Summary
Chapter 5
Warĩĩnga and Gatuĩria leave the cave during the competition's lunch break. As if in a dream, they begin to chant patriotic verses together in response to the treacherous and avaricious behavior they just witnessed in the cave. After they come to from these incantations, Warĩĩnga suggests that she and Gatuĩria head to Njeruca to eat. When he fails to understand exactly what Njeruca is like, however, Warĩĩnga goes off on an instructional digression about the class segregation of Ilmorog. Ilmorog is split into multiple sections: on the outskirts of town are where the peasants live, but also where the banks and shops are; in the wealthier of the two residential areas, the Golden Heights (where they just were), opulence rules and foreign extravagances are the norm; finally, in the poorer of the two residential areas, Njeruca (New Jerusalem), filth is everywhere and people cannot even remove dead animals and human waste from the streets.
Warĩĩnga and Gatuĩria eventually arrive at a butchery and sit in the back room to eat. Gatuĩria mentions that he could not believe his eyes in the cave, listening to and watching his own people talk about theft and robbery in such ways, and Warĩĩnga asks him if he has found the devils that he is looking for. Gatuĩria says that he believes his composition should be inspired by patriotic love rather than hate for these thieves, but Warĩĩnga reminds Gatuĩria that one cannot clearly and fully love anything if they do not also know what they hate. This talk of hatred then reminds Gatuĩria of his own upbringing. Gatuĩria tells Warĩĩnga that he was born to a business tycoon father in Nakuru who wanted him to follow in his footsteps, but when Gatuĩria sympathized more with his father's exploited workers than his own father, he was sent to America to study abroad and get the finishing skills necessary to be a tycoon himself. Once there, however, Gatuĩria saw that American slavery as it existed in the past was exactly what peasants in neocolonial Kenya had to contend with. He decided to specialize in music, but upon returning home and telling this to his father, his father scorned him and told him that he had been ashamed in front of his peers—and especially, in front of his church. Ever since, Gatuĩria has avoided going home to confront his father. After he finishes this story, Warĩĩnga then reminds Gatuĩria that she herself is from Nakuru, and she asks who his father is. Out of shame, Gatuĩria will not tell her. Shortly after, Warĩĩnga begins to discuss with Gatuĩria about the amount of women that such tycoons, thieves, and robbers in the cave have ruined through their "sugar" relationships. She then reveals that she was once in such a relationship, and that it almost drove her to commit suicide. She then commences to tell Gatuĩria the story of her young life.
Warĩĩnga was born in 1953, during the days of the Emergency and the Mau Mau Uprising. Her parents were both detained for political reasons by the time that she was two, so she went to go live with her aunt in Nakuru. Her uncle worked for the railroads, and later he was on the Nakuru town council. As a young girl, Warĩĩnga had a good education and enjoyed going to church most of all, despite grotesque imagery of the Devil that inspired her recurring nightmare of the Devil on the cross. Warĩĩnga's parents were freed in 1960, after which they moved back to Ilmorog, leaving Warĩĩnga in Nakuru in the hopes that, through a good education, she could free her parents from poverty. Warĩĩnga excelled in school, particularly in math, and she dreamed of one day going to the university and becoming one of very few female engineers. Warĩĩnga's youth, marked by her obedience and devotion to her school and church, then reached a turning point when she saw death for the first time one afternoon, in the form of a man who had thrown himself in front of a train and become completely obliterated by the train's force.
By the time of Warĩĩnga's early adolescence, she had developed into a shapely and attractive girl. Noticing this, her uncle—the type of man who served at the feet of white, foreign lords and worked domestically on their behalf—made an arrangement for Warĩĩnga to advance his own social and financial standing. Having gained real estate assistance and financial assistance from a wealthy old man from Ngorika, Warĩĩnga's uncle wanted to return the favor by giving him Warĩĩnga as a sugar girl. Though Warĩĩnga hardly noticed at first, the Rich Old Man was soon insinuated into her life—picking her up from school, driving her to and from parties, and so on. He started to give her money, and they began to have sex. This changed Warĩĩnga's life: she now began to feel that an effortless life of wealth and luxury lay at her feet, if only she would be with the Rich Old Man. The Old Man even told Warĩĩnga he would divorce his wife for her. Warĩĩnga started to loathe school and began to travel with the Rich Old Man even more: often, they would travel to Hot Springs and play a game called "The Hunter and the Hunted." The Rich Old Man would chase her with a pistol while she ran away, and fire a shot of victory into the sky when she was finally caught. One time, they switched roles, and Warĩĩnga was exhilarated by the feeling of power given to her by the gun. When she finally caught up with the Old Man, she fired the victory shot and almost hit him, instead hitting and killing an antelope. She apologized, and they never switched roles again, with the Old Man saying that he "wouldn't miss" Warĩĩnga if he was really aiming for her (163).
