Petals of Blood Quote List
Capitalism
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“He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the
coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.”in
reference to the 3 pillars of colonisation as the pillars of the heavenly world.
“Ezekieli, an old man of seventy five and one of the earliest to recognise the advantages of
conversion,” - In reference to the new wave of post colonial benefittors such as Ezekieli, almost
selling his soul
“colonised black skin”- in reference to those who have converted their morals and culture to the
colonialist way in aims of power now demeaned by their own because of it.
“The three will be an irreplaceable loss to ilmorog. They built ilmorog from a tiny nineteenthcentury village reminiscent of the days of Krapf and rebman into a modern industrial town that
even generations born after Gagarin and Armstrong will be proud to visit``''kimeria and chui were
prominent founding father of the KCO”business men that set up the government , playing puppets
with the government , the real ones in power . hyperbole of how great new Ilmorog is and coming
from the local paper shows the people of ilmorgos views on these people although they did not
know the truth. Pg 6 newspaper extract.
Well known African directors of the internationally famous Theng’eta breweries and enterprises
LTd” the rich get richer.
On a Friday or Saturday the herdsen from Ilmorog plains would descend on the store and drink
and talk and sing about their cows and goats. They had a lot of money from the occasional sale
of goats at Ruwa-ini market, and they had no other use for it.
The only use for the money that the farmers have is bad for them. Money has no specific or
defined value in rural Kenya. Pg10
’the new owners, masters of bank power, money and cunning’ (p205)
“An International Highway through Ilmorog. I suddenly wanted to laugh at the preposterous idea.
Why, I asked myself, had they not built smaller serviceable roads before thinking of international
highways?” This develops the idea of not only equal rights to all villages and people, but a
rejection of capitalism in seeking wealth through infrastructure.
‘The trouble with slogans or any saying without a real foundation is that it can be used for
anything. Phrases like Democracy, the Free World, for instance, are used to mean their opposite.
It depends of course on who is saying it where, when and to whom. Take your slogan. It could also
mean that Fit Africans Never Take Alcohol. We are both right. But we are both wrong because
Fanta is simply an American soft drink sold in Ilmorog.’
“– but I have liked to believe that she burnt herself like the Buddhists do, which then makes me
think of the water and the fire of the beginning and the water and the fire of the second coming
to cleanse and bring purity to our earth of human cruelty and loneliness.” As much as Wanja’s
aunt’s death was a murder; there are times when the death is viewed as a righteous rejection of
humanity’s sins. Of the dark side of humanity.
“The voice of the people haunted them to death. Waweru takes the cows and the goats and then
he stands, watches the retreating figure of his father and spits on the ground. Big houses: big
families: more powerful than the work of my hand is the possession of magic: didn’t the big
houses drive us from our land in Muranga and we had to start all over again? I’ll create my big
house to beat all the big houses.”
Ezekiel Waweru was still one of the most powerful landlords in the area, adding to his pyrethrum
estates new tea estates he bought from the departing colonials.
Meanwhile, the god grows big and fat and shines even brighter and whets the appetites of his
priests, for the monster has, through the priesthood, decreed only one ethical code: Greed and
accumulation. I ask myself: is it fair, is it fair for our children?
“The writer, after giving brief life histories of Chui, Mzigo and Kimeria, described them as three
well-known nationalist fighters for political, educational, and above all, economic freedom for
Africans. Their ownership and management of Theng’eta Breweries & Enterprises Ltd, which had
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brought happiness and prosperity to every home in the area as well as international fame for the
country, was cited as an example of their joint entrepreneurial genius, unmatched even by the
famed founders of the industrial revolution in Europe. Our Krupps, our Rockefellers, our Fords!”
“Flowers for our land. Long live Nderi wa Riera. We gave him our votes: we waited for flowers to
bloom.”
The breweries were owned by an Anglo-American international combine but of course with
African directors and even shareholders. Three of the four leading local personalities were Mzigo,
Chui and Kimeria. Long live New Ilmorog! Long live Partnership in Trade and Progress!
Colonialism/post colonialism/ neo colonialism
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“He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the
coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.”
“Disband yourself … disband the tyranny of foreign companies and their local messengers!” Colonisation/Décolonisation.
“Out with foreign rule policed by colonised blackskins! Out with exploitation of our sweat!” Anticolonisation/Decolonisation/capitalism?
