Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Petals of Blood, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Capitalism
Education
Gender, Sexuality, and Exploitation
Religion, Hypocrisy, and Delusion
Land and Nature
Summary
Analysis
The Trans-Africa road is constructed, connecting Ilmorog to Nairobi and other cities. It is a perverted version of the revolutionaries’ dream of pan-African solidarity; instead of political solidarity, African elites seeking to impress white loaners enact a physical unity that allows for more efficient “international capitalist robbery and exploitation.” The older people wait to follow Nyakinyua; meanwhile, the children, not knowing any better, practice their spelling with the names of corporations and sing songs about different African cities the road could take them to.
This passage represents capitalism in Africa as a horrible parody of African unity: Africans are united across countries, not by shared goals or pride, but by their subjection to capitalist infrastructure like the Trans-Africa road and by “international capitalist robbery and exploitation.” The phrase about older people wanting to follow Nyakinyua implies that she has died.
Themes
In a flashback, Wanja builds a restaurant and bar onto Abdulla’s shop that serves meat and Theng’eta. The men working on the road construction come to eat, drink, and talk there. Ilmorog’s sporadic market is institutionalized to sell to these men’s needs. Eventually, the road workers raze Mwathi wa Mugo’s house, which is in the way of their planned development—only to discover that Mwathi wa Mugo has been living on top of “an archaeological site,” which Nairobi academics fence in and the road workers are obliged to circumnavigate. Though the people of Ilmorog think Mwathi wa Mugo may take vengeance, he never appears.
The Trans-Africa road represents international capitalism, while Mwathi wa Mugo represents rural Kenyan spirituality and perhaps Kenyan traditional culture more generally. The road’s destruction of Mwathi wa Mugo’s house thus represents capitalism’s destruction of Kenyan traditions. That academics take over the “archaeological site” that Mwathi wa Mugo has been protecting suggests that systems of Westernized formal education are colonizing the informal education and cultural knowledge that Mwathi wa Mugo, Nyakinyua, and other elders represent.
Themes
After construction in Ilmorog finishes, Abdulla and Wanja’s restaurant/bar becomes a stop for truck and car drivers. They add a small hotel to their other businesses. Then Nderi wa Riera arrives, along with his two henchmen who have visited Ilmorog previously. He gives a speech, saying that KCO will help the region. He takes credit for Ilmorog’s economic development and for the road passing through it, and he says that the town will be “develop[ed . . .] into ranches and wheat fields.” People will get loans to “develop their land,” but they’ll have to register and get “title-deeds” for their land first. Though the people don’t fully absorb Riera’s meaning, they decide to trust him because of the development they’ve already seen and scold themselves for having distrusted him before.
A “title-deed” is a legal document showing who owns a piece of land or property. Riera’s speech implies that to “develop” Ilmorog, the people must submit to a system of capitalist private ownership rather than holding their land communally. It also implies that just because the people of Ilmorog don’t have specific legal documents, they may not have a legal right to the land they have historically occupied. Riera’s speech thus foreshadows trouble for the people of Ilmorog.
Themes
Various developments Nderi wa Riera has promised occur. Herdsmen and farmers come to listen to a man from the African Economic Bank, who promises them loan repayment will never burden them—they just have to pay regularly. For the next year, everyone feels hopeful except Njuguna, whose sons all come back to Ilmorog and demand shares in his farms. The sons’ disputes with one another grieve Njuguna. Despite this sadness, the people of Ilmorog are proud of Wanja and Abdulla, who now legally own their land and have a fancy building. Trusting in Riera, the people of Ilmorog expect “flowers to bloom.”
The disputes between Njuguna’s sons show how the prospect of wealth can make people envious and destroy interpersonal relationships. It strikes an ominous note in this otherwise hopeful passage, where Wanja and Abdulla serve as an example of small businesspeople doing well—suggesting that perhaps capitalism can lead to “flowers,” (i.e., an appropriate development and appreciation for regular Kenyan people’s potential).
