A Grain of Wheat: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

The narrative looks back to the days when Gikonyo, Karanja, and Kihika were young men: Thabai is proud of its Rung’ei marketplace, swarming with Gikuyu women selling goods, Indian traders from Nairobi, and young people from all over meeting on the railway platform to watch the train go by. When the iron snake was first built, the Gikuyu supposedly fled for a week until their warriors reported that it was harmless and would not kill any who touched it, as was suspected. Now it has become a social center and people obsess over being at the platform to watch it pass by. After meeting at the train station, young men and women often go to dance and sing in the forest, mingling with others from different tribes. Looking back, Gikonyo recalls to Mugo, “I rarely missed the train, […] yet the day I missed the train was the happiest of my life.”

In those days, Gikonyo works as a carpenter to support himself and his mother Wangari. Gikonyo’s father, a man with many wives, turned him and his mother away when he was only a child, leaving them to fend for themselves and probably die. However, Wangari was resourceful, raising Gikonyo until the age where he could make his own living and support her as well. Gikonyo hopes to buy land for his mother, but this requires more money than he has. This desire for wealth and land is especially strong whenever he sees Mumbi, though he cannot imagine that such a beautiful woman would ever pay much heed to a poor carpenter. Though he tries to tell her of his feelings, he never has the courage.

Mumbi is raised by her mother Wanjiku and father Mbugua, along with her two brothers Kihika and Kariuki. Young men often come to visit Mumbi at their house, including Gikonyo and Karanja. Kariuki likes Gikonyo best because he always brings small gifts and tells funny stories, though he speaks less if Mumbi is around. Karanja often tells stories as well, with a manner of “telling stories and episodes so that even without saying so he emerged the hero.”

Gikonyo makes a meager living as a carpenter, but mostly because his customers are just as poor. Even so, Wangari is proud of him. Half-jokingly, she marvels at a British-made saw, since it is capable of cutting all manner of materials. One day, tired of his work, Gikonyo picks up his guitar and begins playing and singing until, startled, he notices that Mumbi has arrived and is listening to him. Although Gikonyo is embarrassed, she convinces him to play some more and sings along with him. After a time, Mumbi leaves Gikonyo with a farming tool that needs a new handle.

Gikonyo pours himself into working on the tool handle, putting all of his expertise and love for Mumbi into the work. After finishing it, he delivers it to Mumbi at her hut, who is thrilled. Although Gikonyo is nervous and intends to leave, Mumbi invites him to stay and they share a short, but sweet amount of time alone together before Kihika and Karanja arrive.

With Kihika present, the conversation inevitably turns to “politics and the gathering storm in the land.” Kihika is involved in politics from the time he is a young man, listening to Warui tell of how the blackman’s land was stolen by the British. Before Kihika even sees a white person, he is already convinced of their evil. Kihika attends a school near Thabai sponsored by the Church of Scotland, where he learns about Christianity at the recommendation of Rev. Jackson Kigondu.

Rev. Jackson is Mbugua’s friend, a Gikuyu Christian preacher who likes to visit people in their homes and offer wisdom from the Bible. Jackson interweaves Gikuyu beliefs with Christian ideas about God, and is thus respected as a wise counselor by many village elders. However, years later, shortly after the Emergency, Jackson is “converted” to a more Western orthodox form of Christianity—the only type allowed to be publicly practiced by the British colonialists—which leads him to condemn his old practices, associations with sinners, and traditional beliefs. His testimony inspires some to convert, but before long he is assassinated by the Mau Mau as a traitor.

Regardless, before all of this happens, Kihika buys a Bible and becomes obsessed with the story of Moses leading Israel out of Pharaoh’s slavery. His time in the Christian school ends abruptly, however, when he corrects the missionary teacher by saying that the Bible does not condemn their ancestral practice of male and female circumcision. Rather than be beaten and forced to apologize and “recant” his words, young Kihika escapes through the window, becoming a hero to his fellow schoolboys. Kihika tells his father that he “would rather work on the land,” but in the intervening years teaches himself to read and write both Swahili and English, eventually working in Nairobi where he learns of the Movement and finds his purpose in life.

