Petals of Blood

“The road had once been a railway line joining Ilmorog to Ruwa-ini. […] It had eaten the forests, and after accomplishing their task, the two rails were removed, and the ground became a road—a kind of a road—that now gave no evidence of its former exploiting glory.”

The road Munira travels to the city is a symbolic representation of what has happened to Africa in the postcolonial era. Europeans came to “save” them and brought them things like roads, infrastructure, and education, but at the cost of Africa’s resources—here, their forests. Similarly, they colonized the people, introducing new systems of economic inequality and leaving behind the lasting influence of corruption. The road seems like an improvement over the railway, but the effect is the same.

“He had gone home, convinced that inwardly he had given himself up to the Lord, and decided to do something about his sins. He stole a matchbox, collected a bit of grass and dry cowdung and built an imitation of Amina’s house at Kamiritho where he had sinned against the Lord, and burnt it.”

Munira feels guilt over his first time having sex and burns an effigy of Amina’s home to cleanse himself. This symbolic cleansing connects with and ultimately foreshadows his decision at the end of the text to burn Wanja’s brothel. Munira views women alternately as objects and corrupting forces, resenting when they don’t bow to his will and believing he can purge their presence from him with fire. However, fire is destructive, symbolizing the harmful nature of this perspective. Additionally, as the fire rages out of control and almost burns down a nearby burn, it also represents how religion can spiral out of control in its efforts to save people, ultimately causing harm.

“These people—you know—too suspicious. Have you seen their anxious faces raised to the sky? I bet that if it refused to rain they would blame it on my donkey.”

This quote shows Abdulla and Munira’s feelings of unbelonging as “outsiders” in Ilmorog, foreigners to their way of life, motivating each of their character arcs. This also foreshadows a future conflict—the villagers do try to blame the drought on Abdulla’s donkey.

“Her voice had a studied vibrant purity: the tone was rich and pleasant to his ears. There was a calculated submissive deference in her bearing as she stretched out a small hand and looked at him full in the eyes, suddenly lowering them in childlike shyness. He swallowed something before answering.”

Ngũgĩ uses vivid language to describe Munira’s first interaction with Wanja, which is alternately admiring—“vibrant purity,” “rich and pleasant”—and suspicious—“calculating.” The conflicting language embodies Munira’s sexism, as he simultaneously desires and resents Wanja. The words “childlike” and “small” also infantilize her, another form of sexism.

“Twelve years later, on a Sunday, Godfrey Munira tried to reconstruct that scene in a statement to the police, a statement in which he was meant to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing else but the truth.”

This first cut back to the present tense establishes the framing device to tell the story. There are from here two storylines from this point. The present tense is used when Munira recording his statement and being questioned by the police, while the events recounted in his statement are shown through flashbacks. The repetition of “truth” is ironic, drawing attention to Munira’s unreliability as a narrator, particularly how he depicts Wanja.

“If Munira had not been blinded by that voice he could have seen the signs, the evil web being spun around him, around Abdulla, around Ilmorog.”

The police seem uninterested in the events that Munira is describing, but to him, his obsession with Wanja is the cause of everything. Building off the idea that Munira is an unreliable narrator, this metaphor compares Wanja to a spider, using her sex appeal to spin an “evil web” around the male characters and the village.

“She was somehow sure of her power over men: she knew how they could be very weak before her body. […] [S]he had come to enjoy the elation at seeing a trick—a smile, a certain look, maybe even raising one’s brow, or a gesture like carelessly brushing against a customer—turn a man into a captive and a sighing fool.”

The bulk of the text is told in the third-person point of view, generally focusing on Munira’s thoughts and actions. However, occasional shifts such into the minds of other characters reveal their motivations. Here, Wanja’s thoughts reveal that there is some truth to Munira’s belief that she manipulates men, though she feels her actions are empowering.

“Just now we can only depend on legends passed from generation to generation […] and also by what we can glean from between the lines of the records of the colonial adventures of the last few centuries.”

This quote shows the contrast between African oral history and the written history of the West. The phrase “colonial adventures” is ironic here, as these “adventures” encompass the conquest, enslavement, and death that were recorded by conquerors and celebrated as achievements. Written history also erases the history of those being colonized, and oral histories resist this erasure.

