The River Between

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1965

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-17

Chapters 18-21

Chapters 22-26

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Complexity of Cultural Negotiation and Resistance

The complexity of cultural negotiation and resistance is exhibited most prominently through the character of Waiyaki. As he struggles to understand the complexities involved in resisting foreign cultural influences, he proves himself to be more open-minded than the other characters—all of whom are uncompromising in their own ways. Faced with their various forms of resistance, Waiyaki ultimately fails to integrate the villages and create a united front. Perhaps his failure stems from the fact that his methodology never matures beyond vague visions of unity and preaching for the need to create more schools. Throughout the novel, he maintains a near-religious faith in the ideal of education and refuses to engage politically, believing that the tool of learning is all his people need to achieve their liberation. Significantly, all of the men in the novel harbor a singular obsession of one kind or another, and this pattern offers insight into Ngugi’s view of the human condition, for the author suggests that humans are grasping, short-sighted animals whose passions prevent them from reaching a larger consensus, and thus negotiation and resistance are always out of reach on a grand scale.

Throughout the novel, Waiyaki struggles to coalesce a coherent vision for how best to help his tribe. He wonders if his father’s prophecy is real and wastes time and energy questioning how to go about saving his people. As a shallow salve for this deep spiritual wound, he continuously turns to education as the ultimate answer. For education to be a viable solution, he believes that he must find a way to unite the villages, and on a fundamental level, he finds it painful to see people at war with one another as the encroachment of colonialism intensifies. However, despite his constant internal debates, Waiyaki remains unable to see any other solution as an answer to cultural preservation and holds fast to his tendency to idolize the concept of education. Locked in this single-minded obsession, he fails to understand the true depths of the people’s misery due to the white settlers’ domination, including the land grabs and taxes.

Yet despite his flaws, Waiyaki is perceptive enough to analyze and reject the nonsensical aspects of foreign doctrine. For example, he is able to see that Christianity fails because it is too rigid to adapt to Gikuyu ways, stating, “A religion that took no count of people’s way of life […] was useless. […] It would only maim a man’s soul, making him fanatically cling to whatever promised security” (106-07). Ironically, Waiyaki clings to education for security, just as Joshua holds tightly to Christianity and Chege to prophecy. Yet alongside his recognition that Christianity fails to grant people access to life-affirming truths, Waiyaki also recognizes the Gikuyu people’s collective inability to appreciate nuance. This realization becomes explicitly clear when the tribe sees him as a traitor due to his love for Nyambura. With this final scene, Ngugi demonstrates that both Christian and Gikuyu mindsets limit people’s ability to embrace nuance and behold the objective reality that exists beyond their cultural conditioning: a reality that is breathtakingly alive, akin to the river Honia. In the end, Waiyaki finds a way to look past these uncompromising doctrinal and cultural beliefs, for he finds love with Nyambura that transcends such limitations. However, this love never translates into an ability to mobilize a collective identity for his people.

Although Waiyaki fails to capitalize on his inner ability to discern subtle social nuances, Ngugi nonetheless uses this character to present the idea that the complexity of cultural negotiation and resistance cannot be solved with single-minded obsessions or overarching beliefs in communal unity. The vision for communal unity is in many ways unrealistic, and prophecy is also proven to be a barrier to unity, for it traps people within an ahistorical and limiting narrative. Ultimately, Waiyaki and the tribes remain lodged between an unwavering, precolonial identity and the possibility for evolution and survival in the face of colonialism.

Cultural and Colonial Threats to Identity

The young characters in the novel must contend with the challenge of coming of age amidst a backdrop of strict cultural constraints and unprecedented external influences on their isolated tribe. Their search for self-actualization involves claiming a distinct identity within the context of these myriad cultural expectations. In the case of Muthoni, becoming “real” entails embracing the Gikuyu tradition of circumcision so that she may become a woman in the eyes of her tribe. However, because she has already been influenced by the tenets of Christianity, she attempts to blend this foreign religion with Gikuyu traditionalism, saying, “[T]he white man’s God does not quite satisfy me. I want, I need something more” (33). Significantly, Christianity does not satiate her or Nyambura, for both sisters need to embrace their own cultural language to give birth to their adult, female selves. Only by integrating her own understanding of the world through a synthesis of Christianity and Gikuyu ritual can Muthoni attain the maturity she seeks, and to her, the fact that her path to maturity results in death is immaterial; she never regrets her decision. Thus, the sisters’ yearning for something beyond their father’s style of Christianity hints at the colonial pressures and threat of distinction on the Gikuyu understanding of self. For Nyambura, her love for Waiyaki becomes her conduit for understanding her deeper self and becomes combined with her own unique interpretation of Christianity, one that focuses on kindness and love, and rejects the violent competition of nature.

