LITR 5831
World / Multicultural Literature: Tragedy & Africa
Lecture Notes
Grain of Wheat
notes
Dear Tragedy-Africans, Assuming “university closed today”
also means “tonight” (& don’t ask me how “code green” means “don’t drive to
campus”), our seminar won’t meet tonight, 18 April,
7-10.
I’ve adjusted our website at
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5831TrAf/default.htm
for next week’s agenda (i.e. 25 April):
review Oedipus at Colonus:
instructor
Gospel at
Colonus:
Heather
[break]
begin Grain of Wheat
Hanna,
your final Bacchae
presentation is now scheduled for our last class, 2 May, and our final
Birth of Tragedy reading for 2
May is canceled, though I may synopsize.
Otherwise, please maintain your reading schedule for
Grain of Wheat (app.
half-way, through ch. 7, p. 121) for next week.
Also please preview the following
websites
for Grain of Wheat
that I planned for tonight:
Text guide:
A Grain of Wheat
(annotations for settings, characters, and unusual terms—helpful b/c novel is
told through flashbacks verging on stream-of-consciousness)
Kenya (some political
history b/c central event and flashbacks occur at Kenya’s Independence
celebrations in 1963 and, from decade before, anti-colonial Mau Mau uprising led
primarily by Kikuyu people—like main characters)
Hope
you’re all OK—welcome to communicate—I’ve drafted discussion questions but may
update as I prepare for next Monday. Till then—
Africa
10 women ruled, men no property
38 how many wives?
220 ghosts of colonial past
175 those buried in the earth
168 child not responsible for birth (Africa?)
Western
Civilization and Africa (modern / traditional)
74 technology
87 guns and boats
88 people > born
106 same thing over and over through history
132 do
unexpected
148 Kariuki, education
149 > school, future
156 sixty years changes
181 women of today surprise me
Tragedy
Cf. Mugo, Oedipus as fate—both rise to prestige
Sacrifice—giive yourself, more than self; identity,
empathize
6 country sick and dull
24 sacrifice, ritual + 56
104 sickly crops
11 sublime Mmixture of agony and joy)
150-1 sublime
92, 120 men imagine each other with Mumbi
206 unfinished drama
John Thompson as Creon
212 Oedipal drama
221 war not ended
238 no one escape from own actions
245 moral distribution > desire to carve stool
Religion
12 Harry, Bible, literacy
53 millennial desire
98 forgootten land
99 born again
134 new Jerusalem
137 Kihika hanged on tree
144 end of world
144 Judas
201 new heaven and earth
217 independent churches
Pre-colonial,
colonial, postcolonial
12 iron snake > 33 evil spirit; human sacrifice
12 Harry learns Bible, sues against + literacy
12 red strangers: Bible > sword
14 Kenyatta from land of whiteman
15 universalist religion
26 WW2
33 European, Indian immigrants
48 Africanizing x order
53 Rudyard Kipling, Brit mission in the world: Greadon
order, measure
83, 204 syncretism
1 sufuria:
flat based,
deep sided, lipped and handleless cooking pot or container in Kenya and
surrounding nations
2 jembe
Panga
shamba
proverb
Kenyatta, Uhuru na Kazi
Riddle?
3 the Emergency
5 Mau Mau terrorist
6 country
sick and dull (cf.
Oedipus the King)
7 husband’s rika (“a
generational group in Gikuyu society; all of the youths in a given rika are
circumcised at the same time, thereby determining their place in the community”)
8 no relation
9 Voices from the Movement
Origins
10 Movement, [missionary]
Gikuyu seer:
women ruled, men no property
[Queen
11 queen in Muranga
Agony and joy [sublime]
“she overreached”
Missionary more land
12 red strangers, bible and sword
Iron snake
[hybrid figure]
Harry and literacy > resistance
Waiyaki’s blood > seed, grain
Bond with soil
14 Burning Spear
The history
of
15 Mubia
[Genesis:] sword of flames
[irony]
The great
sacrifice
Terror and hatred
Proverb:
Kikulacho
16 capture of Mahee
White Highlands
Concentration camps
Rift Valley
Convention
“Uhuru”
17 Special Branch
Kihika cf. passion of Christ
Chapter 3
18 Gikonyo as hero
19 dance the song
Wiyathi
Calabash
Wambui / woman
20 [libation!}
Sacrifice!
