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Chapter 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Petals of Blood, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Capitalism
Education
Gender, Sexuality, and Exploitation
Religion, Hypocrisy, and Delusion
Land and Nature
Summary
Analysis
Twelve years prior, Munira bikes into Ilmorog and begins cleaning the dilapidated four-room school. The town believes he’ll abandon the project soon, as previous teachers have done, but instead he teaches shepherds’ children outside on the grave of the legendary Ndemi. Offended, the diviner Mwathi wa Mugo orders Munira reprimanded, and an elderly woman Nyakinyua defecates hugely in the schoolyard. Later, she confronts Munira about coming from a city where Africans imitate white people; she accuses cities of stealing the town’s young and asks whether Munira has come to steal the remaining children. Munira, thinking how he wishes to be free of the past, accidentally sneezes in the old woman’s face; she flees.
The poor condition of Ilmorog’s school implies that Ilmorog is a rural town whose children have little opportunity for education. Munira offends the town’s diviner (traditional seer or soothsayer), which shows he doesn’t understand the town’s culture. When Nyakinyua accuses Kenyan people who live in cities of imitating white people and cities of stealing Ilmorog’s children, it suggests economic and cultural divides between urban and rural Kenya: the cities take young workers from the smaller towns, impoverishing them, and indoctrinates those young workers into behaviors that smaller-town people consider stereotypically white.
Themes
Munira bikes to Abdulla’s shop and bar. Abdulla, a man with a crippled leg, recently moved to town with his donkey and a boy named Joseph. As Munira drinks a beer at Abdulla’s, three older farmers, including Njuguna, enter. They chat with Munira about a possible drought, but Munira doesn’t care about farming. Abdulla asks Munira about the school, and Munira says he wants to hire more teachers and hopes as an educated person to “pay back” the less educated people who fought for independence by teaching the children. Abdulla is skeptical of educated people, thinking they’re out for themselves, but one farmer praises Munira’s ideals.
Munira, from the city, doesn’t care about farming, which seems to be the townspeople’s main source of sustenance. His indifference suggests that he doesn’t understand the town’s economic realities or feel connected to nature. Munira wants to “pay back” other Kenyan people who fought for independence; he feels uncomfortable with his own non-participation in Kenya’s war for independence from the UK (Kenya became independent in 1963). Abdulla’s suspicion of educated people shows that Ilmorog’s townspeople don’t necessarily trust or value formal education.
Themes
Later that night, Njuguna and the other farmers visit Nyakinyua and vouch for Munira’s decency to her and the other townspeople. Yet after a month, Munira can’t keep the shepherds’ children in school. Shocked at such recalcitrance in the modern 1960s, Munira goes to drink at Abdulla’s, who mocks him with the story of Nyakinyua defecating in the schoolyard.
The shepherds’ children don’t want to attend Munira’s school. Readers may infer that whatever Munira is trying to teach isn’t relevant to the children’s lives. Munira interprets the children’s lack of interest as a symptom of their backwardness, not of his lessons’ irrelevance—which suggests that his own education may not have prepared him to relate to rural workers and their families.
Themes
Munira bikes to Ruwa-ini to speak with his supervisor Mzigo. On the way, he sees three African men playing golf; young caddies dressed in rags wait on them. At Mzigo’s office, Mzigo blows off Munira’s concerns about the school but tells him he can hire UTs. He also claims he’ll drive to visit Ilmorog, complains about the road, and tells Munira he’s lucky to have a bike, not a car. Thinking how much he prefers the people of Ilmorog to Mzigo and the golfers, Munira asks whether he can really hire UTs. Mzigo says he can. .
The passage doesn’t make clear what a “UT” is, but from context, the reader can guess it’s a kind of teacher that Munira would hire for added help. That Munira prefers Ilmorog’s townspeople to car owning Mzigo and the rich golfers who let their caddies dress in rags suggests Munira’s negative judgment on the kind of people who have gotten rich in post-Independence Kenya.
Themes
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Before returning to Ilmorog, Munira bikes to Limuru to visit his family. He feels like the odd one out. His living siblings have prestigious careers or foreign educations, while his favorite sister Mukami—who got in trouble for playing and working with laborers on their father’s farm—recently died by suicide. His father Ezekieli, though a devout Presbyterian, is a stingy landowner who squeezes his religious workers, dismissing those who protest low wages as “devilish.”
Munira’s living family members are among the Kenyan nouveau riche he dislikes: his siblings have fancy jobs, and his father’s a rich, exploitative landowner. That Munira’s father Ezekieli exploits his workers despite his Presbyterianism—a Protestant Christian denomination—implies that Ezekieli is a hypocrite, and that religion fails to make people good.
