In chapter one of The Deep Amaba says:

One can only go for so long without asking ‘who am I?’, ‘where do I come from?’, ‘what does all this mean?’, ‘what is being?’, ‘what came before me and what might come after?’. Without answers there is only a hole. A hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities (Solomon 8).

Solomon uses repetitive anaphoric rhetorical questions—“Who am I? What does this all mean? What is being?” This repetitive structure creates momentum and rhythm creating a feeling of longing and searching in order to emphasize the uncertainty and human need for understanding oneself. Most prominently is the imagery of the “hole” and “cavities.” These words visually create a picture of emptiness and loss due to a past, or in this case history, that has been erased. The “hole where a history should be” is an absence of ancestry, a lost and forgotten origin. The “hole” in this case would be a symbol of a void left from the disconnection from heritage and identity. Amaba’s last words “we are cavities” extends this metaphor of a “hole” in history as a way to describe how trauma and loss quite literally shape people. There isn’t merely just a “hole” in history, the people most impacted by that “hole” become empty and hollow—like a cavity. 

In succession to the first quote Amaba believes that Yetu wouldn’t understand what it’s like due to her being the “historian.” Though Yetu thinks to herself that she “did know what it was like. After all, wasn’t cavity just another word for vessel?” (Solomon 8). The oxford dictionary defined cavity as “an empty space within a solid object, in particular the human body,” and a vessel is described as “a hollow container, especially used to hold liquid, such as a bowl or a cask.” A vessel, in Yetu’s case, is just another sort of cavity. Yetu is a vessel (cavity) made to hold the past and ancestors for the Wajinru people, then when time comes those are scooped out of her and poured into the cavities of her people. And a cavity left untreated, left unfilled, can lead to pain and infection in a person, much like a cavity in one’s tooth. 

Solomon utilizes the imagery of feeling lost, uncertain, and unfulfilled through Amaba and Yetu’s individual, and yet similar, experiences with the absence and “hole” that having their history be forgotten has hurt them. Solomon’s overarching metaphor that solicits their audience to understand the dangers and harm that a loss of history and ancestry causes a person. It leaves them filled with questions and uncertainty, and a hole that is hard to fully fill.