46 pages • 1 hour read
Ousmane SembèneGod’s Bits of Wood
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1960A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “THIÈS Sounkaré, the Watchman”
This chapter views the strike through the eyes of the elderly watchman, Sounkaré, a lifelong railway employee who has not joined the strike. Crippled and dying of starvation in the solitary hovel that he occupies, he is unsuccessful in an attempt to kill two rats in the railway machine shop, for food. He ruminates upon the irreparable deterioration of his own body as opposed to the aging machines in the shop that can be “repaired, recast, made new again” (129). Sounkaré prays to God for relief from hunger and reflects upon the death and carnage resulting from the prior railway strike in 1938, realizing that “the sons of those corpses were on strike again” (131). He reflects upon his own mortality; while the Koran teaches him of an afterlife, he is still afraid to die.
Sounkaré makes several futile efforts to obtain food. He visits the home of a local woman, Dieynaba, who has hosted him in the past but now advises him that she does not have enough food even for her own family. He experiences a similar outcome at the store of Aziz the Syrian, who physically expels him from the premises. His final abortive attempt occurs during a random meeting on the street with Bakary, a former friend who is pro-strike and does not offer him food.
Sounkaré considers previous tragedies in his life, such as the broken hip suffered while working on a rail car as a young man. The injury had left him impotent, preventing Sounkaréfrom marrying the bride who had been chosen by his father. Consequently, Sounkaréwill die “without leaving anyone behind” (134). He returns to the machine shop in a final effort to hunt for rats. He falls into the grease pit and dies of a head wound. His body is eaten by the very rats he hunted.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Penda”
Despite their willingness to sell any of their most valued possessions, the women of Thiès are no longer able to find buyers. Apathetic and unable to feed their hungry children, they begin meeting at the house of Dieynaba, a forceful woman who encourages them to hope. They begin to sing extemporaneous ballads, “always […] a kind of a vow by the women to their men” (138).
Dieynaba had adopted an independent-minded young woman with an apparent hatred for men, Penda, when the girl’s own mother had died. Dieynaba still allows her use of a cabin on her compound whenever Penda returns from one of her “periodic escapades” (138) with men. Maimouna, the blind mother of her one surviving infant, was granted the use of the empty hut. Curtly, the narcissistic Penda agrees that the mother and child may remain there with her. The pair develop an unlikely friendship. When Maimouna refrains from naming the father of her child, Penda vows to determine his identity, stating that “Men are all dogs” (141). Maimouna disagrees with this statement.
Due to Penda’s forthright disposition, the union leaders ask her to supervise food ration distribution to the local women, and she does so proficiently. Her independent spirit is further exhibited when “one of the workmen patted her on the behind” (143) and she responds by smacking him.
Chapter 12 Summary: “THIÈS Doudou”
While Doudou, one of the union leaders, had once reveled in his status, he now feels exhausted and burdened. He questions the correctness of having encouraged the strike and is guilty about the hunger and poverty suffered as a result.
In the past, he met with workers and spoke extemporaneously and enthusiastically about union matters; however, Bakayoko had advised him to study specific books in order to become a more credible speaker. Doudou lacks Bakayoko’s psychological and philosophical preparation for the strike, which has now extended for over forty days. Doudou leaves the union office one morning to walk, and he meets Isnard, the French railroad repair shop supervisor. Doudou reflects upon the inequities perpetrated upon the African workers by this manager and the resulting arguments that the pair sustained, as a result. At one point during his time as an employee, Doudou asks his deputy supervisor why the native workers were not allowed ten minutes off for tea, as the white workers were. When advised of this question, Isnard responded, “Go and make yourself white and you can have ten minutes, too” (149). Isnard approaches Doudou, flatters him, and indicates that Doudou is in line for a promotion upon Isnard’s imminent retirement. The supervisor further offers Doudou three million francs as “just an advance” (150), and encourages him to terminate the strike.
Doudou sees opportunity for retaliation, and he questions Isnard as to the reason for inequitable treatment of the African men. The supervisor is forced into a discomfiting period of introspection, “the structure of ideas on which he had based his life […] had been shaken” (151). The arrival of Leblanc, an intoxicated supervisory colleague, horrifies Isnard, especially when the drunkard advises Doudou that Isnard is “a bloody liar” (152). Doudou rejects Isnard’s offer unequivocally; Isnard mumbles that “you’ll pay for that” (152). Doudou’s spirits are buoyed when he describes this encounter to the men in the union office, and “for the first time in weeks, he was happy again” (154).
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
These chapters depict the personal deterioration of some of the characters and the enlightened spiritual capacity of others. Sounkaré, the aged watchman, experiences a tragically ironic death. Having lived a solitary life after a railway-related work injury prevents his marriage by rendering him impotent, Sounkaré is starving to death alone in his hovel. His attempts to procure food from formerly hospitable sourcesare both humiliating and unsuccessful, and the concept of man’s inhumanity to man is reiterated. This situation presents the inverse image of the railroad’s relationship with its workers: once an inexhaustible source of cheap labor, the paradigm has now been inverted. Perennially victimized, Sounkaré dies in a fall and his body is eaten by the very rats that he attempted to hunt for food. Sounkaré’s life of humility and loss of intimate companionship ends with further punishment at the hands of the reviled rodents, rather than with any reward for his moral stamina.
Penda, Dieynaba’s curmudgeonly adopted daughter, is a conflicted, multi-faceted character. She expresses contempt for men and it is inferred that she is a prostitute. Generally bad-tempered, she exhibits compassion toward the blind young mother, Maimouna. Clear-headed and competent, Penda illustrates an unusually-evolved female character. While she is not the maternal archetype represented by many of the other women, she is proficient at supervising food distribution to the women by the union. Rather than mutely acquiescing to unwanted fondling by a workman in the union office, she slaps him; this is an unprecedented reaction within this community. Penda represents a different type of feminine evolution, eventually joining the strike committee and wearing a carbine belt rather than traditional garb. Misunderstood by most, Penda may be viewed as a more contemporary, African iteration of a Joan of Arc: a spirited female warrior who defies the social mores of her own community.
Doudou, a union leader, overcomes his self-doubt and sense of being overwhelmed by strike-related responsibilities. His personal journey involves rising to new levels of integrity when he refuses the large monetary “advance” and promise of a promotion by the racist supervisor, Isnard, in exchange for stopping the strike. Despite a prior lack of confidence in his rhetorical skills, Doudou engages Isnard in Socratic questioning that forces the supervisor to reflect upon his own beliefs. Doudou grows in intellectual capacity and self-esteem as a result of remaining true to his own principles.