21 song
Masai
22 Kihika prayed, read Bible
Psalm 72
23 Karanja
24 Mugo to lead
sacrifice, ritual
Setting in motion
a course of action
25 What do they really want
[perspective shifts]
Party / Movement
26 Black Power
Koina former cook
World War 2
27 revolutionary
Prison
27-8 Gikonyo emotional in hut?
Chapter 4
33 European and
Indian immigrants
Science in
dark
Sacrifice
34 Mwaura
36 trivial errands > affected standing of African workers
Good name of white people
37 terrible beauty of a rebellion
38 black mule does not equal end of whitepower
How many wives?
Wound: Mumbi
40
East African
Standard
41 Albion
[millennial]
43
Annie Get Your Gun
45 Koina as houseboy
46 wound
Chapter 5
48 earlier vision
> 49 wife
49 African
campaigns WW2
51 meteorology
53 Kipling,
history of
Lord Lugard
2 African students, Gold Coast
British mission in the world
Dress, speech, intellectual power
Reason, Order,
Measure
54 a great moral
idea: all men created equal
Light in darkness
Prospero in
Africa
English = attitude
Alterning social and cultural environment
55 administer people > soul
Schweitzer: Negro
is a child
56 whiteman /
moral ruin / African
Great confession
[ritual]
Chapter 6
57 Gikonyo carpenter, contracts
Concentration camps
changed him
Cf. Indian traders: investment ethic
58
hoarded
Entered the
market
Re-invested
Right time, poured hoardings on market at high price
59 morning after visit to Mugo
Poco preference for Europeans and Indians
M.P.
Colonial education;
Richard Burton
Big oil companies
in
60 real Harambee spirit
[baksheesh]
African schools
MP like a father
/ headmaster to children [tradition]
Co-op farm
Pyrethrum
64 as you’ll remember
65 Rira
Only thought of home [tradition]
67 Thompson beat Mugo
68 nothing to confess
I don’t
understand anything
Proud of you,
resented and hated you
Chapter 7
70 Rung’ei Trading Center (cf.
Market in
Death and the King’s Horseman)
Indian traders
(hoarding > hard times]
African shops < railroad
71 iron snake < Gikuyu seer
Red strangers
Railroad platform
meeting place for young (cf. market?)
Ritual
Dance
72 conventions
Immigrant:
Gikonyo’s father Warahiu from Elburgeon > Rift Valley, now squatter on European
farms; mother Wangari
Warahiu new brides
73 carpentry: fear and wonder
Ritual
74 uses white prestige to own benefit
White men = these
people, clever (technology) cf. 87
Mumbi = land
75 white man: tribal wars > world wars
Gikuyu
Independent Schools
Reading x see & hear
76 Karanja as storyteller
Sublime? (train) [cf. 78, 81-2, 150-1]
Sacrifice
Cf. OT Esther
77 shillings
Gikonyo and guitar
78 Karanja and guitar
Sublime + unity cf. 76, 81-2, 150-1]
79 cf. Ruth
New song < Kihika
80 panga
81-2 sublime [cf. 76, 78, 150-1]
82 Karanja
83 colonialism +
WW2, Hitler
Harry + 1923 Procession
What [Africans]
had seen in Burma . . . India; Gandhi
Word or 2 about Christ
Ngai Gikuyu god =
One God who sent Christ [syncretism]
Unfinished game of words and actions
84 Jackson a
respected elder
Revivalist
movement = fire of vengeance
Lord, what shall I do to be
saved? (Pilgrim’s
Progress)
“My home is
heaven: here on earth I am a pilgrim.”
85 Jackson among
first group of Christians to be killed
Mau Mau
Teacher Muniu, police informer?
