Novel: Petals of Blood By Ngugi wa Thiong’o

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About Petals of Blood By Ngugi wa Thiong’o
“The definitive African book of the twentieth century” (Moses Isegawa, from the Introduction) by the Nobel Prize–nominated Kenyan writer

The puzzling murder of three African directors of a foreign-owned brewery sets the scene for this fervent, hard-hitting novel about disillusionment in independent Kenya. A deceptively simple tale, Petals of Blood is on the surface a suspenseful investigation of a spectacular triple murder in upcountry Kenya.

Yet as the intertwined stories of the four suspects unfold, a devastating picture emerges of a modern third-world nation whose frustrated people feel their leaders have failed them time after time.

First published in 1977, this novel was so explosive that its author was imprisoned without charges by the Kenyan government. His incarceration was so shocking that newspapers around the world called attention to the case, and protests were raised by human-rights groups, scholars, and writers, including James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Donald Barthelme, Harold Pinter, and Margaret Drabble.

About the Author Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and essayist from Kenya whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He lives in Irvine, California.

Petals of Blood Ngugi wa Thiong'o Plot summary
The book begins by describing the four main characters – Munira, Karega, Wanja, and Abdulla – just after the revelation that three prominent Kenyans, two businessmen and one educator, have been killed in a fire. The next chapter moves back in the novel's timeline, focusing on Munira's move to Ilmorog, to begin work as a teacher. He is initially met with suspicion and poor classroom attendance, as the villagers think he will give up on the village soon, in much the same way previous teachers have done. However, Munira stays and, with the friendship of Abdullah, another immigrant to Ilmorog who owns a small shop and bar, carves out a life as a teacher.

Soon Wanja arrives, the granddaughter of the town's oldest and most revered lady. She is an attractive, experienced barmaid who Munira begins to fall in love with, despite the fact he is already married. She too is escaping the city, and begins to work for Abdullah, quickly reshaping his shop, and expanding its bar. Karega arrives in Ilmorog to seek Munira to question him about their old school Siriana. After a brief relationship with Munira, Wanja once again grows disillusioned and leaves Ilmorog. The year of her departure is not good for the village as the weather is harsh and no rains come, making for a poor harvest. In an attempt to enact changes, the villagers are inspired by Karega to journey to Nairobi in order to talk to their Member of Parliament.

The journey is very arduous and Joseph, a boy that Abdullah had taken in as his brother and who had worked in his shop, becomes ill. When they arrive in Nairobi, the villagers seek help from every quarter. They are turned away by a reverend who thinks they are merely beggars, despite their pleas of help for the sick child. Trying at another house, some of the villagers are rounded up and forced into the building where they are questioned by Kimeria, a ruthless businessman who reveals that he and their MP are in league with one another. He blackmails Wanja, and subsequently rapes her. Upon arriving in Nairobi and speaking to their MP, the villagers realise that nothing will change, as he is little more than a demagogue. However, they do meet a lawyer who wishes to help them and others in the same predicament and through a court case highlights Ilmorog's plight. This draws attention from national press and donations and charities pour into Ilmorog.

Finally, the rains comes, and the villagers celebrate with ancient rituals and dances. During this time, Karega starts a correspondence with the lawyer that he met in Nairobi, wishing to educate himself further. To celebrate the rain's coming, Nyakinyua brews a drink from the Thang'eta plant, which all of the villagers drink. Karega tells the story the love between him and Mukami, the older sister of Munira. Mukami's father looked down on Karega because of his brother's involvement with the Mau Mau. Forced to separate, Mariamu and Karega do not see each other again, and Mukami later commits suicide by jumping into a quarry. This is the first time Munira hears the story. Later, an unknown plane crashes in the village; the only victim is Abdulla's donkey. Wanja notices that there are several large groups of people who come to survey the wreckage, and suggests to Abdulla that they begin to sell the Thang'eta drink in Abdulla's bar. The drink attracts notoriety, and many people come to the bar in order to sample it. Out of fury for Karega's connection to his family and jealousy of his relationship with Wanja, Munira schemes to have Karega fired from his teaching post with the school. Karega then leaves Ilmorog.

