get over her anger and feelings of abandonment, thereby controlling not only the structure of the relationship but also the way she feels about it.
Professions Symbol
Each of the characters in the novel has a job that symbolizes both their education level and their position in society. For example Esi works as a data analyst for the government, symbolizing her rational personality and her ability to analyze all of the information put in front of her before she makes a decision. Her job also symbolizes her educational level because only someone with a good education would be able to get a good job like this.
Similarly, Ali owns a business, travels around the world and is knowledgeable about many subjects, all symbolizing his intellect, work ethic and success. His job as a travel agent also symbolizes his perpetually itchy feet and his tendency to leave town and morve from place to place, and in his case, woman to woman.
Contrasting with Esi and Ali are Opokuya and Oko. Both work in what are considered "caring professions" - Opokuya is a nurse, Oko a teacher - and this symbolizes their tendency to put their own needs secondary to the needs of others and consequently explains why both end up in unsatisfying marriages.
Travelling Motif
Ali is always traveling, not just from country to country, but from woman to woman, and relationship to relationship. He clearly does not like to stay in one place, or with one person, for very long, and the fact he travels is a huge advantage to him when it comes to having "a girl in every port". His passion for traveling also gives him a worldly, cosmopolitan outlook and this enables him to be more than the confines of the tradition he has been brought up in.
Esi is also a traveller, not quite so worldwide as Ali, but nonetheless she has been to many places which has definitely broadened her horizons. Both characters also show a marked transience in every area of their lives moving from place to place and relationship to relationship. They never seem to stand still.
Tradition Motif
Although Esi is a thoroughly modern woman, the motif of tradition occurs over and over in this novel. Even Esi is an example of it because every narrative that features her also shows why she is considered non-traditional. The older characters in the book seem to be the most traditional, and this also extends to the less well educated characters such as Esi's husband Oko, and her best friend's husband Kubi.
The pressures of tradition are also demonstrated in the novel; there is pressure on Esi to conform to the traditional image of a married woman, giving up herself in order to take care of her husband and children. Esi's mother and grandmother are both traditional women and cannot understand her prioritizing career and education. Ali's family are also initially against his marriage to Esi because they consider her too independent, Throughout the novel independence is pitted against tradition, primarily because most of the Ghanaian traditions seem to involve subordinating women to one degree or another.
