Petals of Blood

by

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Karega Character Analysis

Idealistic Karega is Munira’s sometime student and coworker and Wanja’s lover. In grammar school, Munira teaches Karega; later, Karega attends the high school Siriana. In childhood, Karega falls in love with Munira’s sister Mukami, whose father Ezekieli owns the farm where Karega’s mother Mariamu works. As teenagers, Karega and Mukami have sex; afterward, Mukami tells Karega that Ezekieli has demanded she choose between Karega and her family. When Mukami dies by suicide, a heartbroken Karega redirects his emotional energy toward hero-worshipping revolutionaries. After Siriana’s racist headmaster Fraudsham tries to expel several students on unjust grounds, Karega participates in a strike demanding an African headmaster and an Africa-centric curriculum. When former student Chui replaces Fraudsham, Karega believes that Chui will sympathize with the students—but Chui insists on maintaining a Europe-centric curriculum and, when Karega leads another strike, expels him. Post-expulsion, Karega becomes an impoverished street vendor. After two encounters with Karega, Munira—who feels somewhat responsible for his former student—hires Karega as an “untrained teacher” at Ilmorog’s school. When one of Karega’s students faints from hunger in class during Ilmorog’s drought, Karega helps mobilize a delegation to beg Ilmorog’s MP Nderi wa Riera for aid. Riera turns out to be corrupt, which damages Karega’s belief in Kenya’s post-independence political establishment. Later, Karega begins a romantic relationship with Wanja—and Munira, jealous, gets Karega fired. Karega leaves Ilmorog. For a while he works on a Kenyan lawyer's progressive political campaign, but he ultimately finds the lawyer too eager to collaborate with the establishment, so he quits. Afterward, Karega works on docks, plantations, and in a sugar mill before returning to Ilmorog and becoming a labor organizer for the Theng’eta Breweries Union. After the brewery’s directors, Chui, Mzigo, and Kimeria, are murdered, the police arrest Karega—but Karega, undaunted, mentally recommits to fighting for racial and economic justice. Karega’s struggle at Siriana exemplifies education’s inherently political nature, especially in postcolonial countries, while his struggles against European-backed Kenyan economic elites represents the connection between white colonial exploitation of Black people and capitalist exploitation of workers.

Karega Quotes in Petals of Blood

The Petals of Blood quotes below are all either spoken by Karega or refer to Karega. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Colonialism and Capitalism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

A man, believed to be a trade-union agitator, has been held after a leading industrialist and two educationists, well known as the African directors of the internationally famous Theng’eta Breweries and Enterprises Ltd, were last night burnt to death in Ilmorog, only hours after taking a no-nonsense-no-pay-rise decision.

Related Characters: Karega, Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo
Related Symbols: Siriana, Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

He stole a matchbox, collected a bit of grass and dry cowdung and built an imitation of Amina’s house at Kamiritho where he had sinned against the Lord, and burnt it. He watched the flames and he felt truly purified by fire. He went to bed at ease with himself and peaceful in his knowledge of being accepted by the Lord. Shalom. But the cowdung had retained the fire and at night the wind fanned it into flames which would have licked up the whole barn had it not been discovered in time.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo
Related Symbols: Fire
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:

‘But boys were always more confident about the future than us girls. They seemed to know what they wanted to become later in life: whereas with us girls the future seemed vague . . . It was as if we knew that no matter what efforts we put into our studies, our road led to the kitchen and to the bedroom.’

Related Characters: Wanja (speaker), Karega, Abdulla, Kimeria, Joseph
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

We are all searchers for a tiny place in God’s corner to shelter us for a time from treacherous winds and rains and drought. This was all that I had wanted him to see: that the force he sought could only be found in the blood of the Lamb.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira (speaker), Wanja, Karega, Abdulla, Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Kenyan people had always been ready to resist foreign control and exploitation. The story of this heroic resistance: who will sing it? Their struggles to defend their land, their wealth, their lives: who’ll tell of it?

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Karega
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Haunting memories from the past; the year of the locust; the year of the armyworms; the year of the famine of cassava […] uncontrolled nature was always a threat to human endeavor.

Related Characters: Karega
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:
The Journey Quotes

‘Why should we fail, though? We are now going as a community. The voice of the people is truly the voice of God. And who is an MP? Isn’t he the people’s voice in the ruling house?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Wanja, Nderi wa Riera
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:

‘To understand the present . . . you must understand the past. To know where you are, you must know where you came from, don’t you think?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Wanja, Nderi wa Riera
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:

The others surrounded the sculpture and commented on the fighter’s hair, the heavy lips and tongue in open laughter, and the sword around the waist. But why did he possess breasts, somebody asked: it was as if it was a man and a woman in one: how could that be?

They were arguing about it until Nyakinyua almost silenced them with her simple logic.

‘A man cannot have a child without a woman. A woman cannot bear a child without a man. And was it not a man and a woman who fought to redeem this country?’