Themes
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After five years’ absence, Karega returns to Ilmorog and visits Munira. Munira ponders all that has happened in Karega’s absence. Wanja has become a successful businesswoman in partnership with Abdulla—the only Ilmorog natives to become successful, as no one else had the capital to develop their land and had to sell to “outsiders.” Though Munira hoped Wanja would resume a romance with him after Karega left, she didn’t, and he felt she was intentionally tormenting him. He began drinking too much Theng’eta and reading horoscopes, applying each one to his life. For a while he carried on a sexual affair with an outwardly religious girl named Lillian who always pretended to be a virgin, but he ended things because he still wanted Wanja.
The capitalist development that Nderi wa Riera promised to Ilmorog led to the people’s dispossession, because they didn’t already have the money that would have enabled them to make more money. Under capitalism, economic mobility is mostly a myth for poor people—capitalism privileges the rich and makes the poor poorer. That Munira is using Theng’eta just to get drunk shows how commodification degrades traditional cultural practices. His sexual relationship with a religious girl who always pretends to be a virgin again represents religious people as repressed and hypocritical.
Themes
Walking around the changing Ilmorog, Munira sees former herdsmen and farmers turned into wage-laborers because land development ended their “hitherto unquestioned rights of use and cultivation.” Suddenly, he has the idea to invent a hugely popular advertisement for Theng’eta and win Wanja’s love by increasing her profits. One night, drunk, he stands up at the bar and yells out a slogan about Theng’eta making you more sexually energetic. Wanja is unmoved; everyone else treats it as a joke. He goes home with Lillian, but when she pretends to be a virgin he’s raping, he beats her. They break up permanently.
Due to the imposition of systematic private ownership, the townspeople have lost their “hitherto unquestioned rights of use and cultivation”—or, their right to use the land for farming and grazing livestock. Capitalism has destroyed their traditional means of self-support and turned them into workers dependent on rich employers. Munira’s idea to win Wanja’s love by coming up with a Theng’eta advertising slogan shows how capitalism is commodifying the spiritual and cultural heritage that Theng’eta represents and how Munira sees Wanja as something he can ‘buy’ by increasing her financial profits. His breakup with Lillian underscores his hypocrisy: despite his own religious qualms about sex, he reacts violently to Lillian’s pretense of religious purity.
Themes
Looking at Karega, Munira muses how the school-building is much larger now and full of teachers. Mzigo frequently visits, though that’s more for his shop than the school. Nderi wa Riera and Rev. Jerrod also own shops in Ilmorog. Karega asks what happened to Joseph; Munira says he went to Siriana. There is a pause.
People who neglected Ilmorog or mistreated the people of Ilmorog—Mzigo, Riera, and Rev. Jerrod—now own the town, which shows that capitalist development benefits the already elite, not the rural poor. Joseph’s matriculation at Siriana suggests that the cycle of Kenyan students being mentally colonized or punished by a white-supremacist education may continue.
Themes
Then Karega asks after Nyakinyua. Munira thinks of how he’s still trying to come up with an advertisement to win Wanja—in the paper, he reads articles about the lawyer, who is now in Parliament calling for reform, but he mainly reads advertisements. Munira recalls how he was reading the newspaper, drunk on Theng’eta, when he came upon an advertisement for a public auction of Nyakinyua’s land and property. Such auctions were common, as many farmers and herdsmen couldn’t pay off their bank loans and were “driv[en] from the land.”
Nyakinyua, among other farmers and herdsmen in Ilmorog, has lost her land due to bank loans. This fact emphasizes that “economic development” in a capitalist context tends to benefit the already wealthy. That Munira is getting drunk on Theng’eta while reading advertisements, meanwhile, emphasizes how commodifying Theng’eta has debased a culturally important substance. Thus, Theng’eta symbolizes capitalism’s exploitation and debasement of Kenyan culture.
Themes
Going to commiserate with Wanja and Nyakinyua, Munira found people gathered in Nyakinyua’s hut, wondering how a bank, which was “not a government,” could take someone’s land. They asked Munira to explain, but he could only babble about title-deeds. He went home, drank Theng’eta, and wondered what would happen to Nyakinyua, who was too old to become a wage-laborer like other dispossessed farmers. In the present, Munira bluntly declares to Karega that Nyakinyua died.
The townspeople can’t believe that a financial institution that is “not a government” can repossess people’s land, a disbelief that implies financial institutions have excessive political power in capitalist societies. Again, Munira is drinking Theng’eta to get drunk, showing how commodification has debased the drink’s cultural meaning. Finally, this passage confirms that Nyakinyua has died.
