Summary
John travels to a nearby hut. He enters, but does not see the woman he is looking for. Instead, he greets her parents, who are intrigued by a visit from someone who follows Christianity. They tell him that Wamuhu, their daughter, has gone to get tea leaves and they invite John to stay. He leaves in a hurry.
In the hut, Wamuhu's parents think about what John's visit could mean. Likely, he is interested in marrying Wamuhu, but Wamuhu's father remembers that Wamuhu is circumcised and the Christian followers in the village do not allow men to marry circumcised women.
Wamuhu's mother argues that John is different and might accept Wamuhu as his wife anyway. Wamuhu's father says all Christian followers are the same, as they are "coated with the white clay of the whiteman's ways" (62).
Meanwhile, John and Wamuhu walk through the village in silence. They eventually stop, and John asks Wamuhu if her parents know. Wamuhu says they do not, but she plans on telling them this evening. John blames Wamuhu for their predicament.
She finally tells him that she has been pregnant for three months and her mother is starting to suspect. Wamuhu agrees to give John one more day to decide if he wants to marry her.
John wonders whether he should marry Wamuhu or not, thinking he is perhaps no better than she is after all. But he remembers his father and how he will never allow a marriage between John and a circumcised woman. Then again, he knows Wamuhu is beautiful and there is no other woman in the village who would equal her beauty and charm.
John continues to waver in his thoughts as he travels back home.
Analysis
In this middle portion of the story, the narrator further develops the tension between the traditional tribal culture and the Eurocentric life that Stanley and his family have led. Wamuhu's mother is excited by the prospect of John wanting to marry their daughter, considering John an impressive man because of his education and upbringing. Wamuhu's father, by contrast, is skeptical of this culture, suggesting that it is merely a parroting of oppressive white colonizers.
They note female circumcision as one of the crucial disparities between these cultures, so much so that a marriage between a Christian man and a non-Christian, circumcised woman would be prohibited by John's parents. While the story neither endorses nor condemns the brutal act of female circumcision, Wamuhu's father notes that it is the white Christian influence that would stand in the way of a marriage, suggesting the divides between members of the village exist solely because of colonization.
Indeed, Wamuhu's father sees the village as weaker now than it was before the British arrived, saying, "Then the white men had come, preaching a strange religion, strange ways, which all men followed. The tribe's code of behaviour was broken. The new faith could not keep the tribe together" (62). Here, the story portrays Wamuhu's father as a type of foil for John's father Stanley. Both men have staunch and inalterable beliefs that have informed their lives, so much so that it now dictates how each of their children will live. The story sides neither with Stanley nor Wamuhu's father. Instead, it showcases how the influence of British colonization impacted and divided communities in permanent ways.
This ambivalence is embodied also by John himself, who struggles throughout this portion of the story to make a decision about Wamuhu and her pregnancy. When John leaves Wamuhu, his thoughts are notably disjointed and wavering; one moment he is thinking that his future is ruined by his situation, and the next he is thinking that Wamuhu would make a wonderful wife. The intense oscillation in John's thought process underscores his torn nature as he struggles to choose between the traditional tribal life and that imposed on him by his father.
In this way, the story presents its broader tension – that between traditional tribes and European colonization – through the experience of John's internal conflict. John therefore becomes the embodiment of the effects of colonization, in which later generations are forced to choose between two disparate paths that allow for little crossover or compromise.