Related Characters: Nyakinyua (speaker), Karega, Nderi wa Riera, The Lawyer
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:

‘I saw in the cities of America white people also begging . . . I saw white women selling their bodies for a few dollars. In America vice is a selling commodity. I worked alongside white and black workers in a Detroit factory. We worked overtime to make a meagre living. I saw a lot of unemployment in Chicago and other cities. I was confused. So I said: let me return to my home, now that the black man has come to power. And suddenly as in a flash of lightning I saw we were serving the same monster-god as they were in America.’

Related Characters: The Lawyer (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Abdulla, Nderi wa Riera, Fraudsham
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis:

He did not therefore want to hear any more nonsense about African teachers, African history, African literature, African this and that: whoever heard of African, Chinese, or Greek mathematics and science? What mattered were good teachers and sound content: history was history: literature was literature, and had nothing to do with the colour of one’s skin.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Abdulla, Chui, The Lawyer
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

‘Educators, men of letters, intellectuals: these are only voices—not neutral, disembodied voices—but belonging to bodies of persons, of groups, of interests. You, who will seek the truth about words emitted by a voice, look first for the body behind the voice. The voice merely rationalizes the needs, whims, caprices, of its owner, the master.’

Related Characters: The Lawyer (speaker), Karega
Page Number: 238-239
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

‘We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of inequality and injustice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil […] we are all prostituted. For as long as there’s a man in prison, I am also in prison [. . .]. Why then need a victim hurl insults at another victim?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja
Page Number: 286
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

‘Are there pure facts? When I am looking at you, how much I see of you is conditioned by where I stand or sit; by the amount of light in this room; by the power of my eyes; by whether my mind is occupied with other thoughts and what thoughts. […] Even assuming that there were pure facts, what about their selection? Does this not involve interpretation?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Abdulla, The Lawyer
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 293
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

‘Even with you, I was hoping, but it did not work out. With him it has been different. I want him. I really want him. For himself. For the first time, I feel wanted . . . a human being . . . no longer humiliated . . . degraded . . . foot-trodden . . . do you understand? It is not given to many: a second chance to be a woman, to be human without this or that “except,” “except” . . . without shame. He has reawakened my smothered woman-ness, my girlhood, and I feel I am about to flower . . .’

Related Characters: Wanja (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Karega, Kimeria
Related Symbols: Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

‘I was surprised to see it on sale . . . but it did not taste the same.’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Wanja, Abdulla
Related Symbols: Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 337
Explanation and Analysis:

‘You cannot serve the interests of capital and of labour at the same time. You cannot serve two opposed masters . . . one master loses . . . in this case labour . . .’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis:

This was the society they were building: this was the society they had been building since Independence, a society in which a black few, allied to other interests from Europe, would continue the colonial game of robbing others of their sweat, denying them the right to grow to full flowers in air and sunlight.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Kimeria, Nderi wa Riera, Chui, Mzigo
Related Symbols: Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 348-349
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Must we have this world? Is there only one world? Then we must create another world, a new earth[.]’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja
Page Number: 349
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Kenya, the soil, was the people’s common shamba, and there was no way it could be right for a few, or a section, or a single nationality, to inherit for their sole use what was communal, any more than it would be right for a few sons and daughters to monopolize their father or mother.

Related Characters: Karega
Page Number: 359
Explanation and Analysis:
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Karega Quotes in Petals of Blood

The Petals of Blood quotes below are all either spoken by Karega or refer to Karega. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Colonialism and Capitalism Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

A man, believed to be a trade-union agitator, has been held after a leading industrialist and two educationists, well known as the African directors of the internationally famous Theng’eta Breweries and Enterprises Ltd, were last night burnt to death in Ilmorog, only hours after taking a no-nonsense-no-pay-rise decision.

Related Characters: Karega, Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo
Related Symbols: Siriana, Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

He stole a matchbox, collected a bit of grass and dry cowdung and built an imitation of Amina’s house at Kamiritho where he had sinned against the Lord, and burnt it. He watched the flames and he felt truly purified by fire. He went to bed at ease with himself and peaceful in his knowledge of being accepted by the Lord. Shalom. But the cowdung had retained the fire and at night the wind fanned it into flames which would have licked up the whole barn had it not been discovered in time.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo
Related Symbols: Fire
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:

‘But boys were always more confident about the future than us girls. They seemed to know what they wanted to become later in life: whereas with us girls the future seemed vague . . . It was as if we knew that no matter what efforts we put into our studies, our road led to the kitchen and to the bedroom.’

Related Characters: Wanja (speaker), Karega, Abdulla, Kimeria, Joseph
Page Number: 44
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

We are all searchers for a tiny place in God’s corner to shelter us for a time from treacherous winds and rains and drought. This was all that I had wanted him to see: that the force he sought could only be found in the blood of the Lamb.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira (speaker), Wanja, Karega, Abdulla, Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Kenyan people had always been ready to resist foreign control and exploitation. The story of this heroic resistance: who will sing it? Their struggles to defend their land, their wealth, their lives: who’ll tell of it?

