A Bend in the River

by

V. S. Naipaul

A Bend in the River: Chapter 16  Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Salim’s flight lands in the country’s capital, the first time he has ever seen it in person. The place feels flimsy, despite its size, and more like an echo of Europe than its own metropolis. Salim notices the European passengers moving past the huge photograph of the president plastered above immigration and customs without a second thought. The drive from the airport into the city is long and reminds him of the transition from his own town into the Domain, only on a much larger scale. He passes billboards of the Big Man with phrases from his maxim pamphlets, some as large as houses. Salim feels a strange sympathy for him, and his desperate and somewhat misguided attempts to elevate himself to the status of Western leaders. But the sympathy wears off as he enters the city itself and sees that it is only his town but on a larger scale. And in the presidential gardens near the rapids of the river, the same water hyacinths float down toward the ocean.
Returning to the unnamed country with the new perspective travel has given Salim reveals the full extent of the façade of the country’s modernity. The capital is like the Domain on a larger scale, a flimsy recreation of a European city. The President’s image is ever expanding, symbolizing his total transformation into a demagogue. For the first time, Salim feels something like empathy for the President, seeing how he too was beguiled by Western modernity and all that it seemed to promise to others. There is something tragic and comical in his attempts to create a new Africa while only succeeding in recreating the worst aspects of its history. Here too, in the capital, are the water hyacinths, their final push toward the ocean perhaps representing the final breaths for the President’s failing ideal.
Themes
Power, Freedom, and Identity Theme Icon
Postcolonialism and Perpetual Unrest Theme Icon
The City vs. the Bush Theme Icon
Salim returns to the airport the next morning, and on the road back he is struck by how barren the land is. It seems impossible that there was ever bush there; the land seems “scraped clean.” Despite having his ticket, Salim still has to bribe an attendant to get through to the gate, only to be waylaid again by a security officer and detained. Salim is made to wait in a questioning room and eventually sent on his way to the plane.
The President’s pursuits have only deepened the country’s wounds, symbolized by the damage done to the bush in the pursuit of modernity. Modernization has left physical scars upon the land.
Themes
Postcolonialism and Perpetual Unrest Theme Icon
The City vs. the Bush Theme Icon
Layers of the Past Theme Icon
Salim’s flight is stopped halfway to its destination at a random airport in the middle of the bush. The passengers deboard only for the plane to take off again without them, called to Presidential service with no sense of when it will be back or when a new one could be provided. A storm rolls in, swallowing the bush into rain. Salim observes the various passengers, all strange vagrants of their various homes. Eventually the storm clears, a new plane arrives, and they take off again. Salim considers the complexity of the river from above, made up of the convergence of so many smaller streams, and also how long the people of the bush villages had lived along that body of water, “more or less as they had lived for centuries.”
Salim sees how many people there are like him scattered throughout the country and is reminded how they will all become displaced once more. Salim’s view of the river from above parallels his own expanded perspective, as he is now able to see the broader arc of history and his own insignificance in the face of it.
Themes
Power, Freedom, and Identity Theme Icon
Layers of the Past Theme Icon
When Salim returns to the town, Metty is cold towards him. Metty acts surprised Salim has returned at all, and his attitude turns the whole trip sour in Salim’s mind. But it is the next morning where the truth of the matter emerges: Salim’s shop has been seized by the government as a foreign owned business and entrusted to an African-born citizen, as a part of the President’s radical new nationalization effort. The new owner, Théotime, a local mechanic, was appointed as the new “state trustee” of Salim’s shop. From what Salim knows of “Citizen Théo,” he is a drunk and functionally illiterate, and yet has been elevated to such a position.
Both Metty and Salim reciprocally benefitted from their continued charade of honoring hierarchy, but with Salim’s shop taken away, everything that gave some semblance of legitimacy to Salim’s stature and clout dissipates. Salim’s shop being ceded to an illiterate man, and an African—both things they look down upon—is embarrassing and humiliating to both of them, and makes it impossible for either to sustain their performance of their old lives.
Themes
Power, Freedom, and Identity Theme Icon
Racism and Diasporic Identity Theme Icon
