Summary
Chapter 9
The harvests are good that year, and the elders offer burnt sacrifices to Murungu.
Chege can remember harvests and famines, and how he’d always warned of the Christians. Things seem okay right now, as his daughters are circumcised and Waiyaki has been in Siriana for a few years, but he still does wonder if Waiyaki will fail the tribe or the prophecy. Chege knows he is growing old and cannot help pinning all his hopes on his son.
He knows it seems like a contradiction that he, the embodiment of the tribe, sent his son to Siriana. However, he knows this is the way to beat the white man. He watches and waits, then, and knows that this season Waiyaki will be initiated into manhood. He will better be able to absorb the white man’s wisdom and help the tribe.
The time has come. People undergoing the rituals are preparing. Waiyaki is a candidate. He is grown tall and strong. He has been in Siriana for awhile, though, and has trouble always remembering the dream from years ago. He is somewhat out of touch with the things that matter most to the tribe and is not very interested in the dances and celebrations attached to the ritual; however, it means a lot to his father. He looks forward to testing his courage at the ceremony.
It is the eve of initiation day and the hills ring with the sounds of drums and jingles. Waiyaki’s mind is unsettled and he is unsure why. He thinks of Muthoni and how someone had pointed her out to him that day. He wonders if she ran away and how she could be here. Kinuthia confirms what she did and Waiyaki is stunned; he knows he could never disobey Chege like that.
Everyone begins to get into the frenzy of the celebratory dance—old and young, men and women. They feel free, lost in the motion. They sing of sexual things, though no one participates in the act itself. Waiyaki is uneasy and wonders what Livingstone would say. He is slightly embarrassed by the words.
Muthoni appears, dances, sings, and speaks of forbidden things in the most startling way. Something stirs in Waiyaki and he thinks her beautiful. Someone pulls him into the dance and, finally, he feels free and madly intoxicated. He blows a horn. It seems like Muthoni holds him with something inside her.
Moments later, though, Muthoni is gone and Waiyaki finds himself alone. He is annoyed he let himself go like that. He finds Muthoni and confronts her. He asks why she ran away; she explains that she is a Christian but still wants to be initiated into the ways of the tribe. She wants to be a woman and cannot be outside the tribe. She adds that she wants to be made beautiful in the tribe, to have a husband and children. She moves away dreamily.
Waiyaki remains where he is, feeling dumbstruck and troubled. He goes back to the tribe but still feels apart. He cannot sleep that night.
Chapter 10
It is misty and cold in the morning, but Waiyaki is glad for the coldness of the Honia so he can numb his body.
He thinks of how he’d waited for this day all his life, but now he is afraid. He does not show it, though, even when the surgeon cuts him. Now a religious bond links him to the earth, as if his blood were an offering.
Pain shakes Waiyaki to his core and his mind races with thoughts. He is confused by the pain, but he keeps still and people laud his courage. The new generation thus proves itself.
In the hospital, the initiates recover. Waiyaki’s wound swells after two days, and he wonders if he will ever feel normal. The attendants tell all the men secrets and stories, and the initiates delight in them.
Chege receives many compliments for how his son handled the rite and “how the white man’s education had not softened him” (47). An elder tells him, though, that Muthoni is not healing as she should. Her wound is getting larger and worse. They talk of how stubborn Joshua is and how this might be a curse.
Alone later, Chege looks out to the opposite ridge. He can see Joshua’s hut and shudders; he fears for his country.
Waiyaki talks to Muthoni. He can see how she is suffering. She wishes for Nyambura. Waiyaki wonders if she is paying for her disobedience, but he decides he must go see her sister.
The next day he travels to Makuyu. He finds Nyambura by the river, greets her, and tells her of her sister’s condition. She is shocked and weeps, but she immediately goes to her sister’s side. She continues to visit and often asks her sister amid her tears why she did it; Muthoni tells her she must make her own choice someday.
Muthoni gets worse and worse. Waiyaki also visits her often and realizes the herbs are not helping her; she ought to go to the Siriana Mission Hospital. Muthoni’s aunt resists but Nyambura urges her. Waiyaki volunteers to take her.
Nyambura tells her mother what is happening, and Miriamu breaks down in tears.