Kihika, school world of printed world
Cf. Exodus
Circumcision of
women, heathen custom
86 Bible for circumcision?
87 Kihiku’s escape from Teacher Muniu
> work on the land
Talked too long
They have got the
guns and bombs (cf. 74)
88 example of
India—Gandhi: blood, people greater than bomb
Sacrificial
martyrdom: ritual mist
Christ
89 one Mother-India
90 path to train through small forest
91 dark ritual
92 fashions
differed from ridge to ridge
93 millennial
desire
Staring into a white blank abyss
94 Kihika:
Christ, blood, Gandhi
94-5 conflict b/w Karanja & Kihika
95 a centre in the cross
Deaths which
will change things, i.e.,
true sacrifice
95 mutually avoided
Dance
in the wood
96 Police
Station, a symbol . . . dominated
97 Kihiku on railway: road whiteman followed
A man following an idea
Wambuku = land
98 the
common shamba, our
Kihika misinterprets Wambuku (irony)
Separate delusions
Ritual myth of a
forgotten land, long ago
99 born again
(contrast millennial p. 93)
Mugo (return to present from flashback)
Cf. banana > Kiana
Cooked in the same pot
Change in the man (Gikonyo’s defiance)
100 Kenyatta; Gov. Baring: State of emergency
Kariuki, Mumbi’s younger brother
101 Kihiku > forest to fight
Enough land? Children’s children? (Mbugua)
102 Wambuku: the demon
Njeri x-women’s weaknesses
A cat, men called her (cf. Okonkwo)
“You are my warrior.”
103 concentration
camps, named detention camps
104 Gitoyo p. 5
Gikonyu arrested
Six years later
Sickly crops,
recent drought (cf. Oedipus)
105 unchanging reality
Reunion with
Mumbi = birth of new Kenya
Radio
106 same thing
over and over again through history
107 oath administrator
Gandhi,
Napoleon,
Lincoln
108 Russian revolution
109 Gatu symbol of collective resistance
No wood-carvers left
Traditional
Gikuyu stools
110 we all have our separate losses
111 Gatu hanged
112 vision of Mumbi
113 Gikonyo confesses
114 [irony] so soon?
115 Karanja’s
child!
117 New Thabai
Village (modernization)
118 ruins . . .
earlier civilization
Collective punishment
Report arrival to the Chief
119 Karanja(!)
God was cruel . .
. humiliation
120 learn your lesson
Cf. 92 Gikonyo
and Karanja imagine each other with Mumbi
Chapter 8
122 back to
present: Gikonyo and Mugo
Decision x-talk about child, x-bed with Mumbi
Ø
hard work
123 guilt, shame
Mugo’s purity
Mugo hints at his
own secret: Suppose I had told him
124 last night’s saying from the Bible (He shall save the
children of the needy; Psalm 72.4)
125 something is going to happen to you
God: Moses, Moses
Week later: D.O.
Robson shot dead > Kihika
126 spectacle
The Uhuru war
People loved good
stories
127 General R
Nobody need ever
know about Kihika.
To the few, elect of God, the past was forgiven.
129 Kihika’s Bible: Exodus 37: I know their sorrows [cf.
Equiano, King]
Chapter 9
131 learned men . . . incident in Rira Camp
Soldiers: it’s the Whiteman, not we
132 Kenyatta in prison
x-answer questions, work
Mugo destined to meet John Thompson again
Torture > enticement
“Do the
unexpected” > different man [modernization]
133 x-tell one
black face from another—cf. masks
134 political prisoners not criminals—collective letter
Eliminate the
vermin (cf. Kurtz)
The now famous beating
>return to present
Mugo’s miraculous escape from death > guiding hand of
fate
He, an only son, was born to save
>the new
Jerusalem [Messianism of millennialism]
134-5 Mumbi’s voice
135 Mumbi & Kihika brother and sister
+ Kariuki >
136 Do you ever dream?
Everybody dreams
x-ordinary dreams, >future
when my brother talked . . . I dreamt of sacrifice
137 whether Wambuku dreamt
The woman you tried to save
Kihika’s woman before
Kihika hanged on
a tree
Destroyed herself
Particular homeguard revenge
137-8 Mambi’s son
138 Irimu
A sacrifice . . . she died for my brother
Njeri, secret dream, shot dead in battle
Kihiku: something really secret and important > Mugo
139 about the house? 2 huts?