Themes
As a high-schooler, Munira noticed the workers were more sincerely devout than his father Ezekieli; they made him want to confess a sin he’d committed with a woman in Kamiritho, but instead he burned the woman’s house in a little grass effigy and abandoned the effigy still on fire—which almost caused a barn to burn down.
That Ezekieli’s workers are less hypocritical and more earnest in their religion suggests that money corrupts religious beliefs. The passage implies that Munira felt so guilty for having sex with a woman that he burnt her house in effigy; this anecdote suggests that Munira is repressed for religious reasons and that his repression can lead to behavior that is potentially dangerous.
Themes
Munira’s father’s most sanctified worker was an elderly woman, Mariamu, who didn’t actually attend religious services. Mariamu’s son Nding’uri was Munira’s friend until Munira went away to Siriana for school; later, Munira learned the son was caught smuggling guns for the Mau Mau Rebellion and executed. Rumors also link Mariamu to Mau Mau fighters cutting off Ezekieli’s ear and to Mukami’s suicide, but Munira still has good memories of her.
Mariamu was Ezekieli’s holiest worker despite not going to church, which suggests thar organized religion isn’t necessary to being holy. The Mau Mau Rebellion (1952 – 1960) was a war between Kenya’s British colonial government and Kenyan freedom fighters. That the worker’s son Nding’uri became a Mau Mau while the owner’s son Munira went to a fancy school implies that Kenyan people’s desire for freedom from colonialism varied by their class: the poorer Nding’uri wanted freedom more because he suffered more under colonialism. That Munira went to school while Nding’uri was fighting also implies that some kinds of formal education may quash young people’s rebellious instincts.
Themes
In Limuru, Munira sees the place where Mariamu’s hut used to be and wonders what happened to her. He goes to visit his own family; when he tries to tell his children stories about Ilmorog, his pretty yet prim, unsensual, and excessively religious wife (Julia) scolds him for “blaspheming.”
Munira lives in a different town from his family, which hints at problems in his marriage. His wife claims he’s “blaspheming”—insulting religion or God—just by explaining what Ilmorog is like, which suggests both that religion blinds some people to reality and that Julia’s religiosity may have caused the problems in her marriage.
Themes
When Munira bikes back to Ilmorog, the people welcome him, appreciating that he won’t run away like the other teachers and that he “carrie[s] the wisdom of the new age.” Munira observes their way of life: they barter as much as they use money, consult the diviner Mwathi wa Mugo about when to plant crops, and argue in Abdulla’s bar about whether farming or herding livestock is better.
Ilmorog’s townspeople have come to believe that Munira, the one teacher who hasn’t abandoned their school, has “the wisdom of the new age.” What wisdom is this? Munira finds strange the townspeople’s disinterest in money, their spiritual beliefs, and their relationship to the land via farming and herding. Munira’s preconceptions—his “wisdom of the new age”—are based on capitalism, Christianity or secularism, and urban environments. Whether this “wisdom” will help Ilmorog remains to be seen.
Themes
In discussing farming versus herding, the people discuss which wealth white colonialists stole first and how the colonialists tricked them into accepting coins, useless in themselves, as “the true wealth.” Uncomfortable with his own non-participation in the struggle against colonialism, Munira changes the subject by asking who Ilmorog’s MP is. The town knows their MP’s name is Nderi wa Riera but not what he does for them; they’re more interested in why their youth keep leaving for the cities. Munira keeps asking questions to steer the subject away from politics; he’s tired and contemptuous of politics.
The townspeople’s discussion suggests that colonialism—in this case, white British colonizers’ political control and economic exploitation of indigenous Black Kenyan people—comes from a desire for wealth: the colonizers came to steal from Kenyan people and to impose a capitalist economic system on them in which money, not land or animals, counted as “the true wealth.” Given Munira’s earlier discomfort with discussions of Kenya’s fight for freedom, he may hate discussing politics because he feels guilty that he never fought against colonialism.
Themes
Munira gets into a routine of working at school during the day and drinking at Abdulla’s in the evening. Abdulla, who has fickle moods, will sometimes remind Munira about Nyakinyua defecating in the schoolyard and will complain that the townspeople are suspicious of his donkey because it eats too much. He also verbally abuses his helper, the boy Joseph. When Munira suggests Abdulla send Joseph to the school, Abdulla blows him off. Despite Abdulla’s occasional hostility, Munira now prefers Ilmorog to his home life and hopes Mzigo leaves him alone there so he can avoid personal, familial problems.