Eventually, Warĩĩnga became pregnant with the Rich Old Man's baby, but she was not worried because she had faith that the Old Man would marry her according to tradition. He did not initially voice a complaint when she told him of her condition, but the next day, he accused her of sleeping around and told her that he did not believe the child was his. He abandoned her on that day and never spoke to her again. Warĩĩnga was at a loss, not telling anyone about her private sorrow, but she tried to do what she could to help herself. She asked girls at school about ways of aborting a pregnancy (but spoke of it as if it were only a rumor), thought of going to a back-door abortion doctor (which failed when she saw a neighbor outside and got too embarrassed to proceed), and even thought of asking a nurse she knew for help (but words failed her when she tried to talk of her condition). When Warĩĩnga walked home from this last encounter, she almost walked into a tree, an accident which reminded her of the possibility that she could kill herself by throwing herself into a crater. Eventually, she attempted suicide by drowning herself in the Nakuru High School swimming pool. Just as she snuck in and was about to throw herself in, the nighttime security guard saw her and asked her what she was doing there. She got him to go away, but this confrontation made her realize that even suicide was hard and not something one can just commit willy-nilly. Finally, however, Warĩĩnga remembers the encounter with the man who had been obliterated by the train.
She resolves the next day to kill herself similarly before a train. She wants nothing more than for her name and identity to be wiped from the earth. The next day, she is waiting at the same crossing where she saw the other man killed. She makes eye contact with the night watchman from the high school, but he eventually walks off. The train then appears, and its song beats in time with Warĩĩnga's heart and appears to mimic a song from her youth. Just as she is about to die, an unknown man rescues her and pulls here aside. She wakes up in bed with her aunt next to her, and realizing that her aunt pities and feels for her, tells her all about the Rich Old Man from Ngorika.
Chapter 6
As Chapter 6 begins, Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga return to the cave and meet up with Mwaũra, but Mũturi and Wangarĩ are nowhere to be found. Mwaũra says that the three of them should run away at once, and he explains that Mũturi and Wangarĩ are raving fanatics. When Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga then press him as to why he is saying this, Mwaũra finally relents and tells them of what happened when they were all at lunch. It seems Mwaũra, Mũturi, and Wangarĩ also went to Njeruca themselves for roast meat during the intermission of the Devil's Feast. While there, Mũturi tells a story about how he was once a night watchman at a school—the very same one who saved Warĩĩnga—and how he was also the one who saved Warĩĩnga from committing suicide at the railroad tracks. He then told Mwaũra that thieves are worse than witches, and when Mwaũra disagreed, he told Mwaũra and Wangarĩ a story as evidence. He says that in a faraway village, there was once a witch and a cunning thief, and that when the village elders invited the witch to curse the thief, the witch found that all of his tools and spells had been stolen by the thief. In embarrassment, he was then forced to move to a new village.
In response to Mũturi's tale—after which he criticizes the white man—Wangarĩ criticizes local compradors who assists them in their looting. She then argues that a thief is no worse than a witch, since they are equal in taking both what makes life worth living as well as life itself. After they finish eating, Wangarĩ then excuses herself to go to the police station and reveal the location of the Devil's Feast to the superintendent, fulfilling the conditions of her earlier arraignment and also her own desire to make sure all theft is punished and purged from the land. As she does so (much to Mwaũra's protestation), Mũturi also involves himself and says that he will rouse the local peasants and bring them to the Devil's Feast as well. He fears that Wangarĩ will not receive help from the police, and he also wants to make sure that the exploited have a chance to reassert themselves and demonstrate their power before the local thieves and tycoons. It was after this that the three parted company, and Mwaũra returned to the cave to warn Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga, suggesting that they all leave at once. Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga, however, want to observe what happens as a result of Mũturi and Wangarĩ's plan, and they go back into the cave. In private, Mwaũra tells Gatuĩria that he wants to enter the competition, and Gatuĩria tells Mwaũra that he should do whatever he wants to, which pleases him. Meanwhile, on stage, Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ is pleading his own case for the competition.
Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ introduces himself in much the same way as others, but when he mentions his preferences in sugar girls, he mentions that he specifically looks for foreign women to get with. He mentions also that he only has two children, since he believes in family planning and that people should only have children insofar as their means allow it. He mentions his educational pedigree, but an audience member interrupts, saying that this brag is not material enough. He then asks what kind of car Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ drives. Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ looks to the chairman to confirm that he in fact does drive a Peugeot, but the chairman claims that he does not recognize Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ without his car, and thus cannot confirm his words (even though they know each other outside of the competition). Here, Mwaũra stands up and testifies on Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ's behalf, along with another audience member. Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ is then allowed to continue, but Mwaũra remains standing. Mwaũra talks about his own history of theft and robbery, but he is quickly shut down by others and told to keep his idle gossip to himself.
Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ continues by talking about his respect for thieving and his belief that all developed and "modern" countries have reached this stage because they have gone through periods of exploiting others. He then breaks theft down into two different kinds: domestic (in which people steal from their own citizens) and foreign (where people have already exploited their own people and go on to exploit others around the world). Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ then says that he only believes in domestic robbery—in people robbing from their own kinds—because he does not believe locals need be subservient to foreigners. Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ explains that he has studied capitalism, and that they should not allow their "slaves" (i.e., workers and peasants) to produce wealth for foreigners; rather, the compradores and other traitors should take command of this wealth themselves (188). He says that he learned of the need to keep wealth inside a country while working for a variety of foreign companies, all of which relied on him to earn locals' trust but never allowed him into their inner circles where decisions were made.
After realizing that foreigners only employed Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ for his Blackness, he started a variety of manufacturing business. Each one, however, resulted in him being shut out of the market by cheaper foreign competition, or else foreigners would refuse to sell him the machinery used in their own factories. Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ then understood that foreigners would never relinquish their hold on Kenya's wealth voluntarily. In response, he suggests that local iron ore can be combined with local metalworking know-how in order to make machine tools and, in turn, a variety of weapons and other products. He suggests making industry completely domestic and shutting out all of the foreigners, using the resultant technological advancements and independence to rob one's own countrymen and turn an even better profit. He then concludes his speech and plan with a latin prayer, "Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen" ["Unto the ages of ages. Amen"] (193).
Chapter 7
We flash to Gatuĩria's point of view. Gatuĩria feels as if what he has just seen and heard is all part of a dream; only Warĩĩnga's warm touch and physical presence near him convinces him that it was not all a dream. We are then told that Gatuĩria even now remembers the chaos that broke out after Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ finished speaking, and that even though a small group ululated in support of him, a larger group was very incensed by his words. We then leave Gatuĩria's point of view and watch these events unfold in real time.
After Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ finishes speaking, the leader of the foreign delegation speaks out. He says that, as a collection of the finest thieves in the world, they thought that Kenyans too understood that the only God is the God of money, and that theft was a creed that united people across borders and national divisions. He says that, if they really agree with Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ and want to scramble for iron ore as part of a harebrained scheme, they can, but that they will be leaving at once and crowning no winner for the Feast's competition. The cave's atmosphere grows cold, but the emcee saves the day by viciously condemning Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ and reminding the foreign guests of the Parable of the Talents. He then tells them that they, the local Kenyans, are the slaves of the Parable, and that they have become the foreigners' friends by sharing the same business aims and duping their own people to accumulate wealth. Thereafter, he condemns Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ again and says that his fate will be decided at the Feast that very day. The foreign guests accept this apology, and the thieves and robbers in attendance applaud thunderously.
We are now back in Gatuĩria's point of view. He is terrified for Warĩĩnga and turns her story over and over again in his mind. What's more, he also has completely lost all inspiration for his music in the face of such vicious greed and terrifying thieves. He looks at them and sees the ravenous hunger in their eyes, and wonders if perhaps the old man Bahati had been telling the truth about man-eating ogres and monsters. He thinks of fleeing with Warĩĩnga, but he realizes that he must stay, for fear that if he leaves, he will have to listen to stories about how the Feast ended in the future.
