The River Between

What role does romance play in highlighting the novel’s focus on cultural and communal preservation?

To what extent are the novel’s events portrayed to be fated and inevitable? Who has the most agency in the novel, and who is the most deeply trapped by doctrine or cultural expectations?

Why does Ngugi begin the novel by describing a landscape, and what symbolic significance does the land have within the larger exploration of colonialism and the resistance to its effects?

Analyze Chege’s role as a spiritual leader, and explain how Ngugi uses this character as a narrative device to highlight the novel’s primary conflicts.

What are the similarities between Christianity and Chege’s prophecy? Given that similar language is used to describe both, what does Ngugi imply about savior figures and the nature of religion in general?

How does Ngugi present the shift from adolescence to adulthood? Are Waiyaki and Nyambura’s experiences of adulthood portrayed as normal or as anomalies? Why is so much emphasis and concern placed on female circumcision but not on male circumcision by the new Christian settlers?

Ngugi is often praised for portraying female characters in a positive, complex light. In what ways are women shown to have agency in the novel, and in what ways are women used as plot devices to aid the development of the male characters?

Examine the relationships that Waiyaki and Nyambura have with their respective mothers. Does Waiyaki consider himself superior to his mother? How is Nyambura shaped by her mother’s acceptance of Christianity?