Out of Africa Book Two, A Shooting Accident on the Farm: From "Wamai" to "A Kikuyu Chief" Summary & Analysis

The character of Chief Kinanjui reveals the narrator's belief that native people can be innately aristocratic. The idea of a "noble savage" fits within the pastoral metaphor that Dinesen explores in her opening chapters. Many natives, such as Chief Kinanjui, have an innately aristocratic quality. This quality exists in certain humans, regardless of their relationship to modern society. The Masai tribe, as well, is seen as a strongly aristocratic group. When Kabero returns to the farm, he has grown more lean, upright, and formal than his Kikuyu father; Kabero has taken on some of the aristocratic Masai qualities. Dinesen even believes the Masai so noble that they die if they are placed in prison for more than three months. This idea is a heavily romanticized notion that blunts the harsh reality of colonial rule, but it is consistent with Dinesen's pastoral vision where the landscape and its people are closely connected.

The motif of paradise additionally recurs when the author comments upon her ability to create characters as a writer. After the narrator records Jogona's account, she compares herself to being like God himself, when God shaped Adam out of dust and breathed life into him. As she writes, "I had created him and shown him himself: Jogona Kanyagga of life everlasting." The narrator's comparison of her own writing to God's act of creation places her metaphor of Africa being like paradise on a textual level. The African landscape appears to be paradise, but her ability to create it in her text makes it even more Eden- like.

Finally, the narrator at last gives herself a name: Baroness Blixen. Despite it, she still appears cryptic and little is known about her. Even though she uses her true name, Out of Africa still very much is a mythic memoir, rather an autobiography, since the author is not trying to describe her own life but rather she is trying to tell a perfect story.