A Grain of Wheat

“About Jesus, they could not at first understand, for how could it be that God would let himself be nailed to a tree?” 

What surprises them about Jesus is exactly what they most value in Kihika—the willingness to martyr himself for a greater cause. The deeply Christian Kihika is the novel’s Christ figure, fighting against an occupying force and then being executed after a trusted ally betrays him.

“Then nobody noticed it; but looking back we can see that Waiyaki’s blood contained within it a seed, a grain, which gave birth to a movement whose main strength thereafter sprang from a bond with the soil.” 

The novel’s title references a Biblical verse, John 12:24-26, a parable that explains that the death of a seemingly small and insignificant granule can spur “much fruit” to grow in its wake. Here, the novel applies the same metaphor to its history of the Movement: When the rebel leader Waiyaki is executed, his death only spurs many others to take up the cause. Hoping to kill him, the British buried Waiyaki upside down in the ground, but what they actually managed to do was plant him and his ideas until they sprouted into the Mau Mau.

“In a flash I was convinced that the growth of the British Empire was the development of a great moral idea: it means, it must surely lead to the creation of one British nation, embracing peoples of all colours and creeds, based on the just proposition that all men were created equal.” 

The racism, brutal, and incompetent British administrator John Thompson writes this ostensible summary of his philosophy in a manuscript he has loftily titled “Prospero in Africa,” aligning himself with the magician and island ruler from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Thompson imagines himself “embracing peoples of all colours” in theory, but in practice he cannot tell black men apart, tortures prisoners to express his frustration with his job, and is amazed to hear Africans discussing literature. The rich irony here comes from the contrast of his elevated writing language and his reality as a sexually frustrated, vicious failure.

“A vote for Kenyatta was a vote for the Party. A vote for the Party was a vote for the Movement. A vote for the Movement was a vote for the People. Kenyatta was the People!”

In a sea of people eager to get involved in the Movement, Mugo finds himself overwhelmed and eager to escape—he a loner who resists joining the community around him. The rhetoric of the rally also highlights the work of an individual—the leader Kenyatta, hoping to win the election for Chief Minister. This contrast between a man who wants only to be left along and a man whose existence is synonymous with that of Kenya is a reference to the novel’s title and the Bible verse it comes from. Mugo is a grain of wheat that stays with the rest of the harvest; Kenyatta is the grain that falls to the ground and generates “much fruit.”

“He wanted to shout: That is not it at all; I did not want to come back; I did not long to join my mother or wife or child because I did not have any. Tell me, then, whom could I have loved?” 

While making his speech at the Kenyatta rally, Mugo unwittingly slips into the first person plural, describing his experiences in the detention center from the point of view of other prisoners. But internally, he realizes that the voices he has been projecting has nothing to do with his own lived experienced as a solitary man without family or connections. 

“Let the whiteman then do anything; the day would come, indeed was near at hand when he would rejoin Thabai and, together with those who had taken to the forest, would rock the earth with a new song at the birth of freedom.”

Gikonyo, whose involvement in the Movement never amount to actual fighting, goes to his detention with a light heart—he assumes that he will soon be released and rejoin Mumbi in the village. His thoughts reflect the uplifting vision of home rule and the easy expelling of British occupiers offered by the nascent Movement. This hopeful attitude is soon shattered, as Gikonyo suffers tremendously in detention for years, ultimately deciding to confess his Movement oath in an effort to gain his freedom. This cowardly act will haunt him for years.

“To the few, elect of God, the past was forgiven, was made clean by great deeds that saved many.” 

Before he decides to publicly own up to betraying Kihika to that man’s death, Mugo first wants to speak at the Uhuru celebration and accept the villagers’ admiration of him. A man driven by the desire to be left alone and invisible, Mugo has a hard time visualizing how to best act in the interest of the community. Here, he tries to justify his initial instinct to hide his guilt with Christian ideas about forgiveness for “great deeds.”

“We are not yet beaten […] Africa cannot, cannot do without Europe.” 

As he is getting ready to leave Africa, John Thompson rehashes his failures, as he sees them. He does not feel guilty for his torture of prisoners or his unremitting racism, but instead believes that if only he’d had more time, he could have reshaped Kenya even more. His part in the novel ends on the dark note that Kenya’s freedom will never entirely free it from the influence of Europe.