Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Grain of Wheat, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism
The Individual vs. the Community
Guilt and Redemption
Christianity
Gender and Power
Summary
Analysis
John Thompson returns home to Margery. Though he wants to tell her about the incident with the dog, he cannot; each time he attempts, he merely comments on the weather instead. He idles around the house, jealous and furious about whichever African man will succeed him in his position of authority. Thompson’s anger gradually becomes redirected towards his wife and he privately wonders, if he were to die, how quickly she would find another man.
John is once again depicted as a weak figure against his wife’s self-assurance. John’s anger seems to be a mixture of guilt over his inability to act and anger at the fact that Britain’s colonial efforts have failed. That he takes such anger out on his wife once again demonstrates the manner in which one’s private guilt inevitably effects the people around them.
Themes
Margery reflects on the days before she and John came to Africa, when they are happy and still trust each other. She tries to support him when he is publicly crucified by the press over the deaths of the eleven prisoners, but they grow further and further apart, isolated by the difference of their experiences. Their distance leads her to have an affair with the disgusting drunk, Dr. Van Dyke. Though she is repulsed by him, she also feels empowered by the “anarchic joy” of the treachery. Nevertheless, enough love for her husband persists that she finds herself caught in a “nightmare of guilt and self-hatred.” When Van Dyke is killed by a train, ending their affair, Margery feels no sadness or pity, only peace.
Despite Margery’s earlier projection of self-assurance and power, it is revealed that she too is stricken with guilt and self-loathing, demonstrating the sour burden that personal guilt can be as well as the repeated dissonance between perception and reality. For Margery, John, and most major characters throughout the novel, the secrets they hold inside themselves form a personal burden and become a point of pain and weakness.
Themes
Thompson first sees Africa during World War Two, splitting his time between Madagascar and Kenya. Afterwards, back at Oxford, Thompson meets two African students who are well-versed in history and literature and thoroughly anglicized, the savagery and superstition that he believes is “characteristic of the African and Oriental races” replaced by reason and order. Their presence convinces Thompson that “the growth of the British Empire [is] the development of a great moral idea.”
Through John Thompson, the author develops the moral argument in favor of colonialism, not because he agrees, but in recognition of the fact that many colonizers sincerely believe they are doing the right thing. By presenting ethical arguments both for and against colonialism, the author turns the conflict between the British colonizers and the Kenyan Freedom Fighters into a moral conflict, rather than just a civil one.
Themes
Thompson begins writing a manuscript entitled Prospero in Africa, a manifesto of British colonialism. Thompson’s enthusiasm becomes a common bond between himself and Margery; she is enthralled by his vigor and brilliance. “His moral passion gave life a meaning.” A few years later, the couple relocates to East Africa to participate in the great work of colonization. Throughout his years, John takes notes and adds them to his manuscript, slowly building his body of work. But now, in exile in Githima, on the eve of Uhuru and their banishment from Kenya altogether, everything seems meaningless. John wants to finally tell his wife about these feelings, but also fears to. When he enters their bedroom, she is already asleep, and he feels relief.
Significantly, John’s sense of purpose strengthens his relationship with his wife, making them feel as if they are caught up together in a grander event. However, as his ideals about the world begin to fail, his sense of meaning and purpose collapses. John’s loss of meaning foreshadows that which both Gikonyo and Karanja will experience when their lives turn out differently than expected. The title of John’s book is a reference to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, in which Prospero essentially “colonizes” an island and enslaves its two inhabitants, Ariel and Caliban.
Themes
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