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Chapter 6
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 and Metty continue to live together despite Metty’s other life, though both are changed. Salim observes Metty losing some of his brightness, both performed and genuine, and Salim feels more isolated and depressed than ever. Indar arrives in town unannounced, sending Salim into another spiral of inadequacy and shame. Salim is anxious to appear as if, despite current conditions, he has grand plans and prospects ahead of him.
Metty was one of Salim’s only connections left to his home, and losing touch with him is isolating. Conversely, to have Indar suddenly return only serves to aggravate Salim’s feelings of inadequacy and failure. So much of power is in the appearance of success, and Indar’s presence articulates how little Salim appears to have succeeded.
Themes
Indar comes to the flat and they sit for tea. Indar’s new business, which remains vague, seems to require him to travel a lot, and he has done so since graduating in England. The two have a perfunctory discussion of local politics until eventually Indar tells Salim of a recent trip he made to the coast, where he saw some of Salim’s family. He, like Salim, was reluctant to return, but describes the process of air travel as capable of cutting some of the pain—the process being so quick that it leaves little time to dwell on the past, or conceptualize the space elapsing. Indar describes this as a process of “trampling on the past,” at first like “trampling on a garden,” and eventually just like “walking on the ground.”
Even as the pasts of the two men collide once more in the town at the bend in the river, Indar speaks of “trampling on the past” as a means of getting ahead or away from generational trauma. Modernity, things like foreign education and air travel, make a future free from past traumas feel plausible and achievable, but both men winding up at the bend in the river begins to suggest that the past always has its effect on the present, regardless of how far someone goes or how hard they try to separate themselves from it.
Themes
When Salim inquires where he is staying, Indar explains some of the nature of his visit. He’s a guest of the government, staying in The State Domain to give a lecture at the university and work at the polytechnic for the semester. Despite Indar’s vanity, and maybe because of the familiarity of it, Salim begins to feel almost at home again for the first time in a while. By the end of their morning together, Salim feels he finally has a true friend with him again, or at least a “friend of my own kind.”
Almost as a salve to Metty and Salim’s growing distance, Indar brings about the comforts of home and the comradery of someone in a similar condition. And at this moment, Indar appears to have succeeded—a guest of the government in the new, glittering Domain. His presence can be read as reigniting the spark of hope in Salim that a better future really is achievable. But Indar’s vanity is also a symptom of this performance of status which Salim falls for once again, and continues to as he ventures into the world of the Domain.
Themes
Salim tries to give Indar a tour of the town but finds he has shown him most of it within the first couple of hours. Salim realizes, with a pang of shame, that most of what he is showing Indar, between the corrugated lanes of junk and the rusted-out shipyards, is rubbish. Indar takes the lead and begins showing Salim around the Domain. As much as Salim wants to be incensed, being the closer of the two to a “local,” he quickly realizes how little he actually knows of the Domain. Assuming it was merely a reflection of the Big Man’s desires for the nation, he had hardly paid attention to the neighboring space. In fact, Salim realizes, he and the other townsfolk had become totally ignorant of what was going on around them.
Salim’s initial assumption about the Domain is not so far off, but once he is given access to it through Indar, he becomes enthralled by its illusion. His lack of a real depth of knowledge about the place he lives also further exposes how little Salim actually feels he belongs in the town. He funnels this feeling of ignorance outward, projecting the same feelings he had about his family being passive and unaware onto the townsfolk, feeling he had fallen back into old ways.
Themes
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Indar’s house is well appointed and modern, as are the other houses on the domain. Each comes with a houseboy and fine furniture, though Salim notes how empty the land feels around the “grander concrete boxes.” Indar is well regarded amongst the “new-style foreigners” who populate the space, all of whom seem warm and excited by the modernity of their neighborhood. Unlike the wariness of others and outsiders in town, the Domain seems to embrace foreignness, especially that of Indar, whose scholastic pedigree seems to make him extra notable. This makes Salim feel like even more of an outsider, belonging to a world in town totally separate from this more modern one. Despite often feeling foolish and having little to contribute, Salim finds himself more and more enticed by the world of the Domain and its artificial customs.
There are cracks everywhere in the façade of the Domain, most immediately visible in the modern buildings’ relationship to the land they are built on. The emptiness physicalizes the disconnect between the Domain and the actual place it exists in and is built to study and educate. There is a hollow divide, a physical disconnect, between the two spaces. Still, it is attractive to Indar and Salim, who are wooed by the space’s embrace of foreigners. The performance of the Domain allows Salim to live once again in the illusion of importance—even if he cannot contribute himself, he still feels privileged to be amongst it all.