He does not want to know
They
140 something in me cracked when I saw our home fall
Breakup at the old
Black man in Nyeri, Mwangi Matemo
Censored, but confirmed
141 Thomas Robson
barazas
draw the plan of the hut (Karanja)
her father’s small forest
[rapid change] women + trousers
A new Wangu
in
The woman’s shauri
142 homeguards . . . more huts to burn down
142-3 Karanja for Mumbi
143 the punishment, the trench
Karanja joins homeguards
144 the end of
the world [millennialism]
Could not stop our voices
Mumbi stops narrative, hums tune
145 Thabai was a warning
x-visiting [hospitality; tradition]
rumors: Karanja betrayed Kihika
146 “Judas”
“I did not betray Kihika.”
Every man in the world is alone
Accepts food, ashamed
No child died
148 hope for
future, Kariuki and education
> Karanja > chief
148 that knot of guilt that tied me to him
Karanja defends
himself
This frightened me
Whiteman bombs
forest of Japan and Malaya
149 Kariuki
passes KAPE > place in Siriana Secondary School
Taken the oath
Talking about the
future [modernization]
Wangui & Mumbi cf. Ruth
150 Karanja & Mumbi
150-1 vision Mugo
of earth: life, struggle amid pain blood poverty, seemed beautiful [sublime]
[cf. 76, 78, 81-2]
151 What do you want me to do?
General R & Lt Koina
What Githua said about bullets? Never shot
Bullets = maize grains
152 He invents a meaning for his life
Kihika trap: Wambui, Mugo, or Karanja
Koina at Githima
153 puzzled by meaning of what I saw there
Aspro?
Some kind of ghosts . . . make me wonder what celebrating
R: x-God, > Gikuyu & Mumbi (land?)
Find Kihika’s murderer
Mugo to call for
murderer (cf. Oedipus?)
Chapter 10
155 [trap for Karanja?]
Mwaura’s reports confirm Karanja’s betrayal of Kihika
The ritual
R’s origins? Name? > Ka-40
Circumcised
156 R = Russia
The little drama
to be enacted on Independence Day
Thompson go?
[modernization]
60 years
157 Mrs. Dickinson
Dr. Van Dyke = Boer
Dog incident
158 shame
Odinga Odinga
Karanja shamed for collaborating behavior
Karanja > Githima and Thompson
158 Mwaura
158-9 conspiring, conspire
159 diminutive “Ka”
160 How explain
Mugo’s escape from Rira hunger strike? Ten died
162 Mwaura’s mission, lure Karanja to Uhuru ceremony
Chapter 11
163 John Thompson worse treated by government
At centre of scandal at Rira
164 African
violence and International Communism
Chinese and
Russian embassies
Mrs. Dickinson and Roger Mason
Mrs. Dickinson predicts holocaust
Scene of [John Thompson’s] shame
Biological metaphor
165 Dr Lynd: “I’ll not leave my property to them.”
One fat man with long unkempt beard and bushy eyebrows
166 reminds Margery of worse aspects of Dr. Van Dyke
Broken glass,
African cleans, conversation resumes
Not the journey’s
end, Africa cannot do without Europe
Chapter 12
167 the boy in dispute
168 child not
responsible for birth
Wow: Wangari as
mother to both
169 scheme: MP
buys Burton farm
Warui’s hut; Gikonyo’s first duty to Party
Warui contented with life
170 Warui not as contented
Wife Mukumi
Stories about birth of the Movement
Gikuyu break with
missions
Disappointment: 3 sons—conscripted WW2
Kamau believed power of British
171 the spirit of
the black people
Faith, spirit of
black people, national heroes
172 old saying true: Kamwena Kabgio ira.
Wambuku’s story cracked M’s inside; released imprisoned
Ran without
thinking of road, its origin, end
173-4 Mugo and woman in trench, torture
174 saw man come from dead (in forest)
175 death of deaf-mute boy
Old woman sees
son = Mugo
Those buried in
the earth should remain in the earth.
Things of
yesterday should remain with yesterday.
176 Why did they
blame Judas?
Wami + Wambui
177 Mugo’s greatness < modesty; refusing to lead >
legendary hero
You have broken your home
Mother in whole conspiracy against his life
You are a man . . . . Read your own heart, and know
yourself.
Chapter 13
178 saw him, the man
Mwauga, Ngai > rain, Kenyatta
179 which of us does not carry a weight in his heart?
Mugo . . . ?