“Go ye unto the villages and dark places of the earth and light my lamp paraffined with the holy
spirit. So be it. Aamen.”
“This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?’ inquired Ruoro. It was Muturi
who answered. ‘You forget that in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use. It was
also plenty, you need not have beaten one yard over and over again.”
“But now, with independence , we have a chance to pay back… to show that we’d… did not
always choose to stand aside.”-munira chapter 1
“go ye unto the villages and dark places of the earth and light my lamp parafined with holy
spirit. So be it- Amen.”
“Wash me, Redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow.” - Ezekieli to a baptist christian
suggesting his idealism of white skin
“Ezekieli, an old man of seventy five and one of the earliest to recognise the advantages of
conversion,” - In reference to the new wave of post colonial benefittors such as Ezekieli, almost
selling his soul
“colonised black skin”- in reference to those who have converted their morals and culture to the
colonialist way in aims of power now demeaned by their own because of it
‘It is sad, it hurts, at times I am angry, looking at the black zombies, black animated cartoons
dancing the master’s dance to the master’s voice. That they will do to perfection. But when they
are tired of that, or shall I say, when we are tired of that we turn to our people’s culture and
abuse it . . . just for fun, after a bottle of champagne
they who showed Africa and the world the path of manliness and of black redemption, what are
they going to do with the beast? They who washed the warriors’ spears in the blood of the white
profiteers, of all those who had enslaved them to the ministry of the molten beast of silver and
gold, what dance are they now going to dance in the arena?”
“It has no stigma or pistils… nothing inside.”
“There’s a worm- a green worm with several hands or legs.”
“It cannot bear fruit.”
“Why did things eat each other? Why can’t the eaten eat back?”
“Skyscrapers versus mud walls and grass thatch; tarmac highways, international airports and
gambling casinos versus cattle paths and gossip before sunset.”
“Before 1952 Africans were not allowed this kind of drink.”
“Now that we have an African governor and African big chiefs, they will return some of the fat
back to these parts” - They won’t
“ Insect told them of a new Kiama-Kamwene cultural organization (KCO) - which would bring
unity between the rich and poor and bring cultural harmony to all the regions.”
“colonised black skin” - in reference to those who have converted their morals and culture to the
colonialist way in aims of power now demeaned by their own because of it
“First a white colonist, Lord Freeze-Kilby and his goodly wife, a lady. He was probably one of
those footloose aristocrats, but a ruined one, who wanted to make something of his own in what
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he saw as a New Frontier. To change Ilmorog wilderness into civilized shapes and forms that
would yield a million seedlings and a thousand pounds where one had planted only a few and
invested only a pound, was a creative act of a god.”
“While I was at a black college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I saw with my own eyes a black man
hanging from a tree outside a church. His crime? He had earlier fought a white man who had
manhandled his sister. There was so much tension in that town. Aa! America, land of the Free and
the Brave!’”
‘Chui arrived. Deathly, sepulchral silence. He climbed the steps . . . up . . . up . . . to the foyer.
Our eyes were glued to the scene before us. He had khaki shorts and shirt and a sun helmet: a
black replica of Fraudsham.
“Nature had been too kind to the African, he had concluded. Karega asked himself: so the
African, then, deserved the brutality of the colonizer to boot him into our civilization? There was
no pride in this history: the professors delighted in abusing and denigrating the efforts of the
people and their struggles in the past.”
‘And the directors of the Kenya branch were Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria. I could hardly accept this
twist of fate . . . I don’t even know how I came back here . . . But I started thinking . . . Kimeria,
who made his fortune as a Home Guard transporting bodies of Mau Mau killed by the British, was
still prospering . . . Kimeria, who had ruined my life and later humiliated me by making me sleep
with him during our journey to the city . . . this same Kimeria was one of those who would
benefit from the new economic progress of Ilmorog.”
Christianisation
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Later another came with a collar around his neck and a Bible, and he too sought supplies and
guides, for he wanted to reach the court of the great King of Uganda. They showed him the way.
But they called a war council: shall we let evil walk across our lands and not do anything? May he
not be a scout from Mutesa’s court disguised as Mzungu, a spirit? For whoever saw or heard of a
human being without a skin?
He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the coin. Christianity,
Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.”
“You never leave the book behind” - The power of christianisation/christianity.
“She could have been beautiful but too much righteous living and bible reading and daily prayers had drained her
of all sensuality and what remained now was the cold incandescence of the spirit.”