Chapter 11
Muthoni dies. Waiyaki walks around as in a stupor after the death. He tells Nyambura and her mother, and they leave Kameno. Waiyaki cannot go straight home. Muthoni’s face is in his mind always. He remembers her bright eyes and rambling words. As she died, she told him she saw Jesus and was a woman made beautiful in the tribe.
Joshua hears of the death and shows no emotion. To him, she was an outcast and a curse.
Chege is silent with all this; he had foreseen this drama. This is a punishment to Joshua and to the hills. It is a warning. He thinks Muthoni’s death does not augur well for the future. He admires his son but wonders if he will be corrupted by Siriana.
In Siriana, Muthoni’s death only confirms how barbaric the Gikuyu customs are. Livingstone, an old, heavy man now, had been full of vigor when he first came here but soon realized he was not making much progress. He’d been fired up by heroism and the vision of new souls for Christ, but these Kenyans only seemed interested in education and slipped back to their blind customs. He thought circumcision was particularly barbaric, though he considered himself an enlightened man who did not want to get rid of all the tribal customs. He had even gone to some of the dances but was disgusted; he realized how immoral these people were. He had kept his preaching against this quiet for a time, but then he took it up with new zeal. He was worried that Muthoni’s death would cause a backlash for him, but he feels Christ filling him with youth and power.
One of the Siriana women knocks on his door. She tells him triumphantly (she is a critic of his policies) that Muthoni was the daughter of Joshua. Livingstone groans; it seems the war is on.
Chapter 12
Muthoni’s name became a legend. The elders of Makuyu looked at each other, knowing that the new faith had contaminated the hills and Murungu was angry. They do not know what to do, as Chege is aging and now confined to his home. Joshua’s followers are gathering.
Waiyaki does not return to Siriana because his father is ailing. He worries about what is happening to him, what their dream portends, and what the ridges will do. Will they fight? He sees greater splits coming, and cannot help but think of Muthoni.
Kabonyi breaks from Joshua and is followed by others. Joshua remains loyal, though, and gathers more followers. Waiyaki feels like a stranger.
One day Waiyaki is walking home, thinking about how Siriana said no child of a pagan can attend the school anymore and how he must renounce circumcision. Waiyaki knows this is his end there, but he is sad because he loves learning.
At home he sees his mother standing outside, crying. He rushes inside the hut, hoping to see his father one more time before he dies.
Chapter 13
The rain drips and then pours. Waiyaki is in his school—the office plus the buildings. He worries about the furious rain destroying the places where children come to learn. Kamau and Kinuthia, his fellow teachers, are sitting near him and arguing.
In the last few years, the conquest of the hills has accelerated. The white man is here, taxes are being paid, and the country is no longer isolated. Many people feel that this is the time to do something. The break with Siriana has made things worse, and they feel a sense of injustice. People remember Chege’s warnings and have come to see Waiyaki as a leader.
Waiyaki hears Kinuthia complaining about the white man and his heart warms to him. He does not feel the same way about Kamau, however, who is the son of Kabonyi. Kamau has a strange look in his eyes. Kamau does not like Waiyaki either, and is always jealous of him.
Waiyaki tries to mediate the argument. Kinuthia maintains that he will push back against intolerable conditions and that it is his right to rebel against the white men who have made conditions intolerable and anything that is unjust. Waiyaki wonders if he is correct, but then he thinks about his new drive for education and thinks that is what will give the people hope.
The other men ask Waiyaki about the new Kiama, which will be a way to preserve the purity of the tribe. Waiyaki had already heard of it, knowing it came from Kabonyi. He is worried about it and wants to concentrate on education; perhaps Livingstone’s words that “education was of value and his boys should not concern themselves with what the government was doing or politics, had found a lace in Waiyaki’s heart” (65).
Maybe the sleeping lions are stirring; the people know the earth is important to the tribe and the white man threatens that. People fear what is happening.
Waiyaki grows angry with the rain and wishes he could fight it. He then realizes this is silly, knowing rain can be a blessing and a curse. The rain stops, and it is time to fix its damage.