“The missionary had traversed the seas, the forests, armed with the desire for profit that was his faith and light and the gun that was his protection. He carried the bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.”

This allusion to the Holy Trinity in Christianity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—explains the methods used by Europeans in their efforts for colonization. All three of these methods (religion, money, and violence) are one and the same, tools by which Europeans exploited and controlled Africa. The biblical allusions and language here highlight the way Christianity was contorted to justify colonialism.

“Let us rather look to ourselves to see what we can do to save us from the drought. The labour of our hands is the magic and the wealth that will change our world and end all droughts from our earth.”

These are the beginnings of Karega’s views on how people should handle oppression, which alludes directly to Marxist arguments that workers create wealth and an egalitarian distribution of capital can fix social issues. This also shows the conflict between the views of his elders and the new views of his generation. While debating how to handle the drought, the elders wish to sacrifice a goat and rely on God to bring them rain. However, Karega wants the people to take concrete action—both with this drought and with their overall oppression—to join together to bring change.

“Why should we fail, though? We are now going as a community. The voice of the people is truly the voice of God. And who is an MP? Isn’t he the people’s voice in the ruling house?”

The irony of this statement also shows Karega’s naivety when it comes to the Kenyan government. As it turns out, the MP (Nderi wa Riera) is only motivated by himself, not the voice of the people. While Karega espouses Marxist viewpoints and believes in solidarity, Nderi wa Riera upholds the neocolonial system and is only concerned with creating more wealth for the capitalist class.

“The naked children playing in the narrow streets, and he wondered: who was better off, the peasant in a forgotten village or the city dweller thrown onto these rubbish heaps they called locations?”

This rhetorical question Karega poses to himself shows the true flaws of the postcolonial system in Kenya. Neither the poor in the city nor the village are “better off.” Both suffer from the poverty that greed and exploitation have put in place.

“The others surrounded the sculpture and commented on the fighter’s hair, the heavy lips and tongue in open laughter, and the sword around the waist. But why did he possess breasts, somebody asked: it was as if it was a man and a woman in one: how could that be? They were arguing about it until Nyakinyua almost silenced them with her simple logic. ‘A man cannot have a child without a woman. A woman cannot bear a child without a man. And was it not a man and a woman who fought to redeem this country?’”

This androgynous statue symbolizes the necessity of unity in the fight for freedom, a theme that is expressed by Karega throughout the text. The delegation’s debate represents the conflict between old views—men as warriors who are the only bringers of freedom and change—and new views—that men and women work side by side to create revolution.

“It is sad, it hurts, at times I am angry, looking at the black zombies, black animated cartoons dancing the master’s dance to the master’s voice.”

This metaphor compares the Black citizens of Kenya to zombies and cartoons—objects, not people. Many live their lives without thought to the injustice that has put them in this miserable position. Others think that acquiescing to neocolonial demands is the best way to get by. Ngũgĩ rejects both methods through this metaphor.

“I saw in the cities of America white people also begging. […] I saw a lot of unemployment in Chicago and other cities. I was confused. So I said: let me return to my home, now that the black man has come to power. And suddenly as in a flash of lightning I saw we were serving the same monster-god as they were in America.”

The lawyer speaks of his disillusionment with America’s land of “freedom.” He sees the failings of capitalism in America, represented by its impoverished lower class rather than the equality he expected to see there. This motivates him to return to Kenya and help the poor in their struggle for equality. While the neocolonial struggle is particular to postcolonial nations, the lawyer situates anticapitalist struggle as a global movement.

“‘Wake up, Wanja,’ Karega called out to her. She heard his voice and she felt cold but she kept her eyes closed. ‘Wake up and see signs of dawn over Ilmorog,’ he continued. They left the hill and walked to their separate places bathed in the cold glow of the morning.”

After Wanja and Karega make love, the sunrise symbolizes the new dawn that is about to occur, both on Ilmorog and Karega. The language here foreshadows negative changes; Wanja is “cold,” the sun gives off a “cold glow,” and they separate. Shortly thereafter, Karega is fired and leaves Ilmorog to discover himself and explore the lives of the working class; at the same time, the road through Ilmorog is finished and the city grows, bringing new problems for the villagers.

“Are there pure facts? When I am looking at you, how much I see of you is conditioned by where I stand or sit; by the amount of light in this room; by the power of my eyes; by whether my mind is occupied with other thoughts and what thoughts.”

