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Chapter 3
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
Salim goes to the lycée to look for the headmaster, Father Huismans, a Belgian priest, but finds he has gone into the bush, as is his habit. The young man he speaks to complains that he is starving as Father Huismans has switched the school meals to traditional African foods, citing the influx of bush villagers. Salim returns a couple of weeks later to return the ledger and learns that the young man has left on a steamer. Father Huismans is a hearty, enthusiastic man in his 40s, fascinated by the traditions and cultures of Africa and the bush.
The town, though on the rise, has still not fully recovered, and thus basic things like food are still very much an issue. Simultaneously, as Father Huismans goes into the bush to study it, the staff of his lycée—an institution of higher learning—eats like villagers from the bush, illustrating the reciprocal relationships between city and bush that make up the town’s reality.
Themes
From his most recent excursion, Father Huismans returned with a mask and a large wood carving, and insists on showing them to Salim rather than discuss the ledger. Father Huismans insists on the depth and importance of these items, repeating the school’s axiom “semper aliquid novi,” a portion of a larger Latin phrase meaning “out of Africa, always something new.” Salim is confused as to why a White Christian would be so fascinated by what he sees as the crude and antiquated traditions of Africa, but also appreciates the man’s genuine fascination with and sense of the place they both occupy.
Not African himself, Father Huismans hoards African relics—masks specifically—as a means of actualizing his relationship to the place that he studies. It is as if, to him, through education and discovery, one can almost own the history of another. Father Huismans is interested in the potential that Africa has, thus the lycée’s motto, but only as far as it will benefit European society, which he sees as history’s sovereign force. The interesting wrinkle to this is that Father Huisman’s interest in and appreciation of Africa appears to come from a genuine place, but is still very much inflected by Euro-centric ideas and perspectives. Furthermore, the “something new” he hopes to nurture for Africa from his institution is very much vested in the history which he mines, illustrating the historical irony that many of these mottos carry.
Themes
Father Huismans also explains the town’s motto that Salim had encountered on the placard by the docks: “Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi,” meaning “He approves of the mingling of the peoples and their bonds of union.” The motto, carved into the monument of the establishment of the colonial steamer service some 60 years prior, is a revision and reversal of the words of a poem, uttered to an ancient Roman hero by his gods, warning him against the potential mingling when he thinks of staying in Africa on his way to Italy. Salim struggles to understand why words so ancient and rich with history would be used for a town of little import.
The irony of the town’s motto is even more acute, as by revising the original phrase, those who adopted the motto also ignored its warning, and the ruin that was foretold comes to pass. Just as the ruins of the town give Salim the unshakeable sense that the town will revert to ruin once more, the Latin can be read as an ironic observation that those who ignore history will fall into its cyclicality.
Themes
But as he gains more of Father Huismans’ perspective, Salim comes to realize that the words of the placard allow Father Huismans to see himself in the context of Africa—not as a European, implicitly separate or opposed, but rather as a part of the greater history of the place, and the larger movements of European civilization across time. Instead of resenting the continent for its new freedom, he sees it in the context of the broader ebbs and flows of history. The town itself is significant, too, existing at the bend in the river, “a natural meeting place.” Father Huismans exalts Europe and the feats of colonialism as the superior timeline, and the European model of civilization as the ultimate goal, but also acknowledges that it led to the death of “true Africa.”
Father Huismans is a prime example of how individuals exploit history to fit their narratives of the future. But he also calls into question what the President wants to push as “true Africa.” To his mind, the Africa left behind by colonists is no longer “true Africa,” yet the President wants to create “true Africa” out of the ashes of colonial civilization. Taken together, the implication is perhaps that “true Africa” is neither the exploitation of its history and cultures, nor the post-colonial euro-modern edifice that the President hopes to create. “True Africa” looks more like the town itself, a natural meeting place, full of multiplicity and contradiction, not some monolithic ideal.
Themes
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Father Huismans collects artifacts obsessively, displaying them throughout the yards and rooms of the lycée. To him, the scrap and ruin of colonial industry are relics just as important to the history of Africa as those tribal carvings and masks. In the courtyard he displays old ship parts and disused machinery from the 1800s. But in the gun room of the school he has shelves and shelves of masks. At first Salim feels they are a sign of Zabeth’s world of tradition and mysticism, having lost their power, forced to lie flat in some basement. But as he stays in the room their power seems to grow, and Salim feels the same spiritual force he often does in the bush or by the river at night, as if history has condensed and resided in that place over untold time.
Even though the masks are much newer than Salim imagines—Father Huismans catalogs their dates—they seem to carry the history of the traditions of their making, and thus remain ever-powerful. History is a very physical thing in the novel—it resides in objects and spaces much more than in the minds of people or the ideologies of politicians. Still, the masks sit in the basement. By hoarding historical objects, Father Huismans is able to imagine himself at the end of it all—both involved in and outside of the arc of history. In other words, by being history’s collector and keeper, Father Huismans can imagine himself in control of his own history and not the other way around. Father Huisman’s idea of “true Africa” can be preserved and owned by him through this hoarding of things, just as it can be projected and signaled by the President in his garb and staff.
Themes
