Petals of Blood

This Blog-post is a response to the thinking activity task on the novel 'Petals of Blood' given by our professor Yesha Bhatt ma'am. To know more, CLICK HERE.

About the Author: 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. He was educated at Kamandura, Manguu and Kinyogori primary schools; Alliance High School, all in Kenya; Makerere University College (then a campus of London University), Kampala, Uganda; and the University of Leeds, Britain. (from Official Website of the Author)

His popular Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major novel in English by an East African. As he became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngugi adopted his traditional name and wrote in the Bantu language of Kenya’s Kikuyu people.(from britannica.com)

About the Novel: 

Petals of Blood reflects the many internal journeys Ngugi had made over the years, up to writing the book. It is a different book from his earlier work, with more complex characters, a sharper political, mental and cultural landscape, harder rhythms, deeper themes, It is tighter. more intense, driven like a racing car over a well-beaten track that leaves no doubt as to his skill, his determination, his destination or destiny It reflects the endless wars he had fought and survived, and the endless wars he saw ahead of him He had sloughed, leaving behind, a part of him that was too worn out for the new skirmishes, and armed himself with a new vision imbued with urgency and an uncompromising stand, as if he was declaring his own state of emer gency because time had not healed the wounds inflicted on Kenya's masses who had fought so heroically but had been so bitterly betrayed The Kenya Ngugi writes about, the Kenya that nobody can take away from him, is the 'Kenya of the working people of all nationalities and their heroic struggle against domination by nature and other humans over the centuries' It is a huge Kenya, trampled by earlier colonial raconteurs like Robert Ruark and Karen Blixen, who celebrated the settler culture of 'legalized brutality, fear, silence, oppression' (It is a Kenya whose face we see reflected in Ilmorog, the centre of action for Petals of Blood Ngugi chooses a barren, drought-stricken part of Kenya) where farmers and herders, like their ancestors before them, are battling the elements on the one hand, and politicians who have abandoned them to their fate on the other The journey of Ilmorog is the journey of Kenya after independence when it donned neocolonial clothes and put the interests of foreigners and traitors first and aban doned the people who had suffered and died for the land. The question of landys very important in the book, as in Ngugi's earlier books.(Land is presented as salvation, as a soul, as a woman, as God, the subject of prophecy, the basis of cultural and political identity) There was nothing people would not do to grab or regain land. Ngugi revists the issue in Devil on the Cross where in Ilmorog a clique of thieves and robbers, former businessmen, are celebrating theft and robbery on a grand scale and are working towards a more efficient system of taking people's land and other goods and resources. Both books breathe the same burning, zealous spirit of concern for a country where the political élite gorge themselves to surfeit as the peasants and workers continue to languish in misery, in prison, on the periphery and where 'women's thighs are the tables on which contracts are signed'

In a world where money has been elevated to the status of world religion and where globalization, meaning the sanctified domination of the world by rich corporations, is seen as a panacea for all problems economic, Ngugi is a writer to cherish for warning, witnessing and pounding on the locked doors of the psyche, especially as for a chilling while it was thought that the end of the Third World War, cynically called the Cold War, would be the end of writers who do not glorify the rich - that they would be cremated along with the remains of the communist empire. Ngugi is sitting pretty because for him history is not some dead skunk reeking to high heaven of centuries of despair, but a mammoth beast, a terrible growler that makes hearts tremble when it bellows for change, change, change, struggle, struggle, struggle. Ngügi has spent most of his life wrestling with the essential issues of life in general and Kenya in particular and has come out of the ring with the definitive African book of the twentieth century. Karibu Ilmorog, Karibu Kenya, Karibu Afrika. - Moses Isegawa, June 2001

A note on the first chapter of the novel (Interrogation of all characters)

There are four parts in the novel, 

Part One: Walking 

Part Two: Towards Bethlehem 

Part Three: To Be Born 

Part Four: Again...La Luta Continua!

Before the start of the first part, there are about four horsemen of the apocalypse:

And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he that 

sat thereon had a bow and there was given unto him a crown 

and he came forth conquering, and to conquer ...

And another horse came forth, a red horse and to him that s

at thereon it was given to take peace from the earth, that they should

slay one another and was there given unto him a great

sword... And I saw, and behold/ a black horse, and he that sat thereon

had a balance in his hand And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat

upon him, his name was Death And there was given unto them authority over the fourth part of 

earth, to kill with sword and with famine, and with death.

Revelation, Chapter 6 To know the meaning CLICK HERE.

Another is by Walt Whitman:(to know about the poet, CLICK HERE)

The people scorn'd the ferocity of kings... 

But the sweetness of mercy brew'd destruction,

          and the frighten'd monarchs come back; 

Each comes in state, with his train - hangman, 

         priest, tax-gatherer,

Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.

Interrogation of all characters: 

The first part starts with police cops and the character Munira. Ngugi Wa pointed to every character in five numbers and in every conversation, we learn about their role or passion in the novel. Here is their introductory part: 

1.Munira: 

Are you Mr Munira? the short one asked. He had a star-shaped scar above the left brow.

'Yes.'

'You teach at the New Ilmorog Primary School?' "And where do you think you are now standing?'

Ah, yes. We try to be very sure Murder, after all, is not irio or ugali 'What are you talking about?"

'You are wanted at the New Ilmorog Police Station 'About?'

'Murder, of course - murder in Ilmorog.'

The tall one who so far had not spoken hastened to add 'It is nothing much, Mr Munira Just routine questioning 'Don't explain You are only doing your duty in this world. But let me put on my coat'

They looked at one another, surprised at his cool reception of the news. He came back carrying the Holy Book in one hand 'You never leave the Book behind, Mr Munira,' said the short one, impressed, and a little fearful of the Book's power.

'We must always be ready to plant the seed in these last days before His second coming. All the signs - strife, killing, wars, blood prophesied here. 

2.Abdulla: 

Abdulla sat on a chair outside his hovel in the section of Ilmorog called the New Jerusalem. He looked at his bandaged left hand. He had not been kept long at the hospital. He felt strangely calm after the night's ordeal. But he still could not understand what had really happened. Maybe in time, he thought - but would he ever be able to explain this fulfilment of what had only been a wish, an intention? How far had he willed it? He raised his head and saw a police constable looking at him.

3. Wanja: 

A police officer went to the hospital where Wanja had been admitted I am afraid you cannot see her, said the doctor 'She is not in a position to answer questions She is still in a delirium and keeps on shouting Fire Fire My mother's sister my dear aunt put out the fire, put out the fire!" and such things. 

4. Karega:

Karega is asleep when the police come and bring him to the station. People gather outside, thinking he is in trouble for last night’s decision to strike, but the police say it is about murder (www.gradesaver.com)

5. News

The headline reads that Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria, African directors of the Theng’eta Breweries and Enterprises Ltd., were burnt to death last night, and murder is suspected. (www.gradesaver.com)