This passage illustrates that while Munira, an educated schoolteacher, values education, not everyone does—Abdulla, a working-class shopkeeper and bar-owner, seems to see no inherent value in sending his young ward Joseph to school. Munira’s desire to hang around Abdulla’s bar rather than visit his out-of-town family reminds the reader that his marriage has problems, possibly due to his wife’s religiosity.
Themes
When April rains arrive, the townspeople are busy farming, and Munira sees them less at Abdulla’s. Though lonely, he strangely comes to feel like the “feudal head” of Ilmorog. In June, he takes his class outside to teach them the anatomy of flowers. When one child starts shouting about “a flower with petals of blood,” Munira corrects him, saying the color term is red. When another child finds a faded red flower, Munira explains that a worm has eaten the inside, which can prevent the flower from blooming fully, with its most intense color. The children begin asking Munira questions about why creatures eat each other and why God lets things happen. Flustered, Munira stops doing field trips; he feels more authoritative inside the schoolroom.
Feudalism was a pre-capitalist European socioeconomic system in which lords owned land cultivated by peasants, who farmed the lord’s land. When Munira feels like Ilmorog’s “feudal lord,” it suggests he views Ilmorog’s townspeople as pre-capitalist and therefore somehow as his servants or subjects. As the novel’s title is “petals of blood,” the use of this phrase seems symbolically significant. Since Kenyan people died to free the land from colonialism, the “petals of blood” may represent the violent deaths of those who sacrificed their lives for independence. The worm-eaten red flower suggests that negative social forces, represented by the worm, have prevented newly independent Kenya from fully blooming. Munira’s discomfort with the phrase “petals of blood” and with the outdoors reminds the reader both of his non-participation in revolutionary politics and his disconnection from nature. These characteristics make Munira a worse teacher: he’s unwilling to let students ask questions or explore the unknown.
Themes
One hot day, a beautiful woman (Wanja) approaches Munira outside and asks for water. He takes her into his house and gives her water. When she teases him that the townspeople were right about his spartan living quarters, he asks when she arrived in town. She says the night before. Worried that she heard about him so quickly, Munira wonders what the town says and thinks about him. He goes to check on the schoolchildren and resolves not to ponder insoluble questions like the “flower with petals of blood”; when he returns home, the woman is gone.
Munira worries what the town may have said about him, which implies that he fears the town still doesn’t accept him. It may also imply that he finds this unknown woman sexually interesting, despite his marriage. Munira’s resolve not to think about the “flower with petals of blood” strengthens the implication that Munira is incurious and a bad teacher; it also serves to link flowers more tightly with the other subject Munira hates to ponder: Kenyan politics.
Themes
That night, Munira goes to Abdulla’s, where he meets the woman again and—uneasy and aroused—buys her a beer. As they talk, he learns her name is Wanja, Nyakinyua is her grandmother, and she used to wrestle with boys in school. When Abdulla turns to Munira, Munira angrily anticipates Abdulla will humiliate him with the story of Nyakinyua defecating in the schoolyard. Instead, Abdulla asks whether he can go to school too, so he can wrestle with Wanja. When Munira jokingly asks what two adults would do in school, Abdulla and Wanja banter back that he should make them prefects to discipline the other students. Then Abdulla suggests that Munira wouldn’t want them in his school because they might lead a student strike.
Munira is, indeed, sexually attracted to Wanja. Abdulla’s joke about going to school so he can wrestle with Wanja implies that he too finds her sexually attractive. That both men immediately relate to Wanja in a sexual way suggests that sexuality is the main lens through which men view women in the novel’s world. In school, a prefect is a student given responsibilities or powers over other students; Abdulla’s joking threat that he and Wanja would lead a student strike links being a student with political activism for the first time in the novel.
Themes
Munira tells Wanja and Abdulla that prefects have to know how “to lick the boots of those above” them. In school at Siriana, Munira was never great at that or anything else. The best student was Chui, who quoted Shakespeare and played football beautifully against white opposing teams. The other students nicknamed him Shakespeare and Joe Louis.
