In Petals of Blood, flowers—in particular, the flowering plant Theng’eta—represent the potential of Kenya and Kenya’s people, which capitalist oppressors exploit. In the first major scene involving flowers, the schoolteacher Munira takes his students outside to teach them about flower anatomy. The students discover flowers with “petals of blood,” suggesting the bloodshed Kenya suffered to achieve its independence from British colonial oppression. Then one student finds a faded red flower whose insides a worm has eaten, which in turn suggests how a small capitalist elite in Kenya has collaborated with European capitalists to exploit—and metaphorically devour—Kenya’s natural resources and its people.
This symbolism becomes more focused with the introduction of Theng’eta, a native plant with “four tiny red petals.” Historically, the people in the Kenyan town where the story takes place brewed Theng’eta as a traditional drink that could inspire visions and bring fertility; the British colonial government attempted to ban the drink, which they believed made Kenyans rebellious. Theng’eta’s backstory associates it with Kenyan culture and freedom. Yet after small business-owner Abdulla and barmaid Wanja begin brewing Theng’eta in larger quantities and selling it for profit, they lose their brewery to a more successful businessman, Mzigo—who patents Theng’eta to prevent others from selling it. After Theng’eta is privatized, it loses its cultural, historical, and spiritual properties; it becomes a mere alcoholic drink to dull the minds of poor workers who don’t want to face their oppressed reality. Moreover, a company based in the U.S. and UK buys Mzigo’s Theng’eta company while leaving Mzigo and his fellow Kenyan elites Chui and Kimeria to run the business. Thus, the Theng’eta flower pointedly represents how a small group of Kenyan elites, with backing from European capitalists, have privatized and exploited Kenya’s common culture and resources to the detriment of ordinary Kenyan people.
Flowers/Theng’eta Quotes in Petals of Blood
A man, believed to be a trade-union agitator, has been held after a leading industrialist and two educationists, well known as the African directors of the internationally famous Theng’eta Breweries and Enterprises Ltd, were last night burnt to death in Ilmorog, only hours after taking a no-nonsense-no-pay-rise decision.
‘Even with you, I was hoping, but it did not work out. With him it has been different. I want him. I really want him. For himself. For the first time, I feel wanted . . . a human being . . . no longer humiliated . . . degraded . . . foot-trodden . . . do you understand? It is not given to many: a second chance to be a woman, to be human without this or that “except,” “except” . . . without shame. He has reawakened my smothered woman-ness, my girlhood, and I feel I am about to flower . . .’
‘I was surprised to see it on sale . . . but it did not taste the same.’
This was the society they were building: this was the society they had been building since Independence, a society in which a black few, allied to other interests from Europe, would continue the colonial game of robbing others of their sweat, denying them the right to grow to full flowers in air and sunlight.
Flowers/Theng’eta Symbol Timeline in Petals of Blood
