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This article examines how characters of No Longer at Ease and The Joys of Motherhood experience pain and how this pain is derived from their social environment culture. Applying sociolinguistic, sociological and psychological approaches, along with Simone Weil’s and Dr. Eric Cassell’s “cultural source perceptions of pain” proves necessary. This paper studies characters from Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (Obi) and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood (Nnu Ego). It demonstrates the interplay between individual pain and cultural context. Cushman’s view of emotional problems or pains is also invoked as a comparative framework for understanding how personal pain is cultural base.