Rethinking Magic

"Sunday roared, leapt out of his body and charged at the back of the policeman, his paw delivering a fatal blow to the back of the policeman's head. With a rasping cough, Sunday disappeared into the night" (286).

Upon revisiting the time of Sunday's death, I couldn't help but think my assessment of magic in GraceLand had been somewhat off. Perhaps Nigerian culture has less of an emphasis or believe in magic, and Abani was using it more for purposes non-didactic. After all, this is certainly a work of fiction. The scene where Beatrice and the totem jaguar appear before Sunday proves more to be a simple hallucination, and instead a powerful moment of magical realism in the text. To see Sunday spring up from his dead body and kill the policeman in retaliation was rewarding, and the use of the word "paw" indicates that it wasn't Sunday in the normal physical sense, but more of the spirit of Sunday. I took it to be more of a symbol than an actual happening in the story at first, but when Elvis discovers the torn-up head of the policeman, he mentions that it looked like the work of a large animal. This all adds up to a strange break in form, since all of the following story had been realistic. I can't help but question the powers of the wizards and Oye in the story, though it doesn't make a large difference at this point.