Previous Next

Summary: Chapter 17

As he grew more confident that the President wouldn’t take the shop away from him, Théotime became bolder and increasingly difficult. Women started to visit him in the shop’s back storeroom. He also started asking Salim to chauffer him around town. Théotime struggled to identify his own position in relation to Salim and Metty. As a mechanic, Théotime knew nothing about running a shop. Thus, despite being Salim’s superior, Théotime nonetheless felt inferior, which spurred conflicting feelings. Salim believed that Théotime wanted the status of a boss but with allowances for being inexperienced.

Regardless of his situation, Salim pledged to remain focused on his goal. Metty, however, hated Théotime for giving him an unending list of menial tasks. Salim confronted Théotime about his treatment of Metty, but the man merely reasserted his authority as the state trustee. Metty begged Salim to give him money so he could go away, but Salim just replied that the situation couldn’t last forever.

One Friday afternoon, Salim went home and found police officers in his yard. On a tip from Metty, they were digging up the secret cache of ivory and gold that Salim had buried at the foot of his stairs. Salim tried to call Mahesh to tell him what was happening, but an officer interrupted him. The officer tried to extort an absurdly large bribe, and when Salim refused, the officer took him into custody.

On a wall in the police headquarters, Salim saw the words Discipline Avant Tout (“Discipline Above All”) painted in large block letters, and he felt that these lying words mocked him. Waiting in his cell, Salim felt overcome by rage. He sensed that events were unfolding without either plan or meaning.

The morning after his arrest, he realized that the jail was full of young men and boys. Salim suspected they were victims of the Liberation Army’s kidnapping operations. Warders forced these prisoners to recite poems of praise to the President and the cult of the African adonna. The forced recitations persisted all day long—in preparation, Salim learned, to receive the President, who was coming to the town to witness an execution.

On Monday morning, the officer who arrested Salim came to collect him and bring him to the commissioner, who had taken an interest in his case. The commissioner, it turned out, was Ferdinand. Sitting at his desk beneath a larger-than-life-sized photograph of the President, Ferdinand appeared “shrunken and characterless.” Ferdinand explained that the deteriorating political situation made it bad for everybody. He also expressed disenchantment with his education and career, believing that the privileges he had received were also destroying him. Ferdinand counseled Salim to leave town on the steamer.

Salim booked a ticket for the steamer set to disembark the following day. He bought some grocery items, then went home to await his departure. Metty asked Salim not to leave him behind. Salim insisted that he wasn’t going anywhere and said that he didn’t have enough money to support Metty even if he were leaving. In a fit of anxiety, Metty declared that the Liberation Army would kill everyone when the President came. Salim tried to calm Metty down and said the town would eventually start up again. Not comforted, Metty left to be with his family.

The next morning Salim went to the docks and boarded the steamer. A soldier appeared and implied that Salim should pay him a bribe since he’d arranged for his escape. Salim did nothing, and the soldier eventually left. The steamer departed at midday, with a barge carrying the poorest passengers—all African—tied to the front of the ship. After nightfall, loud noises and shouts arose from the darkness. Armed young men boarded the steamer and tried to take control, but they failed. The ship’s searchlight came on and shone white light on the barge, which had come detached from the steamer and was drifting away. The searchlight went out, the steamer’s engine restarted, and the ship proceeded downriver in the darkness.

Analysis: Chapter 17

The character of Théotime offers a case study of the corrupting influence of power. When the government appointed him the state trustee for Salim’s shop, Théotime had no experience in business nor did he have any formal education. Even so, he suddenly found himself in a position of power. At first, Théotime seemed reluctant to take full charge of his new position. He also tried to soothe Salim’s hurt feelings by retaining him as manager. But as time went on, Théotime grew self-conscious about his lack of experience. To compensate for his perceived inferiority, he began to take liberties with his unearned power. He turned Salim into his personal chauffeur, and he treated Metty like a mere errand boy. When confronted about the way he’d taken advantage of his power, Théotime responded defensively. He insisted that his power came from a legitimate source, thereby implying that he could do anything he wished. In tracking the transformation Théotime made from meek mechanic to power-corrupted “state trustee,” Salim realized that if average Africans like Théotime felt empowered by their government to do as they pleased, then statewide corruption was inevitable.

The weekend Salim spent in jail highlighted the terrifying ironies of the unfolding political situation. The reason for Salim’s arrest already indicated to him the breakdown of the rule of law. The arresting officer had no interest in upholding the law. Instead, he took Salim into custody because he refused to pay a bribe. Once at the jail, Salim realized that the facility was full of innocent people who hadn’t been arrested by the police but had been kidnapped by the Liberation Army. The implication of an alliance between the government police and the rebel army suggested even greater depths of corruption than Salim had previously realized. And to add yet another level of confusion, the authorities forced the prisoners to learn praise songs for the President’s upcoming visit, when the politician would come to witness an execution. Horrified and baffled at the same time, Salim felt that nothing made sense anymore. This feeling intensified when he saw painted on the jail wall the phrase “Discipline Above All.” With the political situation rapidly disintegrating into chaos, the notion that discipline should be valued above all struck Salim as a terrifying irony.

Ferdinand’s disenchantment with his education and career offers another symbol of the irony of African modernization. Throughout the novel, Salim has followed Ferdinand’s trajectory, starting with his education at the secondary school and the Domain and continuing with his internship in the capital and his appointment as local commissioner. Salim initially felt jealous of the opportunities open to Ferdinand, but when Ferdinand entered the polytechnic institute, Salim grew concerned for his future. As a symbol of the President’s vision for a new, modern Africa, the Domain struck Salim as dangerously out of touch with the “real” Africa. Salim also felt that the faculty and students at the Domain were all invested in creating an ideal “new African” to serve the President’s ambitious vision for the nation. Indeed, Ferdinand’s many years of education had completely transformed him into just such a new African, ready to serve in the government’s civil administration. But Ferdinand recognized the government’s rampant corruption, which put everyone—himself included—in grave danger. Groomed to serve an ideal vision that he now saw crumbling around him, Ferdinand felt deeply disenchanted.

The novel’s final scene offers a pessimistic allegory for Africa’s future. After members of the rebel army failed to take over the steamer, a spotlight revealed that the barge had become detached. The spotlight then went out as the steamer charged onward into the darkness, leaving the barge behind. Salim’s observations in Chapter 10 revealed that the steamer’s first- and second-class passengers had cabins aboard the vessel itself, but the third-class passengers were relegated to cage-like structures on the barge. Whereas the passengers lodged on the steamer were mostly foreigners, the passengers on the barge were all poor Africans. The separation of the barge from the steamer at the end of the novel therefore symbolizes Africa being cut loose and set adrift as the rest of the world sails onward toward its destination. The steamer, representing the world, came equipped with a powerful searchlight and sophisticated navigational tools and hence could make its way confidently through the darkness. By contrast, the barge, representing Africa, had no motor to propel itself and no means to navigate through the night. Naipaul’s conclusion thus offers a disturbing symbolic vision of Africa adrift, floating blindly toward a dark and uncertain future.

 

Previous section Part Four, Chapter 16 Next section Full Book Summary

Popular pages: A Bend in the River

Take a Study Break