Chapter 14
Waiyaki’s school is Marioshoni, the first to be built since the break with Siriana. It bore fruit so quickly that even Waiyaki was surprised. His father’s death had numbed him and he had realized he was now a grown man. This vision took hold and he traveled from ridge to ridge, finding willing people. Schools popped up like mushrooms and were symbols of the people’s thirst for knowledge—for the white man’s knowledge. Few wanted to live like the white man, but they did want his magic.
The tribe still adhered to circumcision, though, as the core of the social structure, as something that gave meaning to man. It could not be ended or the tribe would not cohere.
Children crammed into the schools and parents were proud when they came home full of learning.
Waiyaki is the headmaster at Marioshoni. He loves the walk there and back, using it as a time for thinking. There are splits in the land, and the ancient rivalry continues. He is sometimes confusing to the people because he has the white man’s education, which is part of the other faith, yet he is also of the tribe. He feels isolated, but still proud of his efforts. There is more he wants to do, though, and his eyes blaze with yearning. He is young and passionate, and people wonder about his quiet courage. He is becoming the pride of the hills.
Analysis
There are many things of consequence that occur in these chapters. The first is that of Chege and the prophecy: Chege still believes the prophecy refers to his son, but nevertheless, he admits to himself that he doesn’t know if he made the right choice by sending Waiyaki to Siriana. He is occasionally filled with a sense of defeat and despair, and, dangerously, “it was as if his life, his heart, was being carried by Waiyaki and he feared his son might stumble” (38).
We now turn to Muthoni, a crucial character in the text—even though she is gone long before it comes to a close. Muthoni tells Nyambura and Waiyaki that she wants to be pure: to be made a girl and a woman in the tribe. Being circumcised, according to Muthoni, means she can be married and have children, and also be initiated into the secrets of knowledge of the tribe. She does not see this rite as negating her Christian faith; rather, she seeks reconciliation between the two. She knows she is of the hills and that there are aspects of Christianity that are wanting, but she fully sees herself as representative of both. Unfortunately, Muthoni is not able to be the symbolic river between the two warring ridges of the tribe and Christianity, and she perishes from her wound. The significance of this in the novel is observed even by the characters within it, who see her passing as a bad omen.
There has been a multitude of critical writing on Muthoni’s role in the text. Critic Apollo O. Amoko has a negative view of the way Ngugi draws her, suggesting that there is a “conceptual emptiness at the heart of all her thoughts and actions. Her embrace of Christianity seems so devoid of specific doctrinal content that it amounts to little more than mindless obedience to the dictates of a fanatical father…Her embrace of tradition seems equally superficial. Even though she says she desires to learn the ways of the tribe, that entire tradition is reduced, in her rendering of it, to a single contentious cultural practice.”
As for Waiyaki, he too is initiated, but considering he's the savior of the tribe, he certainly demonstrates extreme ambivalence about the tribe’s rituals. First, he is afraid even though he has waited all his life for this. Second, he is interested more in demonstrating his physical strength rather than tapping into any spiritual experience. Third, and perhaps most important, he was conflicted about participating in the dance. He is embarrassed by his people’s behavior and even though he does let go and experience the ecstasy of freedom, “he felt hurt. He had laid himself naked, exposed himself for all the eyes to see” (43). Waiyaki’s shame resembles the shame of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in regard to their nakedness, which makes sense because Waiyaki has been absorbing the lessons of the white man at Siriana.
The time after Muthoni’s death is a pivotal one for the tribe, one that is rife with bad omens and confusing developments. Critic Michael Loudon writes, “insofar as the circumcision ritual serves as a central metaphor for Kikuyu tradition and values, it becomes the center of conflict.” People at Kameno think the missionaries poisoned Muthoni; Joshua blames it on the devil and the tribe’s “pagan” behavior; Chege warns of future turmoil but dies not long after; the Siriana school refuses to allow students whose parents do not renounce circumcision to enroll; and the British move forward in their plans to confiscate and tax the land. Kabonyi leaves Joshua so he can move into a better position to take over leadership of the tribe, and Waiyaki struggles to fully embrace his role.
That role for Waiyaki is, at least in his mind, wholly centered on education. We will delve into this in further analyses, but Waiyaki has decided that education matters most to the tribe and that it alone can bring unity; he thinks the white man’s knowledge will allow the tribe to push the white man out.