Waiyaki also struggles with developing his own identity, especially in the context of his father’s prophecy. Throughout his inner battles, he never quite comes to terms with the idea that he may be the savior of the tribe. At times this role fits him, and at other times it is ill-fitting and dream-like. His journey of self-realization therefore comes into conflict with his commitment to ensuring the tribe’s well-being, for he must balance the needs of the collective with his own budding desires, including his romantic love for Nyambura. The villagers entrust him with the purity of the tribe—and thus the purity of Gikuyu identity, and his relationship with the Christian Nyambura threatens this purity in the eyes of his tribe. This cultural idea of purity inhibits Waiyaki’s freedom to explore and find himself. Feeling depleted by his people’s expectations, he nonetheless finds himself unable to let go of the prophesy or of his feelings of loyalty to his father and the land. The villages’ desire for self-determination thus becomes the antithesis to Waiyaki’s ability to achieve self-realization. Similarly, Nyambura is limited by the limbo of her father’s loveless version of Christianity.

Love as a Unifying Force

In the beginning of the novel, both Waiyaki and Nyambura feel a hollowness that the land, other people, and their customs cannot fill. Both protagonists share an ache that stems from the question of whether life can offer a way to become whole. These dark feelings reoccur throughout the narrative, often intensifying in the wake of devastating or transitional events that occur along each character’s respective path to adulthood.

During the festivities before the circumcision ritual, the presence of Muthoni beckons and focuses Waiyaki, who feels lost after spending so much time in Siriana. His burgeoning manhood and sexuality produce clarity and a sense of unwavering purpose, in stark contrast to Waiyaki’s usual cerebral wavering. After Muthoni’s death, Nyambura becomes Waiyaki’s new anchor, serving as a source for his visceral feelings of satiation, which he ultimately calls love. As Nyambura returns his affection, they provide one another with a fullness that cannot be found elsewhere. On an individual level, the novel portrays romantic love between a man and woman as salvation from the emptiness of the human condition. In this respect, Waiyaki’s fated encounter with Nyambura and their resulting love free Waiyaki from the limited role of a tragic hero and transform him into an authentic man who experiences love as the highest possible form of contentment.

While Waiyaki cherishes European education, his erotic love attachments also show him the truth and validity of Gikuyu ways. Both Muthoni and Nyambura ground Waiyaki and keep him connected to his real Gikuyu self. The presence of love thus reveals the idea of a somatic, knowing intelligence that triumphs over the novel’s warring ideological differences. Both Christianity and the breakaway faction of Kiama try to distance Waiyaki and Nyambura from each other, but the couple refuses to betray their love for one another. While this decision means that the communities may never find unity, Ngugi explores the idea that unification without such love is ultimately fragile and unrealizable.

Amidst the uncertainty of colonial domination and the struggle to realize an authentic sense of self, love becomes Waiyaki’s truest reference point. As he constantly examines the men around him, and gauges the relative influences of the historical and sacred Gikuyu past, the prophecy, and his own internal compass, Waiyaki finds meaning in love. The connection he forges with Nyambura acts as a reconciliatory force that transcends many polarities and challenges the cultural views that simultaneously shape and inhibit his world. As the characters’ love obliterates the tension between ideological dichotomies, Waiyaki and Nyambura find new ways to connect with each other, and from this connection comes a new peace and a sense of natural rightness. In the end, Waiyaki’s love for Nyambura is linked to his drive to unite the two villages, and his romantic love thus becomes inseparable from his sense of community allegiance. While his attempt to synthesize two cultures ultimately fails, love still exists as a unifying force that connects the two characters to one another and to something that transcends culture and ideology.