In the story “Apollo” by Chimamanda Adichie and “By any other name” by Santha Rama Rau, the authors reveal that happiness can unveil little details. One example of this is when Okenwa and Raphael are hanging out and Okenwa says “By the third day, Raphael’s room felt familiar to me, welcoming, uncluttered by objects. As I put in the drops, I discovered things about him that I guarded closely: the early darkening of hair above his upper lip, the ringworm patch in the hollow between his jaw and his neck. I sat on the edge of his bed and we talked about “Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow.” We had discussed the film many times, and we said things that we had said before, but in the quiet of his room they felt like secrets. Our voices were low, almost…show more content… “This Apollo has gone,” he said. His eyes were clear. I wished he had not healed so quickly. I dreamed of being with Raphael and Bruce Lee in an open field, practicing for a fight. When I woke up, my eyes refused to open. I pried my lids apart. My eyes burned and itched. Each time I blinked, they seemed to produce more pale ugly fluid that coated my lashes. It felt as if heated grains of sand were under my eyelids. I feared that something inside me was thawing that was not supposed to thaw. My mother shouted at Raphael, “Why did you bring this thing to my house? Why?” It was as though by catching Apollo he had conspired to infect her son. Raphael did not respond. He never did when she shouted at him. She was standing at the top of the stairs, and Raphael was below her. “How did he manage to give you Apollo from his room?” my father asked me. “It wasn’t Raphael. I think I got it from somebody in my class,” I told my parents” (p. 6) This supports the idea that happiness unveils the little details because up until that point Okenwa had never noticed those things about Raphael before. He probably noticed more things that most people would notice about him knowing him a long