Themes
Munira recalls how Nyakinyua tried to resist the bank’s theft of Ilmorog’s land. She walked all around Ilmorog trying to rouse the people to political resistance. Yet none of the people of Ilmorog were sure who they should oppose—the banks, Nderi wa Riera, the KCO, or something else. They ignored Nyakinyua or called her crazy. Nyakinyua declared that just as her husband had fought white colonizers, so she would fight “black oppressors.” Yet before Nyakinyua could journey to the city to protest, she died in her sleep. To keep Nyakinyua’s land from being publicly auctioned to outsiders, Wanja and Abdulla sold their own land rights to Mzigo, and Wanja used the money to buy Nyakinyua’s land.
Nyakinyua has difficulty mobilizing the townspeople against the theft of their land because they don’t know whose actions they’d be protesting. Their confusion suggests that economic institutions are more difficult to protest than political ones because economic institutions don’t always have clear leaders to whom protestors can direct their appeals or their anger. Before she dies, Nyakinyua compares white colonizers to “black oppressors,” (i.e., Kenyan capitalist elites), paralleling oppression under colonialism and under post-colonial capitalism.
Themes
Wanja changed after she sold the rights to the land where her business was located. Though she continued to run the business, she also began building “a huge wooden bungalow,” with gardens and electricity, even though she already had a hut. Then, one night, as the band was playing at Wanja and Abdulla’s bar, Wanja began to dance emotionally and sensually toward Munira. Then she got on stage; when the music halted, she told the customers that the county government had said the bar must close. She insisted, almost hysterically, that for that night the band continue to play, and that people continue to dance. Then she went over to Munira and invited her to come to her new house the next night.
This passage hints—though it does not say explicitly—that Wanja somehow lost the right to her bar when she sold her land. This shows the ripple effects of economic injustice: even though Wanja and Abdulla owned their land, the loss of Nyakinyua’s land compelled Wanja to sell her rights. Previously, Wanja has shown angry contempt for Munira, who got her lover Karega fired and drove him out of town. Now she wants to seduce Munira. This sudden change suggests that Wanja, having lost the successful small business she ran with Abdulla, is returning to the devil she knows: having sex to get power, money, or other goals.
Themes
When Munira, excited, arrived at Wanja’s new house the next night, she was wearing excessive makeup and a “flaming red wig.” It reminded him of wig advertisements. Wanja, noting Munira’s shock, asked whether he didn’t want her—wasn’t that why he got Karega fired? She said the county government had taken away her right to brew Theng’eta—the license was transferred to the new owner along with the land—and asked whether Munira knew who the new owner of Theng’eta breweries and the new tourist center would be. Without waiting for an answer, she took him to bed, stripped, and demanded 100 shillings, telling him that in Kenya, there were “no free things,” and that he was “a guest at Sunshine Lodge.” Though confused and humiliated, Munira paid Wanja and had sex with her.
Wanja’s unnatural makeup suggests she is not being authentic with Munira, while her “flaming red wig” suggests fire, a symbol associated with out-of-control, violent emotion. What she says about the Theng’eta license reveals that the government and the brewery’s new owner have conspired to restrict the production of Theng’eta, once a traditional homebrewed drink. This shows how capitalism appropriates cultural objects and practices not originally intended to be bought and sold. Wanja reacts to the loss of her brewery by building a brothel, the “Sunshine Lodge.” Her long history of sexual and economic exploitation may lead her to believe that her sexuality will be commodified no matter what, so she might as well control the process as a self-employed sex worker.
Themes
Munira tells Karega about changes in Ilmorog. Most of the former farmers are now laborers on farms owned by rich men who hire managers to do the on-site supervision. The town has split into a rich neighborhood called Cape Town, and an impoverished neighborhood called New Jerusalem. In the middle of these two neighborhoods are Rev. Jerrod Brown’s church and Wanja’s Sunshine Lodge.
Cape Town is the legislative seat of South Africa, a country known for its longstanding regime of racial segregation called apartheid, which lasted until the 1990s. The novel may allude to Cape Town to compare Ilmorog’s new, stark economic segregation to racial segregation. New Jerusalem is a perfect city that appears in the Biblical Book of Ezekiel; it represents the capital of the spiritual kingdom presided over by the Messiah. Since Ilmorog’s New Jerusalem is impoverished, the name is ironic; religious prophecies cannot help the real poor people in Ilmorog.