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Salim returns to the shop and finds everything the same, except for his desk, which has been moved to the back storeroom. He looks for the photos of Yvette in the drawer and finds them missing, with a collection of tattered old comic books in their place. Salim waits for Théotime to arrive, and when he does, Salim is struck by just how modest the man is. He is polite toward Salim and explains somewhat sheepishly what has transpired. Théotime insists that nobody is to suffer as a result of this, and explains that Salim will be made a manager and be given a fair salary. Salim does not respond, and goes instead to Bigburger to look for Mahesh.
The replacement of his magazine and photos with comic books underscores just how easily Salim can be replaced, and how insignificant he is in the grander scale of the country and history in general. It also illuminates the foolishness of Salim’s obsession with symbols of modernity and sophistication in how meaningless his things are to a man like Théotime, whose power is granted just as arbitrarily as Salim’s own.
Themes
Power, Freedom, and Identity Theme Icon
Racism and Diasporic Identity Theme Icon
Postcolonialism and Perpetual Unrest Theme Icon
Layers of the Past Theme Icon
Mahesh is there and business seems to be operating as usual. Salim learns, to his surprise, that the Bigburger franchise nationalized years ago. Mahesh, like many others, had sold his business during the boom to a small company that included Idlephonse, his house servant, and some other African townsfolk, and had been operating as a manager ever since. Salim is shocked by this news and wonders why nobody ever told him, realizing that he missed his opportunity to get out long ago. Salim asks after Tivoli and learns that no African had wanted it, but that there had been serious contention for who would become trustee of his shop. Mahesh describes the scenes after the decree like people “claiming […] meat in the market,” as African townsfolk clamored to take advantage of the nationalizing.
Mahesh selling the business to Idlephonse underscores how the appearance of power was far more important to them than actual control or freedom. In pursuit of maintaining their performance of prominence, Mahesh and Shoba completely mortgaged their freedom, showing how the performance and exploitation of personal identity ultimately traps people. And Salim totally fell for it. In fact, he was so wrapped up in his own vain pursuits with Yvette that he totally ignored the signs of nationalization when Noimon first sold his stakes in the town. Salim realizes he had become totally blinded by the mirage of The Domain, feeling its sophistication elevated him far above the common ways.  
Themes
Power, Freedom, and Identity Theme Icon
Racism and Diasporic Identity Theme Icon
The City vs. the Bush Theme Icon
Salim accepts his position as manager and takes stock of what he has left: about half a million francs, the flat, and his car. Salim realizes he needs to make as much money as he can, as quickly as possible, and get out of the country while he still can. Remembering Mahesh’s smuggling days, Salim begins dealing in ivory and gold, using Citizen Théotime’s name to protect the deals. Making the money is much easier than getting it out of the country, which Salim attempts to do through a currency exchange program with visitors, relying on their goodwill to pay him back through deposits into foreign accounts when they returned to their homes in Europe and America. He loses two-thirds of his money doing this, but feels he has no other choice.
Salim is brought down to the level of everyone else in town and finds himself fighting for his survival once more, just as he did when he first arrived in town, emphasizing the cyclicality of history. In the process of trying to escape, Salim is forced to swallow his pride, finally “trampling on the past” in the way Indar was never fully able to.
Themes
Power, Freedom, and Identity Theme Icon
Postcolonialism and Perpetual Unrest Theme Icon
Layers of the Past Theme Icon
Salim uses the Domain to make his contacts. At first it is painful, but in time he proves Indar’s point about trampling on the past, as the place loses its old meanings and becomes only what he uses it for. Salim goes by Raymond and Yvette’s house and sees that it has a new African tenant. Nobody can give him any information as to where they went. The Domain’s populace is primarily African now, and Salim notes how the well planted front yards—all maize and cassava—dispel the modern feel of the place, making it instead seem like another African settlement. He is struck by how many changes have come over that one piece of land. Salim is glad Raymond seems to have gotten away, assuming his connection with the President would have made him a large target for the Liberation Army, especially with the President reported to be making a visit to the town in the near future.
In the layers of the past Salim perceives in the land of The Domain, Salim is once again struck by his insignificance and history’s cyclicality. The Domain, once a glittering monument to the President’s dream of a Europe in Africa, hardly looks any different from an African settlement. It has been so many things; bush, trade hub, European suburb, ruin, glittering academic town, and will no doubt return again soon enough. Amidst these cycles, “true Africa” is present, somewhere between the city and the Bush.
Themes
Power, Freedom, and Identity Theme Icon
Postcolonialism and Perpetual Unrest Theme Icon
The City vs. the Bush Theme Icon
Layers of the Past Theme Icon
Quotes