Back in Mumbi’s hut, Mumbi, Kihika, Gikonyo, and Karanja are discussing revolution. Karanja believes it is hopeless; Kihika declares that Kenya might find its freedom, but only if it is willing to sacrifice, which he visualizes as throwing oneself in front of the train. When Mumbi remarks that she would not like to see her family run over by a train, Karanja says, only half-joking, that “women are cowards.” Kihika continues saying that sacrifice is necessary, just like Christ says in the Gospel; Gandhi was only successful in India because he convinced his followers to put their country before their family.

As they are speaking, Njeri and Wambuku arrive—young women who are both in love with Kihika. As they do, everyone hears the rumble of the train in the distance and realizes they are late. The whole group goes running after it. To Gikonyo and Karanja, the race to the train seems to be a contest for Mumbi’s love. Bitterly, Gikonyo realizes that Karanja will beat him, but that bitterness fades when he realizes that Mumbi has also been left behind, leaving them alone together. She does not care about who was fastest in reaching the train. Gikonyo and Mumbi talk for a time before wandering into the forest together, where they make love on the grass.

At the train station, Karanja is disappointed, realizing that it is “dull” without Mumbi there. He realizes that Mumbi let him run ahead so she could be alone with Gikonyo and is furious at her. He tries not to imagine what Mumbi must be doing with Gikonyo, even fantasizing about violently humiliating her in public until she is on her knees, begging his forgiveness. This vision passes, but as the train whistles and pulls away, it is replaced with another vision of Gikuyu people running in fear of the train and the whole region being brought to silence by it. The power of the vision nearly topples him before a stranger steadies him. Karanja blames his dizziness on the heat and goes to find Kihika.

Kihika is speaking with others about the need for each movement to have a central Christ-figure such as Gandhi was in India. However, explains Kihika, Christ failed in that his death did not propel his followers to fight their oppression. Kenya needs sacrifices that will incite change and revolution; thus any person who takes up the “Oath of Unity” is a Christ figure, whether that be Kihika or Karanja or anyone else willing to fight and die for Kenya.

Njeri and Wambuku and other women arrive, and the men gathered break to go dance in the woods. Karanja plays the guitar, though his heart is not in the music, and Kihika and Wambuku dance together—with Njeri looking sadly on—before wandering off into a clearing. Even away in the forest, Kihika speaks about politics and oppression, which irritates Wambuku. Wambuku sees Kihika’s idealism not as righteous but as a “demon pulling him away from her,” like a rival lover. They speak and disagree about such things for a time, neither hearing the other, before promising to never part. Wambuku believes this means Kihika will abandon his demon; Kihika believes this means Wambuku will fight alongside him in the forest. Despite their mutual misunderstanding of each other, they are both exuberant.

Gikonyo recalls to Mugo that his moment in the forest with Mumbi was the most powerful experience of his life, staying with him through all of his years in detention. Gikonyo marries Mumbi not long after that day, but they are together only a short time before he is detained. But in that time, Mumbi’s love makes Gikonyo feel as if all of life finally has a greater purpose. Though he is happy, Mumbi and Wangari note that his music and his words gradually become more like Kihika’s, harboring a revolutionary spirit. The young people of Thabai no longer dance in the woods; people stop going to meet the train.

A few months after the Emergency has been declared, Mumbi stands in front of her new home waiting for Gikonyo and Wangari to come home from their day’s work. Kariuki arrives instead, telling her she must come home. Kihika has gone to the forest to wage war on the whiteman. Wambuku is heartbroken, realizing that she has lost her love, but Njeri despises her for her feminine weakness. Njeri, though small, has always been strong, able to best most men physically. Staring into the forest, she swears a secret oath to join Kihika in the forest and fight by his side. Mumbi, knowing that Gikonyo will soon leave as well, is fearful but “hate[s] herself for this cowardice.” Soon, Gikonyo is arrested in Thabai and taken to the detention camps, striding to meet his fate confidently and with great resolve, believing it will all be over soon and the whiteman defeated. In the village, the young women “pine for their lovers behind cold huts.” The train platform is empty.

