Previous
Chapter 14
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in At Night All Blood Is Black, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity and Binaries
Social Norms vs. Independent Thought
Colonialism and Race
Friendship and Enmity
Inhumanity
Summary
Analysis
The narrator is sure that pretty, vivacious Mademoiselle François, who has blue eyes and whom he identifies as “one of Doctor François’s numerous daughters,” wants to have sex with him like Fary did. Mademba (if alive) would have called the narrator a liar for saying Mademoiselle François wanted him, but the narrator knows he’s attractive due to the way people have looked at him all his life. Even Mademba, who could mock the narrator due to their close friendship, couldn’t mock the narrator’s beauty. Though Mademba never said so, the narrator knew that Mademba was jealous but “proud” of the narrator’s body because of how Mademba would look at his body after his wrestling matches.
The narrator describes Mademoiselle François as friendly and sexually attracted to him, yet her blue eyes link her to the “blue-eyed enemy” who killed Mademba and subsequent “blue-eyed enemies” whom the narrator killed in revenge. Thus, her blue eyes may foreshadow violence committed by or against her. Meanwhile, his apparent belief that the hospital nurses are all Doctor François’s daughters conveys his increasing confusion and unreliability as a narrator. Finally, his claim that Mademba was “proud” but jealous of him reveals a new dimension of their friendship, which apparently involved rivalry as well as love.
Active
Themes
In the Rear, the narrator berates himself for having mocked Mademba, who was physically weak and ugly but brave. He believes that Mademba’s simultaneous adoration and jealousy of the narrator’s beauty motivated Mademba to prove himself a valorous soldier—a proof that killed Mademba. It wasn’t just the narrator’s mockery of Mademba’s totem but also the narrator’s attractiveness to women that caused Mademba’s death.
Here, the narrator makes more explicit the rivalry in his friendship with Mademba: Mademba envied the narrator’s strength and attractiveness to women. This claim helps explain the narrator’s belief that his teasing of Mademba contributed to Mademba’s death. It was because the narrator made Mademba feel inferior that Mademba died trying to prove himself.
Active
Themes
In Gandiol, people tried to tell Mademba that the narrator was a dëmm stealing Mademba’s “vitality.” But Mademba refused to believe them. Indeed, the narrator learned from Fary—with whom Mademba was also in love—that Mademba would fight people who said such things about the narrator. The narrator regrets not telling Mademba that Mademba was the more courageous of the two of them, because Mademba had courage despite being physically weak.
Active
Themes
Though many women have been interested in the narrator, the narrator—in “the world before”—was only interested in Fary Thiam, whom he valued even over Mademba. However, the narrator and Mademba kept their friendship because Mademba accepted that Fary preferred the narrator. In a flashback, the narrator’s “age set” plans an all-night party in Mademba’s family’s compound, in which they’ll tell jokes and stories until dawn. When the girls in the narrator’s age set (they’re all 16 years old) enter the compound, Fary sits next to the narrator, touching her leg with his. She even lets him hold her hand.
Active
Themes
Get the entire At Night All Blood Is Black LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Despite Fary’s preference for the narrator, she declines to have sex with him each time he asks, from the time they’re 16 until he’s about to leave for the war. It’s a strict social norm that boys and girls from the same age set don’t have sex with or marry each other. In retrospect, the narrator wonders whether he began thinking independently before the war, with his desire for Fary, and not only after Mademba was killed.
