A Grain of Wheat: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

The narrator recalls Mugo’s detention: He is taken first to a police station and then transferred to a camp where he is held for six months with many Freedom Fighters captured in the forest. Suddenly, they are all loaded onto the train and deposited at a much larger camp, where they wait in lines to be subdivided between the three sections of the camp. Mugo is placed in the third section for “hardcore” prisoners, those who’ve sworn to never cooperate with the British and often will not even work, before being chained and again transferred to a remote detention camp. John Thompson has recently been transferred to this same camp after earning a reputation as a skilled extractor of confessions. Rather than beating and torturing confessions from his prisoners, Thompson prefers to obtain them by softening his prisoners with promises and talk of home.

Thompson questions Mugo, who tells him his name and home of Thabai—which Thompson twice served as District Officer of—but will not confess to taking any oaths, since he truly never took any. Mugo is “indifferent to his fate,” assuming that he will die in any case. Since Mugo is the only prisoner who will answer questions at all, Thompson persists after Mugo for weeks, screaming at him, beating at him, and starving him. Mugo maintains his indifferent detachment, which seems to the other prisoners to be a mockery of Thompson, making him an unwitting symbol of their defiance. Thompson’s inability to draw confessions makes him insane, prompting him to set his guards upon the inmates, beating them “day and night” and resulting in the eleven deaths that make him infamous across the world.

Mugo thinks of these events as he walks to Gikonyo’s house the next morning to announce that he will lead the Uhuru celebrations and his “people across the desert to the new Jerusalem.” However, rather than finding Gikonyo, Mugo meets Mumbi and her child, and she insists that Mugo stay and visit. They make idle small talk for a time, but as Mugo is rising to leave, Mumbi asks him if he ever has dreams of the future. Mugo gives a half-answer, but Mumbi continues, explaining that she dreamt of supporting Gikonyo when he rose to fight the British, if it came to that, but now she can no longer please him.

Mumbi also recalls Wambuku, Kihika’s lover who, after hearing of his death, “destroyed herself with soldiers and homeguards, any man,” until she was finally beaten to death by a certain homeguard she had once rejected. Mumbi remarks that in her eyes, Wambuku died for Kihika. Njeri died for Kihika too, fighting in the forest until she was killed by a bullet not long after Kihika’s execution.

Mugo does not want to think of painful things, and again tries to leave until Mumbi calls him back again. She remarks that Mugo’s presence makes her feel able to confide in him, and that Kihika once said he felt the same. Although Mugo wants to be left alone, he is drawn in by the presence of Mumbi and her “seductive power,” her eyes, her voice. Mumbi tells him that she wants to speak about her relationship with Gikonyo. Mugo is briefly mad, wanting even to hurt her, wondering, “Why [does] she try to drag him into her life, into everybody’s life?”

However, Mumbi catches Mugo off guard when she begins telling him about how she and Wangari rebuilt their huts after the British forced the villagers to burn their old homes and move to a new location as retribution for Kihika’s capture of a police station. Although Mumbi is initially disheartened, especially since there is no man in the house to help them, she and Wangari set to work and build new huts—with occasional visits and help from Karanja—often sleeping in the partially finished shelters as they work. “Overnight, children grew into men, women put on trousers.” Karanja’s visits become more frequent, though Mumbi does not yet realize this nor know what he has become.

When Kihika is killed, Mumbi’s family is crushed—even Mbugua, a legendary warrior, “urinated on his legs.” Not long after come the events of the trench, which Mumbi notes Mugo saw the beginnings of, since he was arrested and detained for attempting to save Wambuku from being beaten to death. Around this time, Mumbi also learns that Karanja has joined the homeguard, which she sees as a great betrayal of her brother and her husband. But she cannot think of this for long before the work of digging the soldiers’ trench consumes everyone’s life. The people of Thabai are all put to slave labor. The new District Officer lets his soldiers pick women to rape in their tents each night, though Mumbi is spared such a fate. Wambuku is beaten to death, her body thrown in a nearby shallow grave. The villagers think the end of the world has arrived. Those who cannot dig are forced to watch their loved ones dig each day. “Thabai was a warning to other villages never to give food or any help to those fighting in the Forest.”

Thabai runs out of food and people begin starving to death. On the night when Mumbi can stand her hunger no longer, Karanja arrives outside her hut with bread, the first time Mumbi has seen him since learning of his betrayal. She refuses the bread, though feels guilty of it when she sees how emaciated Wangari is. Karanja arrives another night with bread and flour, telling Mumbi that she will die if she does not take it. Mumbi receives the food, but calls Karanja “Judas.” He justifies his decision, saying, “Every man in the world is alone, and fights alone, to live.” Nevertheless, Mumbi is ashamed to have received the food, feeling the same as the women who prostitute themselves to the soldiers in exchange for just enough food to survive.

After the trench is dug, Mumbi and the other villagers are put to more labor, though those who work for the whiteman are excluded from the forced labor. This goes on for years. Mumbi, like all the other wives, thinks only of her husband. Although everyone believes the men of Thabai will not return, they secretly hope that they are wrong. After the infamously cruel regional Chief established by the homeguard is assassinated, Karanja becomes the new Chief and proves himself more ruthless than his predecessor, leading soldiers into the forest to kill Freedom Fighters.

One day, Karanja sees Mumbi on the road and calls after her, his bodyguards threatening to beat her if she doesn’t comply, though Karanja tells them to stand down. Karanja tells Mumbi that he loves her and has saved himself for her through all the years. Mumbi, however, utterly despises Karanja, insinuating that he has lost his manhood and grovels before his “white husbands.” Karanja again tries to justify his treachery, saying, “The coward lived to see his mother while the brave was left dead on the battlefield. And to ward off a blow is not cowardice.”

More years pass, and Karanja grows more arrogant and Mumbi more disheartened, convinced that her husband is dead. One day, Karanja orders Mumbi to come to his house, where he announces that Gikonyo is coming home. She is so shocked that when Karanja starts to have sex with her, she does not reciprocate but neither does she resist, until she realizes what has happened after the fact and is left utterly heartbroken and horrified with herself. As Mumbi tells this, Mugo envisions himself at the bottom of a pool of water, looking up at the world passing by on the bank while he struggles alone in the darkness.

After Mumbi has finished her story, Mugo is left feeling weak, unsure of what he is supposed to do with such heavy information. Suddenly, however, General R. and Koina arrive. General R. announces that Githua’s story about being a driver and a Freedom Fighter is entirely false, only something Githua made up to give his life meaning, though he recognizes that every person does that, in their own way. However, Mugo feels terribly “let down by Githua.” More importantly, though, General R. and Koina are convinced that it was Karanja who betrayed Kihika, confirmed by Koina’s observation of Karanja during a recent mission to Githima. They have laid a trap, with the help of Mwaura, to lure Karanja to the Uhuru celebrations where they will expose him and bring him to justice. At that moment, Mugo suddenly declares that he cannot lead the celebration or the Party. He rushes out of Mumbi’s hut.