Themes
In the magical atmosphere of the Domain, “another Africa had been created,” it seems to Salim. Preoccupations seem to orbit around the creation and expansion of this “new Africa,” and those within seem nourished by their involvement in this ideal. Where “African” carries such a negative connotation in town, in The Domain, the idea seems to carry all the potential of this new world. “African” is a new identity in the process of being constructed, and those in The Domain are the most actively involved—particularly the young minds at the polytechnic, including that of Ferdinand and his friends.
Even if they are inherently excluded from the concept of “new Africa,” those within the Domain who are not African themselves are still able to feel connected to it, or even in control of it, by participating in the “Africa of words,” or the discourse around the idea of “the new African.” There is something intoxicating about this academic ownership that is not so far removed from Father Huismans’s feelings gained from owning all of his masks and relics. Because the work of the Domain is purely theoretical and academic, it can exist in this “magical” or “unreal” space of thought and performance—a delicate and precarious bubble that feels separate from the harsh realities of Africa itself.
Themes
Salim attends one of Indar’s seminars at the polytechnic. The lecture room is barren save for a photograph of the president in a leopard skin cap and a short-sleeved jacket. The conversation turns toward the recent coup in Uganda and eventually to the concept of “Africa” in general. Ferdinand is in attendance and challenges Indar on whether Africa has been “depersonalized” by the introduction of Christianity. Indar slyly deflects the question, turning it back on Ferdinand and wondering if it reflects a fear of losing the African religions. On this tack, he pushes at Ferdinand’s burgeoning sophistication, wondering if “men like him” had any actual use for the African religions, drawing a line between “students” and “villagers.” Indar accuses them of being sentimental, and Ferdinand, frustrated, accuses Indar of asking “complicated questions.”
Indar’s response to Ferdinand is full of colonial perspective and misdirection. By drawing a line between “educated” and “savage” Africa, Indar forces Ferdinand to pick between the two worlds in which he exists—an act of depersonalization of the precise kind that Ferdinand brought up in his question of Christianity. In essence, this is the method of the President’s “new Africa.” It pretends to respect and engage deeply with the traditions and histories of the country, but ultimately demands that those who embody this ideal eschew connection with that past in pursuit of a more viably modern or cosmopolitan identity. Though the project of the Domain is nominally “education” of the masses, the colonial-influenced philosophies and politics of the space ultimately alienate its students from themselves. Indar’s accusation of sentimentality also belies his own insecurity on the subject of ethnic culture and tradition, as he feels abandoned and excluded from such things and must force himself to think they are frivolous in order not to be hurt by his lack.
Themes
Later that evening, Indar and Salim continue their discussion. Indar is impressed by Ferdinand, and Salim explains his heritage. Indar worries that these big questions will become the battlegrounds of defining the country and continent for years to come, and stresses the importance of imparting the proper, practical principles on these young minds. Salim wonders if the dreamed-up Africa of The Domain means anything at all, if they might not be fooling themselves through idealistic futures and hypotheticals. As if to confirm this, when Salim asks Indar if he really even believes in this “Africa of words,” Indar responds by questioning if anything is worth believing in at all, or if anything matters regardless.
Indar’s worry is astute, and foreshadows the ideological battles to come in reaction to the President’s power and practices. Likewise, Salim’s concern about idealism and hollow hypotheticals foreshadows the illusory nature of the Domain and what it promises to be. Indar’s cynicism is symptomatic of his experience of the diaspora, as he has become disillusioned with the ideals of his home and seen them reflected everywhere he has travelled. He copes with this pain by questioning the validity of everything, and thereby can exist more comfortably in his bubble of pessimism.
Themes
Salim is confused. His senses tell him The Domain is a hoax, but at the same time he is genuinely intrigued and engaged by the serious people who populate it. He wonders if truth exists outside of men, or if it is just the various agreements of their minds. Salim remains between town and The Domain, with a foot in both worlds, always returning to town relieved to be in a familiar space, but constantly thinking of the intoxicating excitement of The Domain.
Understanding that something is a performance does not necessarily exempt someone from its influence. Much as Zabeth’s “charm” begins to work on Salim once he understands its cultural grounding, Salim can see the “truth” of the Domain but still engage and participate in it and thereby uphold its illusion. Still, he feels pulled between worlds—not belonging in any one space—exemplified by the dichotomy between the town and the Domain.
Themes