Six years later, Gikonyo walks from the detention camps back to his home, wearing rags, his body emaciated. In detention, when his “hope for early Independence” goes unmet, Gikonyo clings to memories of Mumbi and Wangari for strength. The prisoners are strong for the first few months, swearing never to confess the oath or reveal details about the Mau Mau fighters, but after learning that Jomo Kenyatta’s appeal for freedom has been denied and he is still imprisoned, their spirits begin to break as they realize that the “day of deliverance had receded into a distant future.” The narrator recalls that Harry Thuku, after his capture, was exiled on an island for seven years, returning to Africa broken and swearing “eternal cooperation with his oppressors.” Gikonyo begins to fear his own death.

The other prisoners maintain their commitment to never confess the oath and a man named Gatu becomes their “good spirit.” Gatu tells his fellows inspirational stories about Abraham Lincoln “leading the black folk in America into a revolt” against the British, and about Napoleon’s voice making British soldiers soil themselves in fear. No matter how often he is beaten, Gatu remains upbeat, even after solitary confinement. However, the camp’s commander is determined to break Gatu. Only once does Gikonyo see weakness in Gatu, on a day when they are laboring in a quarry and Gatu tells Gikonyo that he loved a woman once, but now she has married another. Gikonyo feels hatred for the man, believing that Gatu is only able to be strong because he has no woman waiting for him. The next day, Gatu is murdered by soldiers, though the camp’s commander tries to convince them that he hung himself in his cell.

Gatu’s death breaks the collective spirit of the prisoners. In Gikonyo’s mind, the world begins to lose its shape and everything becomes a “colorless mist.” His appetite ceases and he stops eating for days. In a delirious vision which causes him to wonder if he has died, Gikonyo sees Mumbi enter his cell and hears her voice. The next morning, Gikonyo wakes, hungry and assured of what he will do. As he walks to the room to make his confession, the other prisoners watch him with “cold hostility.”

As Gikonyo walks from the detention camp to his home, the echo of footsteps follows him, a hallucinated embodiment of his guilt. Even though he had confessed, he was not immediately released. He is not returning a hero, and he has no dignity left. He only hopes to resume his life with Mumbi.

Mumbi and Wangari live in a different hut, and Gikonyo has to ask a child for directions to it. When he arrives, he finds Mumbi with a child on her back. She seems more surprised than happy to see him. Wangari emerges from the hut and embraces him, but Gikonyo is wary. Mumbi’s child means she has been sleeping with other men, and his immediate desire is to kill both her and her bastard son. Once again, life seems to Gikonyo absolutely colorless, and he feels numb and detached. Wangari tells him the child is Karanja’s son, but he hardly reacts.

Gikonyo goes to bed but does not sleep, and in the morning still feels nothing beyond a cold anger. As the child cries and Mumbi feeds it, Gikonyo imagines her making love to another man, imagining that she must have done so “every night for the last six years.” “Gikonyo greedily sucked sour pleasure from this reflection which he saw as a terrible revelation. To live and die alone was the ultimate truth.” Gikonyo leaves, wandering through Rung’ei, now mostly abandoned, and stands on a hill, looking down upon the village which had been forced to move to a new location by the British, now in disarray and disrepair.

Gikonyo remembers that since the Emergency is still in effect, he must report to the village Chief, so he goes to the new office. Bitterly, he realizes Karanja is the village Chief now, though Karanja acts as if he does not know him, reading off a new list of rules against revolution and stories of unity, proclaiming “the whiteman is here to stay.” Gikonyo is struck by a sudden rage and tries to strangle Karanja, but Karanja points a pistol at him, reinforcing his new power. Gikonyo is furious but unable to do anything, betrayed by his friend who had once sworn the oath alongside him to fight the British Empire. Leaving Karanja, Gikonyo runs to Wangari and Mumbi’s hut, determined to murder her. The door is locked, though Gikonyo beats it in. However, in doing so, he trips himself and strikes his skull against the hearth, leaving him lying on the floor, making strange gurgling noises and leaking foam from his mouth.