Development arrives in Ilmorog as the government begin to build the Trans-Africa road through the village, which brings an increase in trade. Karega returns to Ilmorog, telling of his slow spiral into alcoholism before finally securing work in a factory. After getting fired from the factory, he returns to Ilmorog. The change in Ilmorog is rapid, and the villages changes into the town of New Ilmorog. The farmers are told that they should fence off their land and mortgage parts of it to ensure that they own a finite area. They are offered loans which are linked to their harvest turnout to pay for this expense. Nyakinyua dies and the banks move to take her land. To prevent this Wanja sells her business and buys Nyakinyua's land. She opens up a successful brothel in the town, and is herself one of the prostitutes. Munira goes to see her to attempt to rekindle their romance, but is met with only a demand for money. He pays, and the couple have sex. Karega goes to see Wanja who both still have strong feelings for each other, but after disagreeing about how to live he leaves. Wanja plans to separate herself finally from the men who have exploited her during her life, wanting to bring them to her brothel with all of her prostitutes sent away so that she could present the downtrodden but noble Abdulla as her chosen partner. Meanwhile, Munira is watching the brothel, and sees Karega arrive, and then leave. In a religious fervour, he pours petrol on the brothel, sets it alight, and retreats to a hill to watch it burn. Wanja escapes but is hospitalized due to smoke inhalation; the other men Wanja had invited died in the fire. Munira is sentenced with arson; later, Karega learns that the corrupt local MP was gunned down in his car whilst waiting for his chauffeur in Nairobi.

Explanation of the novel's title
The title Petals of Blood is derived from a line of Derek Walcott's poem 'The Swamp'. The poem suggests that there is a deadly power within nature that must be respected despite attempts to suggest by humans that they live harmoniously with it.

 “Fearful, original sinuosities! Each mangrove sapling Serpent like, its roots obscene As a six-fingered hand, Conceals within its clutch the mossbacked toad, Toadstools, the potent ginger-lily, Petals of blood, The speckled vulva of the tiger-orchid; Outlandish phalloi Haunting the travellers of its one road.” —Derek Walcott, The Swamp

Originally called 'Ballad of a Barmaid', it is unclear why Ngugi changed the title before release. The phrase "petals of blood" appears several times throughout the novel, with varying associations and meanings. Initially, "petals of blood" is first used by a pupil in Munira's class to describe a flower. Munira quickly chastises the boy, saying that 'there is no colour called blood'. Later, the phrase is used to describe flames, as well relating to virginity during one of Munira's sexual fantasies.


Questions and Topics for Discussion

INTRODUCTION
The Mau Mau rebellion, as it is often called, which began in Kenya in the early 1950s, was a nationalist, anticolonial armed resistance against the British colonial state. The guerrilla movement called itself the Kenya Land Freedom Army; the British dubbed the movement “mau mau,” a meaningless name, to obscure the aims otherwise so clear in the resistance army’s name. Ngugi Wa Thiongío’s Petals of Blood examines, among other things, the betrayal by the postcolonial regime of the ideals of this anticolonial struggle that helped Kenya achieve its independence.

The novel revolves around three men and a woman. The four friends reveal different aspects of their history to each other piecemeal, just as their families had guardedly explained the past to them. The lingering effects of the Mau Mau revolt have affected all their lives and by the end of the novel, each character is wrapped up in his or her own exclusive epiphany about life in Kenya.

Abdullah, the trader, thinks he failed the movement because he did not avenge the death of a friend who was a revolutionary and who was betrayed. Munira, the schoolteacher and eventual wide-eyed prophet, is paralyzed by the shadow of his successful father, who condemned the Mau Mau but aided the crony corruption of independent Kenya. Wanja, the beauty from a broken home, learns that it was two generations of revolutionary fervor that distorted the home she grew up in. And Karega, Thiongío’s union-pushing hero, scrutinizes the history of Mau Mau as if it were a sacred text. Somewhere in that history, they all believe, is the key to wisdom and justice.
No one reading Petals of Blood can doubt Thiongío’s faith in the power of national myths. But, like Faulkner writing about the American South or Shakespeare writing about England, he also understands how our obsessions with them can ennoble citizens but also can transform them into something grotesque. The messages of Petals of Blood can be as opaque as the history of Kenya, but in that it reflects the relationship most of us have with our own national mythos.

ABOUT NGUGI WA THIONGÍO
Ngugi lived through the wrenching cultural change he writes about in Petals of Blood. His parents separated when he was a boy, and his education veered from one centered on Kenya’s native Gikuyu language to instruction in English. It was under English schooling that Ngugi fell in love with writing—he emphasizes Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treausure Island as a book that “set my imagination flying.” A gifted child, Ngugi gained admission to an elite high school, and there he became politically radicalized. His whole life was filtered through his Christian faith, his campaigning for more Afrocentric education, and his obsession with writing. In 1955, he returned home from school to a less cerebral agitation: his home village had been ripped apart by an antiguerrilla campaign.

Ngugi’s mother would be tortured for three months because of her suspected collaboration with the guerrillas. It is a testament to Ngugi’s faith in the power of education that, faced with trauma like this, he threw himself into his studies and continued to distinguish himself academically. At Uganda’s Makerere University Ngugi edited magazines, wrote fiction and plays, and became a columnist for Kenya’s flagship newspaper the Daily Nation. After graduating from Makerere, he attended Leeds University in England, where he was introduced to Marxist and anticolonial writers.

Ngugi’s fierce intellect as well as his ideas on labor and African authenticity made him a professional star. In the late ’60s, he became the first African lecturer in Nairobi College’s English department, and eventually moved the department’s emphasis from English to literature in languages from across the African diaspora. He began publishing award-winning novels, and in 1970 he started Petals of Blood, which he finished five years later at the Soviet Writers Union in Yalta.

At the 1977 book launch for Petals, Kenyan Vice President Mwai Kibaki (Kenya’s current president) cited his own attendance as evidence that Kenya was a defender of free speech. But that same year, Ngugi was detained for a year “for possessing banned books.” While in detention, writing parts of a new book on toilet paper, his youngest child was born, and was dubbed Wamuinigi by locals of his hometown: “she who belongs to the people.”

Ngugi faced harassment thereafter but never again as seriously. In the mid-’80s, he began writing in the Gikuyu language of his family and his first school, and has continued to the present. Today he is an A-list academic, making the rounds at prestigious English departments around the world.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

In 1959 Ngugi made a life-changing train journey to Uganda; it was the first among may journeys that would lead him away from home and from the landscape, the people, the country he loved. He left behind a country wracked by the war the Kenya Land Freedom Army, also called Mau Mau, was waging against the mighty colonial government. It was a war that touched the popular imagination and was forever to change the fate of Kenya and many other countries under British rule. For the first time peasants, the wretched of the earth, were taking the war to a highly sophisticated country with a long military history. Many expected the revolt to end quickly. Britain would triumph. It did not, despite the state of emergency laws and a particularly brutal military campaign, well-captured in one of Ngugi’s books: “It was a period of mass trials, mass murder, and mass torture of Kenyans.”

The name Mau Mau made hearts tremble with dreams, hope, and fear. Ngugi’s elder brother joined the fighters, his mother was arrested and tortured, and his village was razed to the ground. The Mau Mau leader, Dedan Kimathi, took on almost mythical proportions for Ngugi and for many Kenyans. After all, he was said to turn into a bird, a stone, a white man, anything. Only those who have grown up in war-ravaged times know deep down that wars never end; they just mutate and live on in other forms. For Ngugi that war still goes on, and the mission born of it has made literature that much richer. Reading Ngugi is like feeling a fire, scorching your psyche, your heart, your being. —Moses Isegawa, from the Introduction
Do the debates of the characters about education, nationalism, and corruption seem dated to you, or do they resonate with issues we still deal with in the twenty-first century? How does it show an illuminating window into labor fights of decades past?

1. What does the flower with petals of blood signify, both in Derek Wolcott’s poem and in the book? Who uses it properly and who ignores its power?
2. What do you think Mwathi wa Mugo was? Was his voice a hallucination? Was it a trick? Did Ngugi put the voice of a local deity into the book?
3. What is the purpose of the passage at the beginning of chapter four about the beauty of Ilmorog? Would the story have been different if Wanja and Munira had noticed it?
4. The characters in the book eventually gain self-knowledge, but they never really understand each other. Do you think this is universal, only a characteristic of desperate times, or a statement about African political life?
5. Do you think Ngugi idealizes socialism and bucolic life as much as his protagonists, or is he simply characterizing the thoughts of people who are fed up living under the thumb of an autocratic rightist state?
6. Do you find Fraudsham to be a noble or pathetic character? When the students laugh at his defense of animals, whom did you side with? Do you feel one side is more correct than the other, or is it merely a difference of equally valid cultural beliefs?
7. Does industry ruin Ilmorog or save it? In what ways do the sacrifices that locals make seem uniquely African? In what ways do they resonate with problems in the West?
8. What is the significance in Inspector Godfrey and Munira having the same name? Do you consider Munira the main character in the book? Are his mistakes the most damning?
9. How is Karega’s optimism at the end of the book changed by the passage of time? In the past twenty-five years, many would find little reason for optimism in African politics, especially leftist politics. Do we pity Karega or are we inspired by him?

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