46 pages • 1 hour read
Ousmane SembèneGod’s Bits of Wood
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1960A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Assets and Liabilities of the Erosion of Traditional African Culture
Niakoro may be viewed as part of the institutional memory of her community. While overtly revered by the younger wives in the residence, she has been decentered from all meaningful decision-making. She is specifically disturbed because no one has consulted her for advice regarding the advisability of the railroad strike. Her sense is that “she was a leftover from a vanished time, slowly being forgotten” (3). She recalls the violence and carnage involved in a previous strike, and she wishes to divert popular sentiment in this direction. Additionally, Niakoro exhorts the young women to engage in traditional, wifely behaviors such as decorating gourds used for cooking; however, they ignore her advice. Her greatest source of concern is for her step-granddaughter, Ad’jibid’ji, an intelligent, articulate and independent young woman who is very interested in the political repercussions of the strike talks by workers. While Niakoro may be viewed as representing the past, Ad’jibid’ji epitomizes the potentiality of future generations of women in South Africa.
Conversely, not all abandonment of past social mores is perceived as negative. The empowerment of traditionally-subordinate societal groups (women and young male apprentices), results in great personal growth, as well as some cases of tragic death. Bakayoko, for example, instructs his subservient wife, Assitan, to forego strenuous domestic tasks until she is less weakened by an inadequate diet. Similarly, the striking male railway workers eventually take over the traditionally female task of obtaining water and also supplement the family’s diet by fishing. While there is a perceptible turning away from some of the spiritual values embodied by Fa Keita, the text provides pragmatic examples in which the brutally difficult daily lives of many of the characters are actually improved by failure to adhere entirely to past cultural traditions.
The Futility of Retaliation
The author uses this theme in order to illustrate the exploitation of native Africans by French colonial forces. The text abounds with specific examples, including the fact that white workers are afforded a ten-minute break for tea, while black workers are denied the same. The brutal, barbaric prison conditions under which the elder Fa Keita is incarcerated are indicative of a population long treated as somewhat less than human, as is the government decision to withhold water and food from the suffering families of the striking workers.
Fa Keita is the voice of charity and reason throughout the trial of the strikebreaker, Diara, and when he meets with other incarcerated strikers, upon their release from jail, he emphasizes the need to take the moral high ground, in order to maintain a fully human status; otherwise, he argues, the strikers will be reduced to a barbaric level of behavior that aligns with the actions of their oppressors.
Bakayoko adopts a more pragmatic, passive iteration of this attitude. He agrees to allow the men to return to the workplace after successful negotiations between the strike committee and railway management; however, he will not allow them to perform actual work until their colleagues are released from prison. Finally, the destruction, by fire, of a large portion of the neighborhood housing the striking workers reside—a fire caused by the flaming sheaves that the women use to intimidate troops—is indicative of the self-destructive nature of retaliation.
The Liberation of Women
While the highly-independent, angry character of Penda undergoes a transformation from an indignant young woman into a more compassionate, contemporary iteration of Joan of Arc,replete with a carbine belt, many other women in the text experience more nuanced, subtler evolutions. Ramatoulaye, for example, foregoes traditional behavior and murders the pet goat of her selfish brother, Mabigue, when she perceives it to be necessary for the survival of the children under her care.
N’Deye Touti, a beautiful, young woman who has been afforded access to education, initially appears to support European values and traditions more than those of her own culture. An idealistic romantic, she is enamored of movies and pretty clothes. When the women take to the streets, in support of the strike and in protest of Ramatoulaye’s arrest, N’Deye opines that they should have pursued legal remedies prior to inciting disorder and destruction. The seachange in N’Deye’s worldview occurs when she overhears three local government officials maligning the local residents, and making sexual comments about her, while speaking French. Their assumption is that she is unable to understand the language. Subsequent to this incident and Ramatoulaye’s arrest, N’Deye abandons superficiality and immerses herself in the life of the compound. She foregoes elaborate clothing and grooming and becomes a true member of her community, performing arduous physical work and tending to the children. In this sense, N’Deye liberates herself from the illusion that she is truly accepted as a member of the educated European community, and devotes herself to the improving the lives of her own people.
Finally, the fact that the women engage in marches and protestsand develop the courage to speak publicly in meetings attended by men is representative of the feminist mentality that evolves over the course of this novel. It might be argued that the dramatic nature of their public protests was ultimately more effective than those of their husbands, the striking railway workers, in producing favorable negotiations with management.