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Karega
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Haunting memories from the past; the year of the locust; the year of the armyworms; the year of the famine of cassava […] uncontrolled nature was always a threat to human endeavor.

Related Characters: Karega
Page Number: 133
Explanation and Analysis:
The Journey Quotes

‘Why should we fail, though? We are now going as a community. The voice of the people is truly the voice of God. And who is an MP? Isn’t he the people’s voice in the ruling house?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Wanja, Nderi wa Riera
Page Number: 152
Explanation and Analysis:

‘To understand the present . . . you must understand the past. To know where you are, you must know where you came from, don’t you think?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Wanja, Nderi wa Riera
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:

The others surrounded the sculpture and commented on the fighter’s hair, the heavy lips and tongue in open laughter, and the sword around the waist. But why did he possess breasts, somebody asked: it was as if it was a man and a woman in one: how could that be?

They were arguing about it until Nyakinyua almost silenced them with her simple logic.

‘A man cannot have a child without a woman. A woman cannot bear a child without a man. And was it not a man and a woman who fought to redeem this country?’

Related Characters: Nyakinyua (speaker), Karega, Nderi wa Riera, The Lawyer
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:

‘I saw in the cities of America white people also begging . . . I saw white women selling their bodies for a few dollars. In America vice is a selling commodity. I worked alongside white and black workers in a Detroit factory. We worked overtime to make a meagre living. I saw a lot of unemployment in Chicago and other cities. I was confused. So I said: let me return to my home, now that the black man has come to power. And suddenly as in a flash of lightning I saw we were serving the same monster-god as they were in America.’

Related Characters: The Lawyer (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Abdulla, Nderi wa Riera, Fraudsham
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis:

He did not therefore want to hear any more nonsense about African teachers, African history, African literature, African this and that: whoever heard of African, Chinese, or Greek mathematics and science? What mattered were good teachers and sound content: history was history: literature was literature, and had nothing to do with the colour of one’s skin.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Abdulla, Chui, The Lawyer
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

‘Educators, men of letters, intellectuals: these are only voices—not neutral, disembodied voices—but belonging to bodies of persons, of groups, of interests. You, who will seek the truth about words emitted by a voice, look first for the body behind the voice. The voice merely rationalizes the needs, whims, caprices, of its owner, the master.’

Related Characters: The Lawyer (speaker), Karega
Page Number: 238-239
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

‘We are all prostitutes, for in a world of grab and take, in a world built on a structure of inequality and injustice, in a world where some can eat while others can only toil […] we are all prostituted. For as long as there’s a man in prison, I am also in prison [. . .]. Why then need a victim hurl insults at another victim?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja
Page Number: 286
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

‘Are there pure facts? When I am looking at you, how much I see of you is conditioned by where I stand or sit; by the amount of light in this room; by the power of my eyes; by whether my mind is occupied with other thoughts and what thoughts. […] Even assuming that there were pure facts, what about their selection? Does this not involve interpretation?’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Abdulla, The Lawyer
Related Symbols: Siriana
Page Number: 293
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

‘Even with you, I was hoping, but it did not work out. With him it has been different. I want him. I really want him. For himself. For the first time, I feel wanted . . . a human being . . . no longer humiliated . . . degraded . . . foot-trodden . . . do you understand? It is not given to many: a second chance to be a woman, to be human without this or that “except,” “except” . . . without shame. He has reawakened my smothered woman-ness, my girlhood, and I feel I am about to flower . . .’

Related Characters: Wanja (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Karega, Kimeria
Related Symbols: Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

‘I was surprised to see it on sale . . . but it did not taste the same.’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Wanja, Abdulla
Related Symbols: Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 337
Explanation and Analysis:

‘You cannot serve the interests of capital and of labour at the same time. You cannot serve two opposed masters . . . one master loses . . . in this case labour . . .’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis:

This was the society they were building: this was the society they had been building since Independence, a society in which a black few, allied to other interests from Europe, would continue the colonial game of robbing others of their sweat, denying them the right to grow to full flowers in air and sunlight.

Related Characters: Godfrey Munira, Wanja, Karega, Kimeria, Nderi wa Riera, Chui, Mzigo
Related Symbols: Flowers/Theng’eta
Page Number: 348-349
Explanation and Analysis:

‘Must we have this world? Is there only one world? Then we must create another world, a new earth[.]’

Related Characters: Karega (speaker), Godfrey Munira, Wanja
Page Number: 349
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

Kenya, the soil, was the people’s common shamba, and there was no way it could be right for a few, or a section, or a single nationality, to inherit for their sole use what was communal, any more than it would be right for a few sons and daughters to monopolize their father or mother.

Related Characters: Karega
Page Number: 359
Explanation and Analysis: