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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 often sees Indar and Yvette together around town. He finds each individually hard to pin down. Both are mercurial and inscrutable in a way he isn’t used to, capable of shifting mood and tone in an instant. In Indar’s case, he is struck by a “dissolving quality” like the glamour of the Domain. After hearing his story, Salim begins to notice how hard Indar fights to keep up appearances of ease and wealth, especially through his style. Salim feels their roles have switched again, with Salim now as the tour guide and caretaker once more. Salim feels protective of him, a feeling that only grows the more disaffected and depressed Indar seems. In the case of Yvette, Salim becomes obsessed with his image of her from that night in the Domain, and whenever he sees her outside of it he feels confounded.
Both Yvette and Indar are well versed in the performances necessary to secure clout in cosmopolitan society, which contrasts with Salim’s experience of life in the town. Power is also secured through less direct means, such as sympathy, attraction, and uncertainty, tactics which both Indar and Yvette use to influence Salim toward their desires. However, appearing important remains vital for securing any kind of soft power. Salim’s desire to soothe and protect Indar is predicated on Indar’s perceived importance to Salim, and thus is mutually beneficial. The same goes for Salim’s attraction to Yvette, which itself is partially wrapped up in the world she appears to be a part of.
Themes
As Indar’s time in the Domain draws to a close, Salim feels more and more like his experience of the place is becoming a distant fantasy that will soon be entirely closed off to him. Even Ferdinand is going away, having taken up an administrative cadetship in the capital. At the end of the term, Salim accompanies Ferdinand to the steamer to see him off. By the river, the water hyacinths seem to speak of times changing and things moving on.
Salim’s feeling of growing distance from the Domain’s fantasy foreshadows its fleeting illusion. The Domain allows people like Indar, Salim, Raymond, and Yvette to feel as if they belong within Africa, but only temporarily, and through tenuous connections to actual power within the country. The hyacinth’s journey down the river once again mirrors that of Ferdinand, as the “new African” ideology spreads further throughout the country.
Themes
As they move toward the steamer they are harried by all manner of officials looking to check their documents. Salim notes that they are both male and female, as in the name of “the woman of Africa,” the Big Man’s dead mother, the President sought to honor more women with positions of power. When they refer to one another, it is as “citoyen” and “citoyenne,” as the President has outlawed the use of monsieur, madame, and boy. Salim remembers the old days when you needed a “certificate of civic merit” to board the steamer, and jokes about it to Ferdinand, who does not laugh. This makes Salim realize the only Africa Ferdinand has ever known is an independent one, its colonial past vanished. Still, Salim notes how, despite the two classes of cabins above deck and in the lower-deck barracks, only the Africans ride in the barge the steamer tows.
Ferdinand (like the hyacinths) is at once completely African and also totally cut off from the place’s history, showing how the President’s project of “new Africa” is rapidly eroding the place’s relationship with itself. Ferdinand is entering a world informed and influenced by its colonial past but with no actual conception of what that past was like, which begins to illustrate the dangers of trying to erase or wipe away the past. The steamer’s cabin structure reflects how African society is still structured in intense hierarchy, and despite the President boasting the strength of the country’s new and unilateral African identity, society still favors the European.
Themes
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Ferdinand is on the second deck, and the two go and have a look at the deluxe cabins near the back of the ship, where they encounter Indar and Yvette. Indar struggles with huge, heavy cases of clothes and food, and something about his toil dispels a little of Salim’s image of him. Indar complains that he was going to fly but the plane he was supposed to take was commandeered by the Big Man with no sense of when it would be returned. The four go to the bar below deck and drink beer together until it is announced the steamer is leaving. Salim begins to perceive what is perhaps more than a platonic relationship between Yvette and Indar, but the two are formal when they depart from each other. Salim and Yvette stand on the docks and watch them leave.
A key piece in the performance of power is the appearance of ease. Indar’s very basic, human struggling brings him down to the level of the everyman, Salim realizes. The Big Man’s commandeering of the jet also foreshadows the increasingly authoritarian power he has over the country—even municipal scheduling is at the mercy of his whims.
Themes
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