Themes
Additionally, Nderi wa Riera owns a tourist village and Mzigo owns Theng’eta Breweries, which has expanded into a massive factory employing hundreds. The Theng’eta packaging carries an advertisement boasting that the drink makes people sexually powerful. Although a U.S./U.K. business group owns many of the breweries, Africans are high-up employees “and even shareholders.” Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria have become “leading local personalities.”
Kenyan elites who have exploited, abused, neglected, or otherwise wronged residents of Ilmorog—Nderi wa Riera, Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria—get rich in town due to capitalist development, implying that capitalism leads to unjust social outcomes. That a business group based in the U.S. and UK owns many Theng’eta breweries suggests that international capitalism is colonialism all over again—white-majority Western countries just control Kenya covertly now, through economics, rather than overtly, through government.
Themes
Karega breaks into Munira’s story and asks after Abdulla and Wanja. Wanting to hurt Karega, Munira offers to take him to see Wanja. As they walk, Munira tells Karega all about which rich people now own which parts of Ilmorog. Then he pauses by a “mud-walled” house partitioned into apartments and asks whether Karega wants to see Abdulla before Wanja. Karega agrees.
Munira’s desire to hurt Karega, though neither man now has a relationship with Wanja, shows how unreasonable his jealousy and possessiveness are. His casual discussion of all the rich people who own Ilmorog emphasizes yet again that only the rich benefited from Ilmorog’s development.
Themes
Munira knocks on a door and calls to Abdulla. Abdulla, sounding drunk, invites him in and offers him Theng’eta. When Munira and Karega enter, Abdulla doesn’t recognize Karega. Munira explains who Karega is, and the men make halting conversation. Abdulla seems exhausted and discombobulated. When Karega asks to whom the house belongs, Abdulla says he rents from an “important person in authority” who owns 10 blocks and deputizes his bodyguard to take people’s rent money. Karega exclaims that’s “on top of his official government salary.” Munira cynically suggests the man probably owns slums all over Kenya.
Abdulla as well as Munira now drinks Theng’eta while alone to get drunk. This sad, solitary drinking contrasts with the communal Theng’eta drinking Nyakinyua organized and highlights how Theng’eta’s commodification has degraded its cultural meaning. The references to an “important person” and an “official government salary” suggest that Abdulla’s landlord is Nderi wa Riera; the politician who should be helping Ilmorog’s townspeople is squeezing them for rent instead, showing how greed corrupts people in power.
Themes
When Abdulla tells Karega that he now sells fruit by the road, Karega—perhaps trying to cheer Abdulla up—mention’s Joseph’s admission to Siriana and hopes he doesn’t get expelled like him and Munira. Abdulla says that all poor people share the same fate and offers Karega Theng’eta, asking whether he’s tasted it. Karega says he tried it in Mombasa, “surprised to see it on sale . . . but it did not taste the same." He suggests that alcohol is widely distributed to pacify and weaken the oppressed.
Karega’s hope that Siriana doesn’t expel Joseph seems to represent the hope that Kenyan education has changed—that elite schools no longer teach white supremacy, so students no longer have to protest. Abdulla’s reaction, urging Karega to drink, implies that he believes nothing has changed. Karega’s belief that Theng’eta doesn’t “taste the same” now that it’s “on sale” implies that commodification has changed not only the drink’s meaning but its flavor.
Themes
Abdulla repeats that the same bad things happen to all poor people. Joseph is his only joy—Joseph who “isn’t really” Abdulla’s brother. When Munira asks Abdulla what he means, Abdulla becomes thoughtful and says Joseph is neither his brother nor his son, though he’s like a son to him. Abdulla explains that after he was released from detention just before independence, he went to Limuru looking for his family and discovered British soldiers and Home Guards had massacred them all.
Up to this point, the novel has not made Abdulla and Joseph’s relationship clear, though Abdulla does seem to be Joseph’s guardian. Now readers learn that Home Guards—Kenyan paramilitaries who fought for the colonial government—murdered Abdulla’s family during the Kenyan struggle for independence. This revelation underscores colonialism’s violence, while making Joseph’s relationship to Abdulla more mysterious.