“Wash me, Redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow.” - Ezekieli to a baptist christian suggesting his idealism of
white skin
“colonised black skin” - in reference to those who have converted their morals and culture to the colonialist way in
aims of power now demeaned by their own because of it
“Man, law, god, nature.” - hierarchy of power in the colonialist ideology
“he would write a statement in his own hand and in his own way and later the policeman could
ask questions – and with the help of the Lord . . . The officer suddenly banged the table, all
patience gone: he wanted facts, not history; facts, not sermons or poetry. Murder was not irio or
njohi, he said and called out to the warders: Lock him in.” the nuance between what is valued in
Christianity and what is viewed as ‘real’
“Violence of thought, violence of sight, violence of memory. I can see that now. In this prison
twilight certain things, groves, hills, valleys, are sharper in outline even though set against a
sombre sky. Get thee behind me, Satan. Arrogant confidence of hindsight. There was a time I
used to think that I was saving him, might have saved her and Abdulla too.” The almost white
saviour complex of Munira in working towards a saved soul. Violence as work of the devil.
“He experimented with wheat, ignoring the many frowning faces of the herdsmen and survivors of
the earlier massacres in the name of Christian pacification by the king’s men, and he again
trusted to the rifle he always slung on his shoulders”
My son, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This KCO is not a bad thing . . . We shall
even have a Church Branch. It’s a cultural organization to bring unity and harmony between all of
us, the rich and the poor, and to end envy and greed. God helps those who help themselves. And
He said that never again would He give free manna from heaven.
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group photographs of the Reverend with various dignitaries. Munira coughed in readiness to
introduce himself, but the Reverend after fetching a Bible from the shelf had already asked them
to join him in prayers. He prayed for the poor in spirit; the crippled in soul; for jobless
wanderers, and all those who were hungry and thirsty because they had never eaten the bread
and drunk the water from the well of Jesus. He prayed for everything and everyone under the sun
and his voice touched something, a softness in their hearts. He ended the prayer.
“This is what’s wrong with this country. Most of us seem to prefer a life of wandering and begging
to a life of hard work and sweat. From the moment man ate the fruit of knowledge in complete
disregard and defiance of God’s express command and wishes, he was told by God that
henceforth he was to work and sweat, that never again was he to get free things, manna provided
by the Lord.” From Reverend Jerrod Brown
‘I am a priest, a father-confessor, and looking through the tiny window, I am really looking at the
soul of a nation . . . the scars, the wounds, the clotting blood . . . it is all on their faces and in
their eyes, so bewildered. Tell us, tell us before we confess our sins: who makes these laws? For
whom? To help whom? I cannot answer the questions . . . but as I said, they open a window for
me to see the world.” The lawyer’s identity.
Socialism
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“Karega and his following of Theng’eta factory workers were not any different: they had rejected
it is true mere brotherhood of the skin, region and community of origins and said no to both black
and white and Indian employers of labour. But they too would fail: because they had also
rejected the most important brotherhood – the only brotherhood – of religion, of being born anew
in the Lord of the universe and of the eternal kingdom”
“An International Highway through Ilmorog. I suddenly wanted to laugh at the preposterous idea.
Why, I asked myself, had they not built smaller serviceable roads before thinking of international
highways?” This develops the idea of not only equal rights to all villages and people, but a
rejection of capitalism in seeking wealth through infrastructure.
“Was it true that he was in league with this or that politician? Maybe he had been planning
something fishy: a coup d’état? But how—? Communism: what was this? Opposition to foreign
control of the economy? Call for agrarian revolution? Call for the end to poverty? Asian: maybe
that and this. But he had been imprisoned and detained by the British in the years of struggle? So
many questions without answers and a current of fear, the first of many others to follow, coursed
through the veins of the new nation.” The concept of revolution is terrifying with these big name
nations as forces beyond the perception of Ilmorog.
Histories
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“Simply law of nature” - the ideology fueling the conquest of imperialism’s past
“We wanted to be taught African literature, African history, for we wanted to know ourselves
better.” - Munira
“They all carried bamboo sticks that vomited fire and venom”- Kenyan war, colonialists invading,
shows the nature of people before colonialism.
“This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?’ inquired Ruoro. It was Muturi who answered.
‘You forget that in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use. It was also plenty, you need not have
beaten one yard over and over again.” their life and whole ecosystem worked well and provided before the white
man came and colonised.
