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Chapter 14
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Grain of Wheat, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism
The Individual vs. the Community
Guilt and Redemption
Christianity
Gender and Power
Summary
Analysis
Later that day, Karanja is in his mother’s hut, packing his bag to leave. Karanja’s father was never present in his life, and he is his mother’s only child to survive childbirth. Though she’d hoped he would take care of her in her old age, Karanja proved to be lazy instead. When he joined the homeguard, it further pained his mother. As Karanja leaves, his mother asks where he will go. He answers that he does not know, perhaps Githima again, and walks out into the rain.
Unique among all of the main characters of the story, Karanja is denied any redeeming quality whatsoever, which the author poignantly confirms in his final moments. He fails his people, his mother, and even himself, for not attaining his singular goal of taking Mumbi as his own partner.
Themes
Karanja walks to the bus stop, where he happens to meet Mumbi. Mumbi crushes him when she tells him that she never wants to see him again and will never let him see their child either. However, she is surprised to hear Karanja tell her of Mugo’s confession. Karanja remarks that Mugo is a brave man and saved Karanja’s life, though he cannot imagine for what purpose anymore. After Mumbi leaves him, Karanja takes the bus to Githima and sits in a small tea shop, imagining how he would have been torn limb from limb by the crowd had Mugo not confessed. He considers the fear he feels of his own people now that Thompson has left, the fear he feels of “black power.” In the homeguard, he had the power to kill and often used it against the Mau Mau terrorists. He grew accustomed to that power; he needed it. “Now that power was gone.”
Having staked his reputation, his power, and even his safety on white power and fear of the British colonial forces, Karanja is left with nothing now that they have departed. Karanja’s need for power not only suggests his utter self-absorption, but yet again depicts him as a nearly psychopathic character, one who is oblivious to morality and the needs of other people or his community, only beholden to his own craving for power. Karanja’s ruin in the story thus condemns such a narcissistic, self-absorbed life, demonstrating that such a life is stripped of all meaning and purpose as soon as the source of one’s power is taken away.
Themes
Karanja leaves the tea shop and wanders down the street, thinking now about Mumbi’s rejection, about the day he saw Kihika’s body hanging from a tree and felt not pity for his friend, but merely disgust and a disbelief in any concept of freedom that should lead to such an end. Karanja joined the homeguard soon after, spending his first months with a hood hiding his face while he anonymously identified Mau Mau sympathizers from his own village, feeling pleasure at the anonymity and power to grant life or death. Karanja thinks finally of Mugo’s sacrifice and Mumbi’s agreement that he is a courageous man. Standing near the railway, the lights and screeching of the train approach Karanja approach him and rush past, the wind knocking him backwards. He is left in complete silence and a deep, pervasive darkness.
Unlike Mugo and Gikonyo, as will be seen, Karanja is denied any opportunity for redemption, with no choice but to exile himself from his own society. Because of his ego and unwillingness to face his own guilt, Karanja will be left to carry his burden forever, suggesting that the only way to be free of such guilt is to confess one’s crimes and accept their consequences. The train passing Karanja by and leaving him in a silent, total darkness again symbolizes British power and technology, which Karanja had placed all of his hope in, and which now has left him behind with nothing and no one.
Themes