Song of trench, village anthem
180 village hero
Wambui’s drama at workers’ strike 1950
Shoe factory
Mithuru & Miengu
181 Mambi and parents
“women of today
surprise me” (Wanjiku) [modernization]
>
More blood / guilt to land? (Karanja)
182 [personal and political]
184 Is it the camps? No . . . yes—everything. Me.
Whiteman / Mzungu = a devil
185 who murdered Kihika? I strangled him
Eyes always
watching you (tribal community) [tradition]
186 Thomas Robson / Tom, the Terror
Bren-gun, Askari
187 assassination . . . brutes
Newspapers:
senselessly murdered by Mau Mau thugs [cf. terrorists]
Mugo’s dreams private message, prophecy
188 padlock; hut as extension of dreams
Mugo 25 years old
Dialogue as a strange voice
The voice from God calling out Moses, Moses! Here am I,
Lord.
189 knock on door . . . I shot him
190 Kihika!
Could this be the man . . . ?
191 x-turn other cheek
Weapon against: x-Maxim gun, > division
Cf. Exodus
A few shall die
that many shall live. That what crucifixion means today.
192 oath
confirms;
cf. baptism
Nightmare
193 meet in a
week at Kinenie Forest
[cf. Afghanistan]
194 avoided conflicts; if you
don’t traffic with evil, then evil ought not to touch you [cf.
Hamlet]
195 old hatred of Kihika
196 wanted poster > sacrifice
197 concrete logic of a dream
To be great . . . dispense pain and death
198 John Thompson
199 beyond good and evil
200 he did not
want the money. He did not want to know what he had done
A corn of wheat
201 new heaven
and new earth
203 12 Dec 1963
Uhuru
Jomo, Kaggia, Oginga + Waiyaki
204 words to describe deeds
Christmas songs +
songs and dances initiation rites circumcision [syncretism]
203-4 our, we
205 pregnant earth
206 unfinished
drama
206-7 Mumbi’s warning note to Karanja
207 irony
Mugo-Mumbi scene resumed
[recognition]
208 knowledge > new dilemma: Karanja or Mugo?
209 the wheel of things
Ironically
210 Karanja’s last race
211 Mumbi wanted Kikonyo to win and prayed he might lose
Gen. R x-fail Kihika
School and learning in Nyeri (Gen. R., Muhoya)
211-12 [Oedipal] > colonial
Slave’s treachery cf. Mother and Kenyans
213
demanding rights (WW2 and
Dr. Lynd’s dog > $
214 exclusive
white settlement grew
214 Gikonyo and Karanja fall
215 ceremony, foundation for new future
216 Christian
hymns + traditional and Uhuru songs [syncretism]
Something done about the
Indians?
Spectacle
217 Kihika & Mugo
Disturbing sense of an inevitable doom
Rev. Morris Kingori, Kikuyu Greek Orthodox Church,
xmissionary
[call / response?]
218 Abraham >
Kikuyu [syncretism]
[Exodus]
Recreated history . . . through words and voices
220 ghosts of
colonial past still haunting Kenya
Rev. Jackson: We
are still here
221 not on our side, against us
Even now this war is not ended
Uhuru = Land and Freedom
Asking for change he had spoken their word
222 drama more exciting
Let him come forward as a sign of repentance
Mugo . . . other drama forgotten
223 Now, you know
As if the meeting ended with Mugo’s confession
Elders
complete
sacrifice before storm
KARANJA
224 mother Wairimu
225 story x idleness
Jembe, panga, shamba
226 x-go against the people, the voice of his own people
227 back to Githima
229 day’s events . . . coherence
Scared of black power
He has saved you
230 hooded man [Trayvon!]
231 merges with
Mugo
MUGO
233 proverb: even an enemy is often rescued from danger
233-4 x-cast stone, open hearts naked for world to look
at
234 re-enacted same movement
238 General R
No one will ever
escape from his own actions
WARUI, WAMBUI
239 [disordered household]
240 things started changing in our village the day she
started seeing visions of the dead
241 something
went wrong
Cf. days of Harry
We slaughtered
the rams
Not what I had waited for
242 nothing to save
I did not want anything to happen
I ask myself, Why did he do all that in the trench and in
detention?
HARAMBEE
244 Kerinyaga
245 desire to carve stool
What difference was there between
him and Karanja or Mugo or those who had openly betrayed people and worked with
the whiteman to save themselves?
[moral distribution]