“How does one tell of murder in a New Town? Murder of the spirit? Where does one begin? How
recreate the past so that one can show the operation of God’s law? The working out of God’s will,
the revelation of His will so that now the blind can see what the wise cannot see?” The past as
intertwined with the creation of the world. Death and destruction as part of god’s will; is it
inevitable?
“Later her husband became a white-man’s spear-bearer – you know – Home Guard – and he was
notorious for his cruelty and for eating other people’s chickens and choice goats or sheep after
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accusing them of being Mau Mau . . . Anyway my cousin would come from the city and she
glittered in new clothes and earrings…My sister, my only sister,” cried my mother as she rushed
forward toward the burning figure of my aunt. There she stood, outside her burning hut, and she
aflame and not uttering a sound at all . . . just . . . just animal silence. Now were other screams
and hurrying feet and noises . . . “put out the light . . . put out the light,” were her last words.’
The story from Wanja which underpins the multiple ways in which the Mau Mau rebellion was
fought: with Kenyans on both sides of the conflict and the oppressed peoples coming off second
best. Murder and oppression are consequences of such a rigid regime.
“May the Lord bless Ole Masai and his band of brave warriors.”
Ilmorog, the scene of the unfolding of this drama, had not always been a small cluster of mud
huts lived in only by old men and women and children with occasional visits from wandering
herdsmen. It had had its days of glory: thriving villages with a huge population of sturdy peasants
who had tamed nature’s forests and, breaking the soil between their fingers, had brought forth
every type of crop to nourish the sons and daughters of men. How they toiled together, clearing
the wilderness, cultivating, planting: how they all fervently prayed for rain and deliverance in
times of drought and pestilence!
s. But now the past he had tried to affirm seemed to have a living, glowing ambience in the
mouth of the woman on this journey to save a village, a community. He went over it . . . images
on images . . . and he was, for a time, carried away: the knowledge in metal and stone . . . the
careful piecing of things together . . . and the stories, the songs and the disputations of an
evening . . . and beyond the site where they tried to capture the power of metal and stone were
the settlements of those who tried to do the same with the land.
But a few sat with the grown-ups. The walls were decorated with the pictures of Che Guevara
with his Christlike locks of hair and saintly eyes; of Dedan Kimathi, sitting calmly and arrogantly
defiant; and a painting by Mugalula of a beggar in a street. At one corner was a wood sculpture of
a freedom fighter by Wanjau. Abdulla stood a few seconds in front of Kimathi’s picture and then
he abruptly hobbled across the room and out into the garden.
He[Karega] was soon to know, shockingly so, that there were those who waited in shadowy
corners to suffocate growth with their foul breaths with the fart and shit of their hypocrisy and
religious double-dealing.
History after all should be about those whose actions, whose labour, had changed nature over the
years. But how come that parasites – lice, bedbugs and jiggers – who did no useful work lived in
comfort and those that worked for twenty-four hours went hungry and without clothes? How
could there be unemployment in a country that needed every ounce of labour? So how did people
produce and organize their wealth before colonialism? What lessons could be learnt from that?
To the learned minds of the historians, the history of Kenya before colonialism was one of the
wanderlust and pointless warfare between peoples. The learned ones never wanted to confront
the meaning of colonialism and of imperialism.
“You had asked me for books written by Black Professors. I wanted you to judge for yourself.
Educators, men of letters, intellectuals: these are only voices – not neutral, disembodied voices –
but belonging to bodies of persons, of groups, of interests. You, who will seek the truth about
words emitted by a voice, look first for the body behind the voice. The voice merely rationalizes
the needs, whims, caprices, of its owner, the master.” A letter from the lawyer to Karega.
Tradition
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“first rode a metal horse through ilmorog”
“they had a lot of money from the occasional sale of goats at Ruwa-ini Market, they had no other
use for it”
“Your first act of manhood is to impregnate a women”
Munira was telling Abdulla how he had always felt a little incomplete because he had been
circumcised in the hospital under a pain killer.”
‘Mwathi wa Mugo seems to be losing his power over the rains,’ he added with an ironic smile,
without looking at Muturi. ‘It may be those things that the Americans and Russians are throwing
into the sky.’ The juxtaposition between myth and reality where both are assessed as equals.
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“Even the rain that fell a month after all the charitable individuals and organizations had packed
their bags and returned to the city was, later for Munira, the way God chose to reveal himself in
all his thunderous and flaming glory.”
