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
While Gikonyo had been in his last detention camp, he thought about carving a stool for Mumbi as a gift. For each of its legs, he would carve dour-faced laborers, straining under its weight. Now, lying in the hospital, Gikonyo thinks again of carving the stool for his wife. For three days he lay there thinking of Mugo’s courage and his own cowardice by comparison, wondering if he will ever have the strength to tell his village that he confessed the oath. He finds himself wishing to speak to Mumbi about all of it, wishing to hear her thoughts on Mugo’s courage, and even to tell her of his time in detention.
Although Gikonyo never finds the courage to confess his betrayal of the oath within the pages of the novel, it is implied that he will do so someday in the future. Thus Mugo really has acted as a hero, though not in the way everyone thought—his courage to confess has inspired others to do so as well. There is also clearly a connection between Gikonyo and Mumbi still, though it’s left unclear if too much has happened between them to salvage their relationship.
Themes
Gikonyo also, for the first time, begins to consider that he is the father to Mumbi’s children and wonders what a child between them might look like. Gikonyo spends his hours determining how the stool will look, longing to work with wood once again. The stool, he imagines, will not be the picture of laborers, but a man and woman holding hands, joined together by the figure of a young child.
The transition of Gikonyo’s concept of the stool is telling of his future redemption, seeming to reflect his view of life and purpose. Where once his role was to suffer under the weight of the Movement and the pain of detention camps, now he finds his new purpose in being Mumbi’s husband and her child’s father, united in their common cause of raising a family. This represents a marked change of character for Gikonyo, who previously had gone so far as fantasizing about murdering Mumbi and her child.
Themes
Mumbi has visited Gikonyo in the hospital every day prior, but on the sixth day she does not. Her absence makes Gikonyo restless and fearful. She arrives the following morning alone, but only briefly, and tells Gikonyo that she may not visit him ever again. As Mumbi is leaving, Gikonyo asks if they can speak of their child. This gives her pause. She will not speak of it in the hospital, but tells Gikonyo that perhaps after he is released they can begin to speak. However, the hurt they have caused each other is too much to simply put things back as they were, though she may come see him tomorrow still. Gikonyo feels anxious about the new possibilities, and realizes that “in the future he would reckon with her feelings, her thoughts, her desires—a new Mumbi.” After she leaves, Gikonyo reconsiders the design of his stool. It will be a figure of a woman, pregnant with a new child.
In the same way that Mumbi’s courage to confess her story to Mugo inspires him to find the strength to do the same, Mugo’s sacrifice and redemption of himself also plants the seeds of redemption for Gikonyo. For the entire novel, Gikonyo has been running from his problems and unwilling to admit his own fault in his broken relationship with his wife, unable to see her as her own person and recognize her individual perspective. The carving of a pregnant woman into the stool signifies not only that Gikonyo wants to give his wife a gift, but he wants to anticipate their future together with her, fully recognize her personhood and strengths, and look forward to the life-giving potential of the future.
Themes