Being successful at Siriana meant “lick[ing] the boots” of people higher up in the hierarchy. To do this, successful Black students like Chui learned to quote William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), England’s most famous playwright, and to play football (i.e., soccer), a game very popular at English private schools. Siriana’s focus on English literature and sports suggests that it was conditioning the Kenyan students to view English culture as superior. Thus, Siriana represents the way colonialism miseducated Kenyan people into viewing English culture and white people as inherently more valuable than Kenyan culture and Black people. The other students liked Chui because he could beat white people at white people’s own games; his nickname “Joe Louis” refers to the African American boxer Joe Louis, who in a 1938 rematch famously defeated the Nazi-backed German boxer Max Schmeling, whom the Nazi press claimed could never lose to a Black person.
Themes
When Siriana’s friendly headmaster—whom the students liked even though he was white—retired, the new headmaster Fraudsham refused to let the students wear shoes or eat decent food. Chui led the students in a strike. Inspired, Munira became another strike ringleader. Yet when Fraudsham called in the police, the strike ended. Munira and Chui were expelled. Munira concludes that whereas Chui ended up traveling to America, Munira retreated into himself.
At Siriana, the students were Kenyan adolescents, while the headmasters seem to have been white Englishmen. Thus, Siriana the school reflected the racial power structures of British colonial Kenya, where white foreigners oppressed the Black indigenous population. Fraudsham’s decision to deprive Siriana’s Black students of shoes and decent food illustrates how some racist people in Kenya’s British colonial government didn’t even want Kenyan people to assimilate into English culture—they simply wanted to keep Kenyans oppressed and poor. This passage hints that Munira’s participation in a failed strike may have conditioned him to avoid political engagement.
Themes
Abdulla yells at Joseph. Wanja tries to help Joseph clear the table; noticing a tear in Joseph’s trousers, she asks Munira whether Joseph is at school. Munira says no. Abdulla protests that with his crippled leg, he needs a helper around the store. Wanja tells Abdulla to send Joseph to school and offers to work in his place. Abdulla, in a gentler tone, tells Joseph to bring him another beer and then stop working.
Despite Munira’s story about Siriana, Wanja still believes education is worth pursuing and intervenes with Abdulla so that Joseph can go to school. Wanja’s attitude suggests that education need not indoctrinate students into bad political attitudes, even if Siriana did.
Themes
Though Ilmorog’s townspeople believe Wanja will soon move on, they are very happy when she ends up moving her things into a hut near her grandmother Nyakinyua’s. The townspeople end up throwing a party with singing and dancing to celebrate. The crops have changed, and people now walk around with flowers stuck to their clothes. Yet they worry that the pattern of rain and sunshine has been wrong all spring—and, indeed, the harvest isn’t good. Nevertheless, the townspeople accept “that God was the Giver and also the one who took away.”
That people walk around with flowers stuck to their clothes during harvest suggest that flowers symbolize the creative potential of Kenya’s land as well as its people. The townspeople’s acceptance “that God was the Giver and also the one who took away,” however, suggests that their religious beliefs about God’s power and humanity’s powerlessness may prevent them from trying to change bad outcomes—say, with better technology or farm practices.
Themes
Wanja and Munira start up a low-key flirtation. Though Munira believes he doesn’t want an intense relationship, he feels he made himself vulnerable to her and Abdulla by telling them about Siriana and keeps almost bringing it up again. He’s also jealous of Wanja’s flirtatious friendship with Abdulla. One day, an airplane flies over Ilmorog, and Wanja comes to the school to ask Munira about it. He doesn’t know anything, and he ends up watching her buttocks as she leaves. Then he has a series of sexual dreams about her. He feels out-of-control and tormented.
Munira feels vulnerable around Wanja and Abdulla after telling them about Siriana, which shows that the school’s white-supremacist administrators and Munira’s expulsion for protesting them continue to affect his self-esteem as an adult. Munira’s sexual obsession with Wanja, meanwhile, hints that he sees women as sexual beings first and has difficulty relating to them as friends.
Themes
A few days later, engineers travel through Ilmorog surveying the land in preparation for a possible highway connecting all Africa. Munira, Wanja, and others come out to watch and question the engineers, but when Wanja sees the head engineer, she flees. Later, the townspeople discuss whether the highway would be good or bad: Some worry their own land will be appropriated for the road, while others hope it will help them transport their goods to better markets.
Wanja’s reaction to the head engineer implies that she knows him or that he reminds her of someone she knows. Ilmorog’s townspeople react to the engineers primarily by discussing the economic effects of the road—its passage through their land, its opening of new markets—on their own lives. This shows that the townspeople aren’t ideologues; they simply want whatever changes are coming to improve their material conditions.