Themes
Then one day, while moving goods with his donkey, Abdulla discovered a homeless child scrounging for food who told him he couldn’t remember his own name and that his parents and brothers had all gone away, though he hoped they’d come back. Abdulla called the child “Joseph Njiraini” and told the child that he, Abdulla, was his brother. Though Abdulla couldn’t tell whether Joseph believed him, Joseph stayed with him and did errands for him until Wanja convinced Abdulla to send Joseph to school.
Abdulla’s story implies that Joseph, like Abdulla, lost his entire family—though whether they died due to colonial violence is not clear. Either way, Abdulla’s decision to adopt Joseph after they both lost their families suggests that care for others—and ultimately perhaps political solidarity—arises when a person realizes others have suffered the same tragedies they have.
Themes
Without responding to Abdulla’s story, Munira and Karega walk on to Wanja’s wooden house. When they arrive, a girl serves them alcohol and plays music for them. On the walls hang English landscape paintings, Christian religious art, and “Akamba carvings of giraffes and rhinos.”
The art in Wanja’s brothel represents colonialism (English landscape paintings), Christian hypocrisy about sex (Christian religious art), and capitalist commodification of indigenous African cultures (the Akamba are an ethnic group native to Kenya). In sum, the art suggests that colonialism, religion, and capitalism are forces of exploitation similar to the sexual exploitation of poor women by rich men occurring at the brothel.
Themes
Wanja appears in a revealing dress and sophisticated makeup. She and Karega stare at each other, shocked; Munira savors their discomfort. In a halting way, Wanja asks Karega where he’s been. Karega explains that after leaving Ilmorog, he worked for the lawyer, who had become a politician and was trying to help the poor despite KCO opposition. But though the lawyer and Karega agreed on the social problems that needed fixing, Karega thought the lawyer “had too much faith in the very shrines created by what he called the monster” and eventually left his employ.
Karega’s belief that the lawyer “had too much faith in the very shrines created by what he called the monster” means that Karega thought the lawyer trusted the established political order too much. The “monster” is capitalism, which colonizers forced on Kenya; its “shrines” include the law, which protects private property, and status-quo politics, which reward corrupt moneymakers. Though Karega does not say so specifically, he may believe that the lawyer spent too much time at Siriana before independence, absorbing conservative, pro-establishment views against his better judgment.
Themes
After leaving the lawyer, Karega became a dockworker in Mombasa. When Wanja interjects that dockworkers are well paid with “responsible union leaders,” Karega disagrees—too many union leaders are themselves businessmen, and “you cannot serve two opposed masters.” After leaving Mombasa, he worked on plantations and tried to convince the impoverished, exploited workers to organize; inevitably, the owners would find out what he was doing and fire him.
The phrase “you cannot serve two opposed masters” is an allusion to the Gospel, Matthew 6:24, in which Jesus Christ argues that because people can’t serve two masters equally well, they cannot serve both God and money. The novel thus connects the hypocrisy of union leaders who are also businessmen to that of Christian ministers like Rev. Jerrod Brown: though union leaders and Christian ministers are supposed to help workers and the poor, many sidestep that duty and enrich themselves instead.
Themes
Eventually, Karega began working in western Kenya for a sugar mill owned by the UK’s McMillan sugar, which had land all over Africa. The company relied on immiserated indigenous farmers encouraged to grow sugar rather than food for themselves. In Kenya, Africans occupied McMillan’s “middle-level managerial positions,” while European workers took the high-level technical jobs and mistreated African technical trainees. One day, while Karega was helping an African trainee, a European worker came over and demanded something. When Karega told him to wait, the European worker called him a rude word in Swahili. Karega threw a bearing at the European’s face and was fired, after which he decided to travel back to Ilmorog.
That a UK-based company owns land all over Africa again emphasizes that colonialism isn’t over. It has simply transformed from a form of overt political control to covert economic control through international capitalism. Karega’s story about McMillan giving Africans “middle-level” positions while reserving high-level positions for white people shows that large-scale European economic colonialism in Africa leads to racism at the level of companies and interpersonal relations.
