How does Buchi Emecheta use imagery in The Bride Price?

The imagery is full of metaphor. Emecheta uses extended metaphors in this story. The first exemplifies the conflict that Akunna and her brother feel, caught, as they were, between traditional culture and European customs. She creates an image of fish caught in a net, referring to Aku-nna and Nna-nndo as

helpless fishes . . . [who] could not as it were go back
into the sea, for they were trapped fast, and yet they
were still alive because the fisherman was busy debating
within himself whether it was worth killing
them.

In another, longer metaphor, Emecheta has Aku-nna and Chike sitting under a tree, watching a group of brown ants.

No single ant deviated from the main column, all followed
the same route one after the other, as if at the
command of a power invisible.

With this metaphor, Emecheta uses the ants and their willingness to follow that invisible power as an example of the people of Ibuza following the traditional ways without questioning the reasons behind them. When Aku-nna asks Chike why the ants are following one another, Chike responds: "Because each ant would be lost if it did not follow the footsteps of those in front, those who have gone on that very path before."

Aku-nna's death could be read as a metaphor. Why did she die? Was it because she was too young and malnourished as suggested by the doctor? Or was it because her stepfather, in vengefulness and voodoo-like practice, calls her spirit back home? If her death is looked at as metaphor, it plays out the main conflict of the story. Inside of Aku-nna, the clash between the European (scientific) world and the African (traditional) world ultimately lead to her death. Aku-nna's death acts as metaphor for all young African women who struggle with the new culture that cries out for independence and reliance on self, and the old culture that thinks with a male-dominated, group mind. Her death is symbolic of the psychological deaths that these women must pass through in an attempt to be reborn into a new role for themselves.