"Luxurious Hearses" has a lot to tell about the complexity of relationships between people. It was almost amusing to look at the characters and their circumstances in this story and see how similar they are but how much they hate each other. The barbaric violence that occurs during the story is over two religions that have a number of same beliefs. What the slaughtering emerged from is uncertain, but still Nigerians were able to have enough rage to kill strangers and even people who were family. I was shocked by the story of Jubril's brother. It was hard to believe that Yusif's own family would plan to kill him. I was in awe when the story concluded with the Christians on the bus killing Jubril. Even after hours of being friendly and even showing compassion towards him, they were just able to suddenly have a change of heart and kill him. That says a lot about what people feel about each other ethnically.
We all have qualities that differentiate ourselves, but we are not supposed to let these differences tear our human relationship apart. I think that Akpan wanted his readers to really struggle with their opinion of Jubril. Jubril is immediately easy to hate at the beginning of the story simply because of his beliefs. At first I thought that Jubril was very illogical and inconsiderate for his opinions of Christians and women. I had know sympathy for him or his awkward situation. At the end I felt awful, because of the things I saw that he had to go through. Jubril towards the end even starts to show grace towards the Christians on the bus. I think that Akpan wanted the reader to understand what it felt like to be the one who is different from his or her self.
This article has more information and statistics about the conflict in Nigeria.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/nige-f28.shtml
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