Karega expresses his disagreement with Munira’s views on education. Munira thinks they should give facts and information, not interpretation—an idea he got from “a circular sent to all schools by an English inspector of language” (293). This interaction represents the broader disagreement about interpreting literature that was taking place when Ngũgĩ wrote Petals of Blood. On one side, which Munira expresses, was New Criticism, which dominated mid-20th century literary study and encouraged students to focus solely on the text itself, ignoring the social context surrounding it. On the other side is Karega, Ngũgĩ himself, and Postcolonialism, which stresses the importance of understanding the author, time period, and context surrounding the text, as the idea of something being unbiased is not truly possible.

“But she tried to convince them that all these were one and that she would fight them. Her land would never be settled by strangers. There was something grand, and defiant in the woman’s action—she with her failing health and flesh trying to organize the dispossessed of Ilmorog into protest.”

When the idea of owning property and land deeds via loans from the bank comes to Ilmorog, a dying Nyakinyua is the only one who protests. However, the people fail to hear her, instead feeling uncomfortable and uncertain that what she is saying is true. This represents the major issue with bringing about change—people who are comfortable, in power, or are presented with opportunities are, in turn, too comfortable to take action or too shortsighted to see where it will end up.

“How could I continue teaching them how to fit into a world I was beginning to reject, a world that was fundamentally illogical and evil? How could I explain this: that Ironmonger was replaced by Cambridge Fraudsham, that Fraudsham was replaced by Chui, that Chui owned a factory in Ilmorog.”

These thoughts by Munira examine how oppression is cyclical. One form of power replaces another as those underfoot fail to break the cycle and gain back their own power. Chui represents the way neocolonial practices fill the void left by colonialism; though he initially protested Cambridge Fraudsham’s discriminatory practices, he is even worse when he is headmaster. He also owns a factory, marking him explicitly as a capitalist.

“Kenya, the soil, was the people’s common shamba, and there was no way it could be right for a few, or a section, or a single nationality, to inherit for their sole use what was communal, any more than it would be right for a few sons and daughters to monopolize their father or mother.”

This metaphor shows Karega’s beliefs upon his return to Ilmorog and seeing what has become of the village. He is creating a mother-child relationship between the land and its people, asserting that the people are like brothers and sisters who must share equally of the land, as children should share equally with their parents. This is an explicitly anticapitalist viewpoint, meant to highlight the artificial nature of landownership. Ngũgĩ uses the Swahili word “shamba” to juxtapose this idea. A shamba is a polyculture agricultural system that blends native crops, resulting in stronger yields and more sustainable harvests. This reference emphasizes the value of Indigenous practices and values over colonial ones.

“Every dispute was put in the context of the exploitation of labour by capital, itself stolen from other workers. Why should so few wield power of life and death over so many?”

This quote is a reference to Karl Marx’s theory on capitalism and labor. He wrote: “Capital not only lives upon labour. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves” (Marx, Karl “Wage, Labour, and Capital” Marxists.org). The bankers who take the land are a physical embodiment of this power. Marx, Karega, and Ngũgĩ support the theory that a man cannot be “capital,” as he is when he labors, and still attain his own wealth, as he will always be exploited and kept down by the capitalist upper class.

“He walked to Wanja’s place. It was not he, Munira. He was doing this only in active obedience to the law. It was enjoined on him to burn down the whorehouse—which mocked God’s work on earth.”

Munira views his act of arson as his final break from the ordinary and casting off his status as an outsider. In this quote, he also reveals that he believes he is ordained by God to do so. This is ironic, as his action gives him a sense of self but is not his own choice. It’s also ironic because he believes Wanja’s sex work is immoral and illegal, and his response is arson and manslaughter, which are immoral and illegal.

“Maybe he would talk to his superiors about this: maybe he would give them the separate report that he had made. But then remember how many VIP’s might be connected with such an Utalii Utamaduni Centre, he desisted.”

Inspector Godfrey demonstrates his hypocrisy and the broader hypocrisy of the police force. Earlier in the text, he is touted as concerned only with the law and upholding it despite political and social forces. However, he decides to keep the information on human trafficking to himself because of the “VIPs” connected with it. This shows the way neocolonial power protects itself; Godfrey is part of the privileged class, and he chooses to maintain that power system rather than seek justice.