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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Bend in the River, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Power, Freedom, and Identity
Racism and Diasporic Identity
Postcolonialism and Perpetual Unrest
The City vs. the Bush
Layers of the Past
Summary
Analysis
Though he begins still somewhat deferent to Salim, over time, Théotime loses the fear that the Big Man would take the shop back from him and gets increasingly difficult to deal with. He often has women visit him in the back storeroom, and he becomes self-conscious that he doesn’t have a car and begins pressuring Salim to chauffeur him around town. Théotime is constantly looking for ways to assert himself over Salim and Metty, but also wants them to make allowances for him as being uneducated and African. The resulting balance is strange, as since Théotime knows nothing about running a shop, he feels constantly inferior to the other two men despite being their superior.
Théotime’s juvenile attempts at dominance are reminiscent of Ferdinand’s adolescent years around the shop in his attempts to assert himself over Salim and Metty. Much like the President’s own self-aggrandizing, there is something almost comical about Théotime’s desire for Salim and Metty to respect him, despite him holding so much power over them.
Themes
Salim focuses on trying to escape, but he realizes that Metty, trapped, is taking everything much harder. Metty feels degraded by the unending list of menial tasks and disenfranchised by Salim’s sudden loss of power. One evening he even says he will kill Théotime if something doesn’t change soon. When Salim goes to drive Théotime to work he tries to confront him on the issue. In response Théotime performs offense and reasserts his authority as the state trustee. Again Metty threatens that he will do something terrible, begging Salim to give him money so he can go away. But instead of helping him, Salim just tells Metty that this can’t last forever.
At the core of Salim and Metty’s fractured relationship is their shared realization that Salim has no real ability to protect Metty. Metty’s hysteria is due both to his mistreatment, and also the final loss of the way of life they both once knew. Metty has always been nominally free, but his social and economic standing traps him completely without the lingering hope of connection to Salim.
Themes
At the end of that week, Salim returns home to find police officers swarming his front yard. Salim knows immediately that they have found his cache of ivory and gold buried near the stairs, and understands that Metty, who had first helped him bury it all that time ago, must have tipped them off. Salim rushes upstairs to call Mahesh but is cut off by one of the officers, Prosper, who Salim knows. Prosper tries to extract an exorbitant bribe out of Salim, and when he refuses Prosper arrests him. The police headquarters becomes an eternity of waiting, and eventually while in the yard, Salim sees that phrase “Discipline Avant Tout” painted again in block letters on one of the walls.
Despite their uneven social statures, Metty and Salim were the closest thing each of them had to family, and thus there is something extra painful in Metty’s betrayal, illustrating how jealousy and desperation can turn people of the diaspora against one another. Once again, Salim is mocked by mottos, as the corrupt police spit in the face of discipline and exact their will as they please.
Themes
Salim becomes enraged, realizing there is no real plan or structure for what is to happen to him. The whole organization is a sham, and he is truly at the mercy of the men who have him in captivity. Even the walls and structure feel artificial to Salim, who is overcome by the arbitrariness of it all, as if the whole town is just people playing make-believe at a real society. In the morning, Salim realizes most of the other people in the jail are extremely young, leading him to believe they are the victims of the kidnapping operations run in response to the Liberation Army.
All performance of identity is done in the hope that it will be rewarded by someone higher in the social hierarchy. Brought to his lowest point, Salim realizes how truly arbitrary it all is, and how all of his power and safety only ever came from the whims of those who held more of it than he did.
Themes
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The wardens force the prisoners to recite poems praising the president and the African Madonna at threat of indescribable torture and violation. Salim witnesses the frenzy of both the captors and the prisoners, almost all Africans, and sees in the captives a grim preparation for their deaths, not as martyrs but rather because of an intense sense of themselves and the place they belonged to, “crazed with the idea of who they were.” In this way Salim feels incredibly distant from them. The prisoners are being prepared, he learns, for the President’s visit, as he is coming to witness an execution. Salim protects himself from harm by behaving as “a man apart,” understanding that the moment he is touched physically, his façade will be shattered and he will be no different from any of them.
