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Chapter 4
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
Africans from the surrounding villages, who would previously visit town primarily for markets and trade, begin staying. The town begins to feel crowded and lively, and all of a sudden rumors of war begin anew. To Salim, this conflict hardly seems new, but rather an extension of the unrest and tribal conflict that had begun at independence and continued cyclically since, spurred on by “accumulated anger from the colonial period” and “every kind of reawakened tribal fear.” In the people of the region, Salim sees an inscrutable rage that causes them to destroy their own villages, like a forest fire that continues to burn underground. The new president, “The Big Man,” sends a standing army to town and though their presence is heavy, they also make for good trade.
More and more, the town becomes the sum of both urban and tribal culture as it begins to grow into a trade hub once more. The lack of break between previous internal conflict and new instances of unrest underscore the perpetual state that Africa has been left in in the wake of colonial rule. The “accumulated anger from the colonial period” is not a scar that will heal easily, and thus aspects of colonialism still exert themselves on the country’s present context. The President’s immediate move to heavy military occupation is notably reminiscent of colonial tactics, despite him presenting himself in opposition to the country’s colonial past. Salim, likewise influenced by European perspectives, characterizes this unrest and uprising as “reawakened tribal fear” rather than a justified or typical response to oppression or hard conditions.
Themes
Salim feels trapped between the African rebels and the governmental forces—frightened by both, and sympathetic to both sides. Metty feeds Salim local rumors of mystical powers of the bush on the rebels’ side, and Salim notices he is talking and behaving more and more like the locals. Classes are suspended at the lycée and Ferdinand comes to stay with Salim and Metty until things calm down—Salim and Metty find comfort in comforting someone else. At lunch with Shoba and Mahesh, Mahesh assures him the only thing to do is to “carry on.” Salim does his best to do so, but feels only more unprotected and vulnerable. It doesn’t help that Shoba complains that their lives have amounted to nothing. Shoba also explains that when she married Mahesh, her family disowned her, and her brothers threatened to throw acid on her face if she ever returned home.
Salim’s fear and sympathy is the opposite side of the coin to his feeling of not belonging. Neither side fully represents him, nor does either side have any interest in protecting him. Thus, by being a foreigner and mixed, Salim is in some ways the most exposed and the most at risk. Salim finds comfort in performing prudence and levelheadedness to Ferdinand. In many ways, the only option left for Salim is to “carry on,” as Mahesh says. But in this “carrying on,” Salim perceives some of his people’s passivity and acquiescence to their place in the world, making him feel that perhaps his people’s condition is inescapable. Salim’s predicament shows how limited the options are to people who are part of the diaspora, or otherwise cut off from the structures and support of a home or culture.
Themes
Salim finds the president has sent an army of White mercenaries to bolster the town, who are now staying at the van der Weyden hotel. Salim returns to the shop, and right around closing time Metty comes back and tells him the president had ordered his mercenaries to go meet with the rebel leaders in town, and at each meeting they had unceremoniously shot the rebels. The president’s actions bring terror to the whole region. The fighting continues but comes no closer, and Salim finds comfort knowing that the gunshots he hears at night are the sounds of order, brought on by the president’s White men. Not long after, the town is buzzed overhead by a fighter jet dropping missiles throughout the bush. This smothers the violence almost immediately. The rebels are enraged but have no option except to resume regular life in town, dependent on the place they sought to destroy.
Again, the President’s tactics mirror that of European colonists, in this case specifically using White mercenaries to quash rebellion. He also uses terror tactics, like mass executions and carpet bombing, to enforce his power. The President’s excessive force belies a fear and respect for the bush’s antiquity and seeming mysticism, expressed by Metty in the rumors he tells Salim, and foreshadows his attempts to appropriate its power later on.
Themes
In the early days of tentative peace, Father Huismans takes one of his trips out into the bush and is killed, his body placed in a dugout by his killers to drift down the river with the hyacinths. His death makes Salim feel like life is a waste, and he mourns all of the knowledge lost with the priest. However, nobody else in town seems to care. In fact, public opinion of him quickly sours, many of the boys in the lycée are embarrassed to have been associated with him, and Ferdinand speaks out against his colonial-European practice of museum-making, seeing it as profane and violating of the “god of Africans.” This comes along with another change in Ferdinand’s character: no longer trying the identities of various different Africans, he is now “simply an African” himself. He grows distant from Salim and the shop, but then sends Salim a simple letter thanking him for his generosity, which moves Salim.
Huismans’s body being found amongst the water hyacinths symbolically connects his death to the rise of the “new African,” and the death of “true Africa” (or at least his image of it). The loss of knowledge allows history to be manipulated and exploited as the President proceeds to do for the rest of the novel. This is present almost immediately in the change of public opinion against Father Huismans. Ferdinand, though certainly vindicated in his criticism of Father Huismans’s looting of tribal relics, invokes the “god of Africans,” foreshadowing the cultish extremism that the President later utilizes to expand his power. Simultaneously, Ferdinand embraces his Africanness, and thus begins to understand himself more clearly in relation to the rest of the world.
Themes
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In the newfound peace, more foreigners begin to trickle back into town. Visitors were occasionally shown Father Huismans’s collection in the gun room, but in the dingy, airless space, the masks had begun to rot and deteriorate, emanating an unpleasant smell. Salim also feels, without Father Huisman’s understanding and appreciation of the objects, they have begun to lose their religious power, now hardly more than semi-valuable relics. One American visitor shows particular interest in the relics. He leaves suddenly by steamer and they find the room completely looted, its contents no doubt being shipped back to the United States.
The stealing of the masks represents the continued predatory interest of foreign bodies in Africa even after the continent’s independence. Despite the masks rotting, symbolizing the deterioration of “true” African identity, there are those who still seek to steal, loot, and pillage from the continent’s rich history. At least, in Salim’s eyes, Father Huismans genuinely appreciated and understood the cultures from which they came. To anyone else, they are simply emblems of ownership and sovereignty.
Themes
