50 pages • 1 hour read
Helon HabilaOil on Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6
Chapter 4 Summary
Rufus, Zaq, Tamuno, and Michael begin their journey down the river, but soon a helicopter shows up. It is from the oil company, and they fear that it will start shooting at them. After watching them for a bit, it flies away. Two speedboats appear from the direction the group is headed and overtake them. The boats are full of soldiers; they order the travelers to throw all weapons and oars aside and swim to them. The old man, the boy, and Rufus all swim over, but Zaq, due to weakness from his illness, tips the boat while trying to grab a rope, and all their equipment sinks into the river’s water.
Rufus tries to explain to the soldiers that they are journalists, but the sergeant halts him, telling him, “You can explain yourself to the major” (48). When they arrive at camp, the sergeant gets on the radio for a while; when he returns, he tells Rufus that he was told to treat the journalists well. Zaq is taken to the medic in camp, who injects him with something and lets him rest in medical care. Rufus thinks back to how he took this assignment: Nobody else seemed to want it because only weeks before, two of his colleagues had been murdered by militants during someone else’s escape attempt. He wasn’t going to go, either, but when he heard that Zaq had taken the job, Rufus decided to accept the assignment, thinking that Zaq could protect him and everything would be all right.
Chapter 5 Summary
The major is sitting on a stool, watching seven men he has forced to kneel before him, hands tied behind their backs. Tamuno and Michael are there as well, crouched nearby, perplexed and frightened. The major walks up to Rufus and asks where Zaq is (Zaq was left behind at the doctor’s tent due to his illness). The major asks Rufus whether he realizes the danger of sailing these waters as two journalists with an old fisherman and a boy to guide them. The major forces Tamuno and Michael to join the kneeling men and has one of his soldiers retrieve a watering can. He begins to pour corrosive petrol all over the men as he lectures them. Rufus stands, about to protest, but feels hands holding him back. It is the doctor, who tells Rufus that now is not a good time to talk to the major. The major continues his angry speech about how these men are fighting and killing for oil, so they might as well enjoy it, pouring more of the liquid on their faces and bodies.
The doctor indicates that the men are waiting for the day when the major strikes a match and throws it upon his victims after showering them in petrol. The major wasn’t always like this, but his daughter was raped at university. The major found out who was responsible, which made the main perpetrator’s family send the rapist away to another country. The major waited a whole year before the man who did it came back to visit; then he and his men broke the assailant’s limbs and shot him in the groin. The major was court marshaled and sent here as punishment.
Rufus follows the major and pleads for the boy and the old man, telling the major they are innocent and only hired as guides. They are simply looking for the woman who was kidnapped. The major replies that everyone is looking for her, himself included, and then asks how Rufus can prove he is who he says he is. Rufus tells him that any identification or equipment that would prove it sunk to the bottom of the river when the soldiers sank their boat. The major persists and says that he does not trust Rufus or his companions. He tells Rufus that he has until tomorrow morning to devise a way to prove they are who they claim to be. Rufus insists that the major listen to him, which makes the major angry. He reminds Rufus that he has no power here: “You insist! I can shoot you right now and throw you into the swamp and that’s it. Now get out” (64).
Chapter 6 Summary
Rufus asks Zaq what they can do to help the old man. Zaq replies that there is nothing to do. The two men are side by side in the infirmary since the only alternative would have been to spend the night in lockup with the prisoners. Zaq asks Rufus why he became a journalist and whether he regrets it. Rufus tells the story of how it happened: His father had a job with one of the oil companies but eventually lost it as the industry dried up near their village. The same happened to many others, who had previously been swimming in oil money and now were losing everything. Many people either left to go live in the villages and towns they grew up in or moved to bigger cities like Port Harcourt to find new jobs to sustain them.
Rufus’s father arranged an apprenticeship for him in Port Harcourt with a photographer named Udoh Fotos; at 16 years old, Rufus moved to the city to live and study with Fotos. He learned very little about photography the first year, mostly spending his time cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the family’s children. He would have run away if he had been able, but two things stopped him: He didn’t know how to navigate the slums of the city he was living in, and he couldn’t figure out what he would tell his father. He realized that the point of being with Fotos was to become a man and make his own way in the world. Three years later, he was handed his certificate, with Fotos’s signature on it.
Zaq has fallen asleep; Rufus continues reminiscing. Certificate in hand, Rufus went back home to see his family, but things had changed. They were not where he had left them, instead having moved to a series of smaller homes until finally ending up in a place called Junction. His mother didn’t talk much anymore and looked very tired. His father had taken up smoking and drinking and would spend all day illegally buying oil from children and reselling it to people with vehicles. Rufus thought maybe he would stick around and open a photography shop, but his father convinced him that there was nothing for him there and that he should go back to Port Harcourt to make something of himself. His father knew that eventually he would be arrested or that the authorities would take his illicit business for themselves, and he didn’t want his son around to see that.
Rufus went to the offices of a magazine called Whispers, which used to buy photos from Udoh Fotos. Rufus had been the one who delivered them back and forth, so he knew the editor. This man allowed him to work for the magazine and stay in the offices, and one day he told Rufus about scholarships to a journalism school in Lagos and convinced him to apply; this is how Rufus became a journalist. Rufus wishes that Zaq were awake because he would like to ask if Zaq still enjoys being a journalist and if he ever feels like giving up, as he certainly looked like he was about to give up the day they met on the waterfront to leave for this assignment.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
The action of this section of the book parallels that of the first few chapters, with the journalists being led down the river by Tamuno and Michael. This time, however, they are captured by the military, who sink all of their boats and are pivotal in them losing their equipment. They are stripped of their profession, their identification, and their safety, all in one sweeping gesture. This is symbolic, as the military exerts its power in this region in such a way that it erases everything in its path; it also serves as a plot point, setting Rufus up to be unable to prove his identity to the major, even though it was the major’s actions that removed the identification from Rufus in the first place.
Where before the novel has only shown the military’s brutality secondhand, that brutality now unfolds in real time, culminating in the scene where the major pours petrol on his prisoners. It is an act both symbolic and violent. The oil is what they are all fighting for: what causes the rifts between people in the region and what devastates their environment to the point where they can no longer call their homes home at all. It is also caustic and causes them physical pain—a mode of punishment that the major is well versed in. Violence is his language. The major himself is not merely a flat villain: His own traumatic past—the rape of his daughter—has created a hardness in him that leaves little room for remorse. The military itself, however, has clearly aligned itself with neocolonial interests, protecting the oil companies’ ability to do business even at the cost of the civilian population’s safety. This situation is among The Environmental and Social Effects of Neocolonialism.
Notably, the major himself is almost as alienated from the military as it is possible to be while still ostensibly serving in it, having been court-martialed and sent to his current outpost as punishment. This not only develops his characterization but also speaks to the remote, impersonal nature of power in the novel, which complicates characters’ efforts at Searching for Order Amid Chaos. The oil companies that are ultimately responsible for the region’s suffering are a distant presence; while there are clear reasons for the companies to act as they do (namely, the pursuit of profit), their removal from the day-to-day life of the area’s residents gives their actions an air of arbitrariness and unpredictability. The section underscores how little control individuals have over their lives in its description of how the oil companies that promised prosperity end up neglecting the citizenry as the jobs disappear. Rufus’s experiences with the photographer, though not literally related to the oil industry, further show the fruitlessness of attempting to control one’s fate in this region.