In prison, Salim witnesses the darkest extent of the President’s tyranny, seeing how he has turned the country against itself. Rather than uniting city and bush, the President has set them up to consume one another. The people of the country are “crazed with the idea of who they were,” spurred on by either the President’s nationalism or a desire to return the country to its ancestral state. Prison also demonstrates the precarity of the perception of power, as Salim sees how that perception is immediately shattered by violence. Salim must perform his prominence one last time, as he can only guarantee his safety by remaining perceived as too important to harm. His only protection is this illusion.
Themes
Monday comes and Prosper fetches Salim from the jail, saying the commissioner has taken an interest in his case. The commissioner is Ferdinand, and Salim is surprised to find him seeming withdrawn and ill, rather than emboldened by his position. Ferdinand’s desk is beneath a massive photograph of the president, this one only depicting his face, and making Ferdinand appear shrunken by comparison. Ferdinand tells him that everything is deteriorating, and nobody is safe. He is disenchanted with his education and his career, feeling that the privileges he was afforded as a portrait of what the President wished the modern African to be were also what destroyed him: all the books and money and clout.
Ferdinand, the poster-child of the “new African,” shows how all safety in the country has been eroded, as rather than being protected by his identity, he is more at risk than ever. For all the opportunity he has been given, and as far as he has risen, Ferdinand finds himself back in his home, symbolizing how the past remains inescapable, even to those with the most power and promise. Ferdinand being racked by internal conflict, disillusionment, and shame shows the futility of the project of “new Africa.”
Themes
Ferdinand tells him he needs to flee town immediately on the next steamer, as there are no more airplanes, promising to keep Prosper busy at the airport. When Salim asks him what he will do, he responds grimly that he will continue to do what he has to. Before Salim leaves he reminds him of the day they spent together before he left to his cadetship in the capital, drinking beers on the steamer with Yvette and Indar. Ferdinand feels that was the last time things were ever good, and that everything since has been “a terrible dream.”
Perhaps the one shred of hope the narrative offers is in Ferdinand’s decision to help Salim, suggesting that genuine goodwill and solidarity is rewarded down the road. The situation in the country is hopeless, but at least Salim will now survive.
Themes
Salim buys a ticket for the steamer leaving the following day and then goes home to wait. There he finds Metty, who can tell he plans to leave and begs Salim to take him too. Salim lies to him, saying he’s not going anywhere, and explaining that he wouldn’t have enough money to support him even if he was to leave. Metty says the Liberation Army is going to kill everyone who can read and write, or who ever put on a jacket and tie, when the President comes. Salim tells him the town will start up again, but at last confesses to having lost most of his money, and that he knows he could’ve at least helped Metty a little, calling him by his old name “Ali.” Metty says “I thought you knew what you were doing, Salim,” and then leaves to be with his family without another word.
Whether or not Salim and Metty ever truly believed in the better future they were pursuing, both persisted through the performance in the hope that they might achieve it. Every character is guilty, to some extent, of tying themselves to someone else’s dream. Metty’s last words to Salim represent the end of the illusion; no longer can there be any doubt that the town is doomed. While Salim still has the ability to escape—one last chance to trample on his past and leave it behind—Metty is truly stuck, and whatever fate comes to the town will befall him as well.
Themes
Salim is harried on his way to the steamer the following day but eventually gets there. At one point before the boat casts off a soldier demands a bribe, but Salim does nothing and eventually the soldier leaves him alone. In the afternoon, the steamer departs, with a barge tied to the front carrying all the poorest passengers: all African. At nightfall, sounds of combat arise and the ship is boarded. Young men with guns try and take control but fail. The ship’s searchlight comes on to reveal the barge has become detached from the front of the steamer and is floating away, cutting through the water hyacinths. Then the searchlight turns off and the barge disappears into the night. The ship continues on down the river in darkness, and Salim thinks of the countless bugs, briefly illuminated in the white light.
The futile attack on the steamer is emblematic of the tragic and futile battle the country wages with itself. The revolutionaries fail to stop the ship—the steamer continues its steady progress down the river, like time itself—and only succeed in taking their own people with them. The barge, previously noted to only carry African passengers, becomes disconnected from the steamer and caught in the midst of the water hyacinths, symbolizing the end of “new Africa” and the ”new African.” The final image of the novel underscores the relative insignificance of all the individuals who struggle and die along the long bend of history—like the characters in the novel—briefly illuminated in the light of significance before being forgotten entirely, like bugs in a searchlight.
Themes