“The older folk told stories of how Rain, Sun and Wind went awooing Earth, Sister of Moon, and it
was Rain who carried the day, and that was why Earth grew a swollen belly after being touched
by Rain. Others said no, the raindrops were really the sperms of God and that even human beings
sprang from the womb on mother earth soon after the original passionate downpour, torrential
waters of the beginning.”
“The old woman now set to work. She mixed the crunched millet seedlings with fried maize flour
and put the mixture in a clay pot, slowly adding water and stirring. She covered its mouth with
the mouth of yet another pot through which she had bored a hole. A bamboo pipe was fixed into
the hole and its other end put in a sealed jar over which she placed a small basin of cold water.
Then she sealed every possible opening with cowdung and when she had finished she stood back
to survey her work of art and science. Karega exclaimed: ‘But this is chemistry. A distillation
process.’ She now placed the pot near the fireplace.”
‘This can only poison your heads and intestines. Squeeze Theng’eta into it and you get your spirit.
Theng’eta. It is a dream. It is a wish. It gives you sight, and for those favoured by God it can
make them cross the river of time and talk with their ancestors. It has given seers their tongues;
poets and Gichandi players their words; and it has made barren women mothers of many children.
Only you must take it with faith and purity in your hearts.’
“we were not as scared as when Mwathi’s place was razed to the ground. The two huts were
pulled down. But where was Mwathi? There was no Mwathi. He must have vanished, we said, and
we waited for his vengeance. Maybe he was never there, we said, and the elder who might have
helped, Muturi, had become suddenly deaf and dumb at the sacrilege”
Theng’eta. Deadly lotus. An only friend. Constant companion. The trouble with drinking was that
he felt he needed a little bit more to get back to yesterday’s normality and, in time, to prevent
his hands from trembling so that they would remain firm enough to hold another horn. Theng’eta.
The spirit. Dreams of love returned.
Identity
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“‘Ritwa ni mbukio,’ Karega quoted the proverb. ‘Somebody a long time ago asked the question:
What’s in a name? And he answered that a rose would still be a rose even by another name.’
Talking as if from a book, again thought Munira. Wanja countered: ‘Oh, then it would not be a
rose. It would be that other name, don’t you think? A rose is a rose.’” What constitutes out
identity? Our background? Our given names? Our sense of self? It is our awareness of all these
things and more that connect us to our environment. Language as the root.
“they had a lot of money from the occasional sale of goats at Ruwa-ini Market, they had no other
use for it”
“We wanted to be taught African literature, African history, for we wanted to know ourselves
better.” - Munira
“Flowering of self” - Wanja, meaning rebirth and cleansing
“Why should ourselves be reflected in white snows? Spring flowers fluttering by on ice lakes.” Munira, imagery and alliteration, basically saying why should we copy the personality of the
whites?
“Munira was telling Abdulla how he had always felt a little incomplete because he had been
circumcised in the hospital under a pain killer.”
“I tried to figure out all this: what had this stranger to do with my father and Mukami and
Nding’uri’s death of years before? I wanted to know more – to know where or how Karega came
into all this . . . but how could I ask a stranger, and a boy at that, about a mystery involving my
own family? It was he who changed the subject and talked as if the revelations were incidental to
his visit” For Munira, the circumstances of his escapism hinge upon his connection to Karega. He
needs to reveal the past in order for him to escape it. No such thing as coincidences.
“It is of three colours, rightly sang the poet: Green is our land; Black is black people; and Red is
our blood.” The poetry which Karega says. This beauty in painting the nation and its people. They
are intertwined.
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And I truly beheld a new earth, now that Christ was my personal saviour. He would level
mountains and valleys and would wrestle Satan to the ground and conquer the evil that is this
world. New life with Christ in Christ. I accepted the law. My knees trembled. I humbled myself to
the ground and cried: “I accept, I accept.” I felt tears of gratitude and joy. My years of agony and
doubt and pursuit of earthly pleasures were over . . .’
Values/Morals
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-“colonised black skin” in reference to those who have converted their morals and culture to the
colonialist way in aims of power now demeaned by their own because of it
“Wash me, Redeemer, and I shall be whiter than snow.” - Ezekieli to a baptist christian
suggesting his idealism of white skin
‘But he hoped that even if he was arrested ,the strike would go on”- karega pg 5. Fighting for
what's right even if it means self sacrifice.
“Mariamu’s son had been caught carrying weapons for Mau Mau and was subsequently hanged.”Munira thinking to himself. Some in Kenya chose to resist colonial rule. Juxtaposed with Kimeria,
who aided the colonists.
Violence of thought, violence of sight, violence of memory. I can see that now. In this prison
twilight certain things, groves, hills, valleys, are sharper in outline even though set against a
sombre sky. Get thee behind me, Satan. Arrogant confidence of hindsight. There was a time I
used to think that I was saving him, might have saved her and Abdulla too.” Keep in mind the
values and morals that are underpinned by Christianity and how this develops characters like
Munira.
“Munira’s stomach tightened a little at the revelation. He always felt this generalized fear about
this period of war: he also felt guilty, as if there was something he should have done but didn’t
do. It was the guilt of omission: other young men of his time had participated: they had taken
sides: this defined them as a people who had gone through the test and either failed or passed.
But he had not taken the final test. Just like in Siriana.”The trouble with a flawed sense of self.
Munira is lacking a sense of purpose and has made so many poor judgements that he struggles to
let anyone else be ‘correct.’ Guilt and a sense of powerlessness occupy his identity.
Munira had been so convinced that this world was wrong, was a mistake, that he wanted all his
friends to see this and escape in time. That was why he had pestered Karega so much. In the end
this had become an obsession.
It was enjoined on him to burn down the whorehouse – which mocked God’s work on earth. He
poured petrol on all the doors and lit it up.
Education
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Gone! Cambridge Fraudsham gone? How? I could hardly believe this: Fraudsham was Siriana and
Siriana was Fraudsham. I cursed my lack of interest in newspapers. I suppose if he had been
murdered or something – but Fraudsham! My obvious ignorance was to Karega like cold water
thrown over a guest on his entering a house. His excited enthusiasm subsided even as my curiosity
and excitement rose. Another strike involving Fraudsham, ending in his defeat and final
departure!”
“The African experience was not always clear to him and he saw the inadequacy of the Siriana
education” - Karega reflects on his education and incurs internal conflict
“We wanted to be taught African literature, African history, for we wanted to know ourselves
better.” - Munira
“The one who carried the wisdom of the new age in his head” - describing Munira and the
knowledge he obtained due to his knowledge of the western subjects.
The pupils were mostly shepherd boys , who often did not finish the term but followed their fathers
in search of new pastures and water for their cattle.” shows how useless the education they
received was as it was more beneficial to follow in their fathers footsteps.pg 7 diction used creates
emphasis on how education out of the classroom was more beneficial. “ followed their father “ “their
cattle” actually gaining something from it.
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“Beautiful petals: beautiful flowers: tomorrow would indeed be the beginning of a harvest.”
Education as planting a seed to be nurtured.
: history was history: literature was literature, and had nothing to do with the colour of one’s
skin. The school had to strive for what a famous educator had described as the best that had
been thought and written in the world. Racism had been the ruin of many a school, many a state,
many a nation: Siriana believed in peace and the brotherhood of man. He would never have a
school run by rebels and gangsters and the European Foreigners should have nothing to fear.”
‘The other workers . . . with a message. They are with you . . . and they are . . . we are planning
another strike and a march through Ilmorog.’ ‘But who—?’ ‘The movement of Ilmorog workers . . .
not just the union of workers at the breweries. All workers in Ilmorog and the unemployed will
join us. And the small farmers . . . and even some small traders . . .’
‘Tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .’ he murmured to himself. ‘Tomorrow . . .’ and he knew he was no
longer alone.
Feminine roles/masculine
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Eat or you are eaten. If you have a cunt – excuse my language, but it seems the curse of Adam’s
Eve on those who are born with it – if you are born with this hole, instead of it being a source of
pride, you are doomed to either marrying someone or else being a whore. You eat or you are
eaten. How true I have found it. I decided to act, and I quickly built this
“Between Wanja and Munira there gradually grew an understanding without demands: nothing
deep, nothing to wreck the heart. It was only, so he at first told himself, that her company gave
him pleasure. For a time he felt reassured, protected even.”
“But she was not really fit for much else and besides, she thought with a shuddering pain of
recognition, she had come to enjoy the elation at seeing a trick – a smile, a certain look, maybe
even raising one’s brow, or a gesture like carelessly brushing against a customer – turn a man into
a captive and a sighing fool. Still in her sober moments of reflection and self-appraisal, she had
longed for peace and harmony within: for those titillating minutes of instant victory and glory
often left behind an emptiness, a void, that could only be filled by yet more palliatives of instant
conquest. Struggling in the depths of such a void and emptiness, she would then suddenly become
aware that in the long run it was men who triumphed and walked over her body, buying insurance
against deep involvement with money and guilty smiles or in exaggerated fits of jealousy.” A
clear demonstration of what Wanja feels is the root of her strength. Now the direction Ngugi
wants the reader to take is one of judgement at her promiscuity. Rather, we should evaluate the
cause of this identity. She appeals to the male gaze because she knows it will give her what she
needs. Validation. Really, this is a sad revelation of her character. Longing for love.
And then she thought she knew. A child. Yes. A child. That is what her body really cried for.
I have desperately looked for a child . . . a child of my own . . . Do you know how it feels for a
woman not to have a child? When Mwathi was here, I went to him. His voice behind the partition
said . . . woman, you have sinned: confess! I could not tell him. I could not quite tell him that I
was once pregnant, that I did have a child . . . that the world had suddenly loomed so large and
menacing and that, for a girl who had just left school and had run away from home . . . that . . .
that . . . that I did throw it, my newly born, into a latrine . . . There! I have said it . . . I have
never said that to another person.
Love/Sex/Relationships
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Wanja sat quietly on a stool, legs parted a little, her hand pressed down her skirt between her
thighs. - obvious sexualisation from Munira
“Between Wanja and Munira there gradually grew an understanding without demands: nothing
deep, nothing to wreck the heart. It was only, so he at first told himself, that her company gave
him pleasure. For a time he felt reassured, protected even.”
“She had taken my heart prisoner so that she could say so cooly: ‘and you'll bring me a pound of
the long grained rice’ and my whole being so ready to obey. - Munira, lust of munira and the
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sexualisation of wanja and obsession over wanja. The power Wanja holds over Munira causes him
to feel trapped in a free life.
“And Wanja’s pained face under the moonlit beams issuing from the window; or her little noises
of pain, as if she was really hurt; of pleasure, as if eating honeycombs and sugarcanes; and the
waves of her gentle motions made the snake in paradise full with the blood-warmth of
expectation before final deliverance from the pain of this knowing, this knowledge. Her scream,
calling out to her mother or sisters for help, would give him an even greater sense of power and
strength until he sank into a void, darkness, awesome shadow where choosing or not choosing was
no longer a question” The sexual exploits of Munira allow for him to develop his identity into one
which seeks control. He does not want anything else other than to dominate in something. The
obvious allusion to the snake of temptation in the Eden.
“‘My wife is not here tonight, but that is not the point. You are a witch, do you know that? My
witch. Will you, will you come back to me?... I know a few people. Kenya is a black man’s
country, you know. What are you really doing with these funny-looking fellows? What are you
doing in Ilmorog? I love you, Wanja. The years, the hardships, seem not to have impaired your
beauty.’”
Urbanism / ruralism
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“This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?” inquired Ruoro. It was Muturi
who answered. “You forget that in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use. It was
also plenty, you need not have beaten one yard over and over again.”
“Our young men and women have left us. The glittering metal has called them. They go ,and the
young women return only return now and the to deposit the new born with their grandmother”
powerful affects of cities and its attraction for young people that then devours their lives .
repetition of “young men and women”
“Scratching this earth for a morsel of life” the ideology that the cities have become a life centre
and it has become hard to live away from them
“Skyscrapers versus mud walls and grass thatch; tarmac highways, international airports and
gambling casinos versus cattle paths and gossip before sunset.”
“But the forest was eaten by the railway.”
At its shrine we kneel and pray and hope. Now see the outcome . . . dwellers in Blue Hills, those
who have taken on themselves the priesthood of the ministry to the blind god . . . a thousand
acres of land . . . a million acres in the two hands of a priest, while the congregation moans for
an acre! and they are told: it is only a collection from your sweat . . . let us be honest slaves to
the monstergod, let us give him our souls . . . and the ten per cent that goes with it . . . for his
priests must eat too . . .
And now I saw in the clear light of day the role that the Fraudshams of the colonial world played
to create all of us black zombies dancing pornography in Blue Hills while our people are dying of
hunger, while our people cannot afford decent shelter and decent schools for their children. And
we are happy, we are happy that we are called stable and civilized and intelligent!’