Another man, Nditika wa Ngũũnji, takes the stage. He is dressed in a suit, the tails of which resemble the flies that are found in latrines or trash heaps. He brags about his cars, his children's education, and so on, and claims that everything came from the theft and robbery of the people. Nditika wa Ngũũnji earned most of his money from smuggling and playing the black market with foreigners (with whom he says he has a lucrative relationship, contrary to Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ's speech), but that he also has earned money from working village people on farms, then selling their own food back to them at a profit. He also plays the stock market, cornering certain markets as soon as prices are introduced (or even before by corruptly buying stock information). After mentioning how much money he has earned from these practices, he once again talks down on Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ, saying that he probably has better chances than Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ of picking up foreign women on account of his BMW (Be My Woman) and wealth.
As for his plan to increase wealth and foreign dependence, Nditika wa Ngũũnji says his idea came to him after learning about transplants in the human body. He says that it struck him one night that he, like a poor person, only had one stomach, one heart, one penis, and so on. He then realized that, if one could buy body parts, they could show off their status even more clearly and live forever, while the poor are left to suffer and die. He suggests making a factory for human body parts in the country, so that the rich men can have two hearts, two stomachs, and so on. Nditika wa Ngũũnji's then says that, after explaining this to his wife, she was very pleased with the idea and also relished in the fact that she might have two vaginas. This angered Nditika wa Ngũũnji, who then struck her into compliance with his desire that only men get additional genitals. He then closes his speech with a repeated decree that his plan would make the wealthy immortal, and he calls himself the winner.
Analysis
In many ways, Chapters 5-7 are a succinct recapitulation and development of the passages that come before it. For example, in this section of the text, we are exposed to more speeches at the Devil's Feast, witness more aspects of Warĩĩnga's past, and learn the latter parts of Mũturi and Wangarĩ's own plans for the feast. One should not think, however, that all these chapters do is repeat or reiterate what comes before. Importantly, one does well to note that here, each of the passengers from the matatũ (with the exception of Gatuĩria) no longer acts as a mere observer; rather, each character begins to be implicated in some way in the Devil's Feast, or else becomes implicated in a different way in the events which preceded these chapters. As mentioned, Gatuĩria is the only exception to this general movement of the text towards its climax: the implications of this, as well, are discussed below.
To begin with Warĩĩnga, note over the course of Chapter 5 the way in which we get new color and shading to fill in the bare-bones story of her life that we have heard before. We hear now an explicit confirmation that the father of her child is the Rich Old Man from Ngorika; moreover, we learn here for the first time that her uncle was the one who more or less sold her body to the Rich Old Man. This idea of betrayal within the family unit, of course, is a clear parallel to the fact that her uncle is one of the compradore-type traitors who works behind the scenes for foreign masters. Additionally, while Warĩĩnga's tale before seemed to be exclusively one of victimization and exploitation in a sugar relationship, we see here that Warĩĩnga was both complicit and taken advantage of at the same time, the dynamics of which were very complex. Yes, she was literally preyed upon and hunted by the Rich Old Man, but she too was drawn to his wealth as a potential pathway out of poverty and an escape from the humdrum life she lived before. She gave up her dream of being an engineer to cavort with the Rich Old Man, but at the same time, she did it not of her own volition but because of the consequences of her condition. How could someone in Warĩĩnga's position resist such an advance? Finally, in these chapters, we get more detail on her past of suicidal ideation. Where in the past, we were told simply that Warĩĩnga had tried to take her own life, here we are shown the intense, psychological feelings of desperation and self-rejection that drove her to attempt suicide twice. In sum, while Warĩĩnga is here presented as a woman with a unique history of tragedy and sadness, we also see the ways in which she was perhaps complicit herself in her own downfall—even copying her suicide tactics from others—and was implicated in the larger sugar-girl relationship structure that she later decries.
Something similar can be said of Wangarĩ in these chapters. Wangarĩ knows that thieves and robbers are just as much a pain as witches, but she is unable to confront the fact that the police and the apparatuses of the State work almost exclusively for such thieves and robbers. Was she herself, after all, not arrested unfairly for being a vagrant in her own country? Still, here Wangarĩ plans to go to Superintendent Gakono of the Ilmorog police and help the thieves receive what she sees as their just desserts. Ultimately and ironically, this will lead to her own arrest. In a somewhat paradoxical way, then, Wangarĩ's hatred for thieves and robbers, as well as her plan to do away with them, ultimately leads her to be captured by the envoys and servants of those very thieves and robbers. In this way, too, Wangarĩ is implicated in the larger network of thieves and robbers by unwittingly supporting their paramilitary, mercenary wing.
Mũturi, for his part, is implicated strongly in Warĩĩnga's past—namely, as the man who saved her from suicide not once, but twice. This revelation is as strange to Warĩĩnga as it is to readers, but note here that Mũturi is painted as a kind of savior figure, a role that opens the text to Ngũgĩ's own Marxist thesis and viewpoint. Of course it is a worker who has saved Warĩĩnga, and of course, this same worker plans to lead a revolt of the people against the tycoons who have exploited them for so long. This implication with the Devil's Feast—although diametrically opposed to it—then lays the groundwork for something that the Devil will tell Warĩĩnga in Chapter 8. While tycoons tell the peasants and workers that there are only two worlds—the world of the oppressed (such as the one occupied by Wangarĩ and Warĩĩnga) and the world of the oppressor (such as the one occupied by Mwaũra and Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ)—there is in fact a third world of revolutionary action that remains hidden. This is the prospect that Mũturi represents, and we can see it as early on as these chapter from the various roles he assumes in the larger arc of everyone else's stories.
As mentioned, on the ideologically and experientially opposite side of Wangarĩ and Warĩĩnga is Mwaũra. Here, we see more of the same from our inglorious and vain matatũ driver: he says that thieves are better than witches, tries to stop Mũturi and Wangarĩ, tries to flee with Gatuĩria and Warĩĩnga, and finally even attempts to enter the competition itself. Here, then, the primary takeaway is that Mwaũra, despite everything, is someone who cannot grow out of his old and corrupt ways. He is trapped in his belief that he will still make it big someday, and such beliefs drive him to be opportunistic and selfish (note that we do not fully comprehend the extent of this behavior, past or present, in Mwaũra until Chapter 8).
Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ is also developed into a controversial and complex figure in these chapters. Whereas we are conditioned from early on in the text (based on clothing, demeanor, language, etc.) to group Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ in with all of the other thieves and robbers in the text, we see here, stunningly, that he sticks out like a sore thumb in such a crowd. This, however, is not on account of his appearance or language, but rather his ideology. First, his pride in his education falls flat amidst the hollow materialism of the guests in attendance at the Devil's Feast. Second, his claim that theft should be kept domestic and away from foreign profiteers enrages most of the people in attendance at the feast and drives them to eventually condemn him to death (as we will see in later chapters). He even has to be denounced by the emcee of the entire event (who he evidently knows well) in front of the other thieves, just so that the feast will continue. Here, then, Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ is not revealed to be the archetypal tycoon, but rather a perfect example of how easily compradores will turn on each other, especially if they sense that someone is not loyal to the right master. A notable irony within this situation is that the emcee uses the Parable of the Talents—once spoken by Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ himself—as a rhetorical tool for asserting Kenyan servitude to the foreign powers—something that Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ would have stood firmly against.
Finally, we arrive at the figure of Gatuĩria. Though he is present for all the events of these three chapters, he is not developed as thoroughly as the other characters. This is not an accident; rather, it is a very intentional choice by Ngũgĩ to leave Gatuĩria's character unresolved and tense as the text builds. Note that we are given Gatuĩria's point of view twice, but in neither instance are we given any indication that he staunchly disagrees with or rejects the events of the Devil's Feast (even to Mwaũra, he claims to be a passive observer of the Feast, though its events terrify him), nor are we told that he explicitly condones or agrees with such events. He is simply someone whose loyalties remain unclear. This fits in with his role as a student or educated person in postcolonial Kenya (who can either be revolutionary, like the students who made the demonic fliers, or complicit, like Mwĩreri wa Mũkiraaĩ), but note that it also provides a clear foreshadowing of Gatuĩria's ultimate fate, which will be discussed in Chapter 12's analysis.
