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Victor Barrera
Dr. Doreen Thierauf
ENG 201
December 2, 2019
Materialism: “Mercy´s worst gift”
The famous short story, “Two Sisters” by Ama Ata Aidoo depicts the story of a girl named
Mercy who is a younger sister of two and whose thoughts were associated with a society that
encourages women to take advantage of powerful men. In other words, Mercy would rather have
someone to make her happy with material goods instead of real love. I explain the different ways
of how materialism can affect a woman´s life and the things that a materialist person can do, like
having sex with men to obtain gifts. This is important because it can help people to be aware of
what happened in societies; men were taught to see women as an object and this behavior leads to
materialism. First, I will discuss the case of Mercy and her desire for fancy cars. Then, I will show
the things that Mercy does to obtain material gifts. Later, I will show why Mercy is unhappy and
changes her mind about how she sees things. In the conclusion I will make a final analysis about
materialism, how it affects Mercy´s life. Materialism is a problem in Mercy´s life and in general
because she´s only thinking at herself as a person whose value is in the things that she gets and not
in what people have to offer her in a emotional and spiritual way.
The author, Ama Ata Aidoo, presents two sisters. Mercy is a description of the concept of
materialism; Connie, who represents women of the 20th century, cares about what it is traditional,
taking care of the family in a society where men are dominant. Mercy reflects a tendency to care
more about possessions and material things than traditional values or having a nuclear family: for
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instance, Mercy says about her love that… “And he is as handsome as anything, and a good man,
but you know… Besides there are cars and there are cars” (Ama 918), she was in a hurry to catch
the bus with pain, so she started thinking that what if she had a man with a car would not him pick
her up every evening. This is a clear example of materialism being more important to Mercy than
what the person feels. The story shows that she wanted a boyfriend to pick her up every evening,
and Joe was a man who was willing to do this. However, he had a taxi as car, so she does not like
it. She wants someone with a fancy car, no matter if he is a good person or not. Her sister, Connie,
talks with her about her friend, Joe. Connie is trying to give Mercy her opinion about Joe,
highlighting materialism: “Joe drives someone´s car now. Well, you never know. Lots of taxi
drivers come to own their taxis, sometimes fleets of cars” (Ama 919), Mercy replies “Of course.
But it´s a pity you are married already. Or I could go–between for you and Joe” (Ama 919), this