Munira had hoped that his involvement with Lillian would provoke. Wanja’s jealousy. But she did
not seem to be moved. He gave up starry charts. Lillian, the ‘virgin’, was not a substitute for
Wanja
Imperialism
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“Mariamus son had been caught carrying weapons for Mau mau and was subsequently hanged.”
power through violence. Choose the “ correct side “
“Simply law of nature” - the ideology fueling the conquest of imperialism’s past.
“The strength of gunpowder ushered in an era of blood and terror and unstability.” - Colonial
violence
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He would champion such populist causes as putting a ceiling on land ownership; nationalization of
the major industries and commercial enterprises; abolition of illiteracy and unemployment and
the East African Federation as a step to Pan-African Unity.” Nderi Wa Riera
‘Now, I want you to go back to Ilmorog. Get yourselves together. Subscribe money. You can even
sell some of the cows and goats instead of letting them die. Dive deep into your pockets. Your
businessmen, your shopkeepers, instead of telling stories, should contribute generously. Get also
a group of singers and dancers – those who know traditional songs. Gitiro, Muthuu, Ndumo,
Mumburo, Muthungucu, Mwomboko – things like that. Our culture, our African culture and
spiritual values, should form the true foundation for this nation. We shall, we must send a strong
representative delegation to Gatundu!’ Nderi’s promise which is only vocal and not resolute.
KCO had originally been a vague thing in his mind. It had grown out of his belief in cultural
authenticity which he had used with positive results in his business partnership with foreigners
and foreign companies. Why not use culture as a basis of ethnic unity?
QUOTES FROM IMPORTANT CHARACTERS
Ezekieli
• His father was an early convert to the christian faith. Pg 106 pt 1
• The bible, the coin, the gun: Holy trinity - Pg 106 pt 1
Karega
• For what was the point of a world in which one could only be clean by wiping his dirt and shit and
urine on others? - Pg 360 pt 4
• Down with Fraudsham: down with the prefect system: down with whites uuuuup with Chui; shake
them… Black power - Pg 204 pt 2
• Flowers for our land… We gave him our votes: we waited for flowers to bloom - Pg 319 pt 4
• Just you wait, just you wait… Mwathi’s place was razed to the ground… He must have vanished Pg 315 pt 4
• Karega sat next to Munira, his shadow falling on Munira’s face - pg71 pt1
Kimeria
• I shall not let you go until you have lain, legs spread, on that bed… The choice is yours to make,
and freedom is mine withhold or to give - Pg 186 pt 2
Munira
• “A flower with petals of blood”... There is no colour called blood - Pg 26 pt 1
• “I have found another, petals of blood… Nothing inside... There is a worm.”... That’s why we
must always kill worms… A flower can also become this color if it’s prevented from reaching the
light - Pg 26 pt 1
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Note: quotation marks are when the child is speaking
Some of the herd boys are going to be initiated into men - Pg 242 pt 3
“Wanja give me a sniff g” pg 244 pt 3
Karega sat next to Munira, his shadow falling on Munira’s face - pg71 pt1
Wanja
• Wanja preceded over all this: she had money and she was powerful and men and women feared
her - Pg 320 pt 4
• No more free things in Kenya. A hundred shillings on the table if you want high-class treatment Pg 331 pt 4
• Wanja sat quietly on a low stool, her legs parted a little, her hands pressing down her skirt
between her thighs - Pg 243 pt 3
• He is the one who seduced me away from home… He called himself: Hawkins Kimeria - Pg 305 pt
3
Nyakinyua
• Here we need water, not songs. We need food. We need our sons back to help this land grow - Pg
102 pt 1
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“Mother of men” in reference to her
Abdulla
"[Abdulla] was never to forget that moment, the moment of his rebirth as a complete man, when he humiliated the two
European oppressors and irrevocably sided with the people. He had rejected what his father stood for, rejected the promises
of wealth, and was born again as a fighter in the forest." (137) Abdulla becomes a "man" only when he joins the Mau
Mau freedom struggle against British colonizers in Kenya. This passage shows us how important the decolonization
struggle is as a theme not only in Ngũgĩ's work but in postcolonial literature as a whole. Postcolonial literature, after
all, emerged at the same time that decolonization struggles all over the world were taking place, and it was a big
influence on and reflection of them.