Themes
The night after the engineers leave, Munira decides to make a move on Wanja. When he goes to her hut, Abdulla is there. At first Munira is jealous, but he feels better when Wanja and Abdulla inform him they’re celebrating Wanja’s decision to start working as a barmaid at Abdulla’s so Joseph can go to school. Wanja credits Munira’s “moving” story about Siriana for her decision to help Joseph. Abdulla, pleased, tells Wanja that she looks so young when she’s happy that it seems she should be in school too, not working.
Munira was raised Christian and is married; nevertheless, he pursues Wanja. As Christianity forbids adultery, Munira is either no longer religious or somewhat hypocritical. Wanja found Munira’s Siriana story “moving” and reacted by helping Joseph go to school, which suggests she interpreted Munira’s story as a lament for losing educational opportunities, rather than as a disturbing revelation about British colonial education’s white-supremacist tendencies.
Themes
Wanja, becoming thoughtful, says the head engineer they saw earlier reminded her of something that happened long ago. When she was in primary school, a poor boy had a crush on her. One day, he walked her home and told her about his dream of becoming an engineer. At home, her mother questioned her about where she’d been. She answered back, a little cheekily, that she’d been strolling with her boyfriend. Her mother and father beat her for walking with a boy and for talking back. Wanja felt they were beating her partly because the boy was poor and partly to “work[] out something between them,” as they were becoming estranged.
Wanja believes that her parents beat her not simply for walking with a boy but for walking with a boy who was poor. This suggests both that Wanja’s parents were very money conscious and that—even when Wanja was an elementary-schooler—they saw Wanja’s romantic choices and sexuality as commodities they did not want her to trade cheaply or give to someone poor.
Themes
Wanja felt her parents’ behavior was unjust and wanted revenge but had no power to get it. The incident turned her against school. Shortly after, a rich, married man (later revealed to be Kimeria) moved into her village and made friends with her father. The man gave Wanja’s family presents for Christmas, including a dress with a flower pattern for Wanja. Unbeknownst to Wanja’s parents, he began taking Wanja out in the city during school hours.
In previous scenes, flowers have symbolized the potential of Kenya’s people and its land, which colonizers have exploited. Here, the flower pattern on Wanja’s dress represents her potential as a young, intelligent girl—potential her father’s adult, married friend exploits by sexually abusing her, initiating a relationship with her before she’s even in high school.
Themes
Wanja’s math teacher, who desired her sexually, followed her during one of her absences, found out about her outings with Kimeria, and told her he’d inform her parents unless she had sex with him. When Wanja refused him, the math teacher told her parents—but rather than beating her, Wanja’s mother blamed her father for making friends with Kimeria.
Wanja’s math teacher also tries to abuse Wanja sexually, emphasizing that sexual exploitation of women and girls is a common phenomenon.
Themes
Wanja stopped seeing Kimeria, started studying hard, and did excellently in the “mock-CPE results.” The teachers were sure she would get into a good high school. But then Wanja discovered she was pregnant. When she told Kimeria, he said she could be his second wife, but his first wife would treat her terribly. Despite this, Wanja ran away to him rather than let her mother find out about the pregnancy. But when she showed up at his house, he laughed at her, saying he was too old for her and “a Christian.”
CPE stands for Certificate of Primary Education. Kenyan students take CPE exams at the end of their primary education and use the results to apply to high schools. Wanja did excellently on her “mock-CPE results,” meaning she received a high score on a practice exam for the CPE. Kimeria’s reaction to Wanja’s pregnancy—claiming he can’t help her because he’s “a Christian”—shows his hypocrisy. While he seems to be saying that he can’t marry her because Christians don’t practice polygamy, Christianity forbids both adultery and preying on others. If he took Christian doctrine seriously rather than using Christianity as a cover for evil behavior, he wouldn’t have abused Wanja at all.
Themes
Wanja concludes her story by saying that after Kimeria rejected her, she went to live with her cousin, still wanting revenge, and became a barmaid rather than continuing with school. That’s why it makes her sad when children aren’t allowed to go to school. She says Abdulla and Munira must celebrate Joseph’s matriculation and her first day of work at the bar the next night. When Munira demurs, Wanja insists he come and walk her home afterward. Abdulla and Munira leave, the latter thinking happily about “beautiful flowers.”
Whereas racism and colonialism derailed Munira’s education, sexual abuse derailed Wanja’s, suggesting that sexual exploitation harms women and girls in a way that may exacerbate other oppressions they already face. Previously, flowers have symbolized the exploited potential of Kenyan people and Kenyan land; that Munira thinks about “flowers” after Wanja makes a date for them to walk home together implies he sees the date as full of (sexual) potential.
Themes