Themes
Wanja and Munira sense Karega has somehow become unlike them. Wanja asks Karega whether he plans to stay in Ilmorog, and Karega says workers are homeless, traveling wherever employers buy labor. As Munira and Karega are about to leave, Wanja—struck by resonances between Karega’s story and what has happened in Ilmorog since Karega left—asks them to stay. She tells them that “this Africa knows only one law. You eat somebody or you are eaten.” Then she says that she’s longed for a child; when she went to Mwathi wa Mugo, he told her to confess—but she felt unable to tell him that she’d once been pregnant and had tossed her newborn into a latrine.
Here readers finally learn how Wanja’s first baby died: she killed the baby. Though the passage doesn’t immediately reveal why she killed the baby, her claim that “you eat somebody or you are eaten” implies that she thought—given her youth and poverty—she couldn’t possibly care for both the baby and herself. Thus, Wanja’s knowledge of her economic precarity and vulnerability to sexual exploitation led her to commit infanticide.
Themes
To the speechless Karega and Munira, Wanja says she can’t excuse what she did, but she didn’t know what else to do because she couldn’t have supported a baby. Since then, she’s prayed to God and hunted for real love, which she found with Karega—until he left.
Here Wanja makes explicit that she committed infanticide because she was too poor, with too few job prospects, to support a baby after Kimeria sexually abused her.
Themes
After Nyakinyua died, Wanja sold her business to keep ownership of her grandmother’s land. She visited Nderi wa Riera at Ilmorog’s tourist village and saw him with another owner—the German man who terrified Wanja one night in Nairobi. The German man didn’t even recognize her. Afterward, she went to Mzigo to ask for help in getting another brewing license, and he admitted the government had given him a patent on Theng’eta.
The German man who terrified Wanja tried to rape her and may have been a sex trafficker. His involvement with the tourist village hints that it may be a cover for sex trafficking, a detail that links exploitative European tourism in Africa to more overt, violent exploitation of Kenyan women and girls by European men. That Mzigo was able to patent Theng’eta shows that capitalist political systems have no sense of shared cultural inheritance not ‘owned’ by any individual—they only know how to privatize what should be shared goods, like land and other natural resources.
Themes
Wanja knew Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria were the directors of the Kenya branch of Theng’eta Breweries. It infuriated her that Kimeria, who had been a Home Guard, impregnated her as an adolescent, and forced sex on her as an adult was the one making money off of Ilmorog’s new prominence. She concluded that in the world as it is, women’s only choices are marriage or sex work. Deciding to do nothing “for free,” she built a brothel and procured various types of girls for men’s various preferences. She used sex to get revenge against Kimeria, Chui, and Mzigo—they all pay to have sex with her, and she pits them against one another. She declares she’ll “never return to the herd of victims.”
Kimeria, a collaborator with colonizers and an abuser, now helps direct the privatized brewing of Theng’eta, a traditional cultural product that symbolizes the potential of Kenya’s land and people. This situation illustrates how rich Kenyan elites, with connections to former colonial powers, exploit and abuse the Kenyan people. Wanja believes she can exit the “herd of victims” by selling her own sexuality and making money from other women’s bodies. Yet in the end, Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria still have access to her body because they’re rich, which suggests she is still a victim of capitalism.
Themes
Karega, believing Wanja doubts her words, examines her and sees “countless other faces” from Kenya. Though he’s seen people across the country enact her dog-eat-dog view, he declares that there must be another way. If it’s not possible in this world, they should make “another world, a new earth.” Wanja scoffs. Munira declares that they have to go and bolts outside. Karega, following, glances back and sees Wanja seemingly dragged toward the earth by her heavy jewelry. He walks outside but doesn’t see Munira. Back at home, in bed, Munira feverishly murmurs to himself Karega’s words about a new world.
When Karega sees “countless other faces” within Wanja’s face, it suggests that her sexual and economic exploitation represents the exploitation of "countless” Kenyan people by former colonial powers and Kenyan elites. Yet it also suggests that Karega, like other male characters, still has trouble seeing Wanja as an individual rather than as an object or symbol. When Wanja droops under her heavy jewelry, it hints that the money she makes does not empower her. Munira’s repetition of Karega’s words about “another world” and “a new earth,” meanwhile, imply that Karega has inspired him.
Themes
