Petals of Blood

“They came for him that Sunday. He had just returned from a night’s vigil on the mountain.”

The first lines of the text foreshadow Munira’s culpability. The police come for him after he holds a “vigil,” which is eventually revealed to mean he watched the fire that he had started. Calling it a vigil is an example of understatement, representing how Munira doesn’t feel guilty for his actions.

“The road had once been a railway line joining Ilmorog to Ruwa-ini. […] It had eaten the forests, and after accomplishing their task, the two rails were removed, and the ground became a road—a kind of a road—that now gave no evidence of its former exploiting glory.”

The road Munira travels to the city is a symbolic representation of what has happened to Africa in the postcolonial era. Europeans came to “save” them and brought them things like roads, infrastructure, and education, but at the cost of Africa’s resources—here, their forests. Similarly, they colonized the people, introducing new systems of economic inequality and leaving behind the lasting influence of corruption. The road seems like an improvement over the railway, but the effect is the same.

“He had gone home, convinced that inwardly he had given himself up to the Lord, and decided to do something about his sins. He stole a matchbox, collected a bit of grass and dry cowdung and built an imitation of Amina’s house at Kamiritho where he had sinned against the Lord, and burnt it.”

Munira feels guilt over his first time having sex and burns an effigy of Amina’s home to cleanse himself. This symbolic cleansing connects with and ultimately foreshadows his decision at the end of the text to burn Wanja’s brothel. Munira views women alternately as objects and corrupting forces, resenting when they don’t bow to his will and believing he can purge their presence from him with