The Famished Road

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1991

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Section 1, Book 1

Section 1, Book 2

Section 1, Book 3

Section 1, Book 4

Section 1, Book 5

Section 2, Book 6

Section 2, Book 7

Section 3, Book 8

Character Analysis

Themes

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Section 2, Book 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Section 2, Book 7, Chapters 1-4 Summary

Dad is still interested in a career as a politician, and he has the idea to use “the ever-approaching rally as the platform to preach his ideas and gather voters” (427). He also wants to use Azaro as his spy; Azaro will resume his visits to Madame Koto’s bar to monitor the activities of the Party of the Rich. On his first foray back to the bar, a stream of deformed beggars comes into the place, disrupting the meeting of political operatives. Their leader wants Azaro to come with them. It turns out that he is the four-headed spirit sent to bring Azaro back to the spirit world after the three-headed spirit failed. Madame Koto herself is upset, burdened by money and politics. Dad wanders in and tells Azaro about his dreams of “a new continent” (436). When he and Azaro return home, some of the beggars follow them.

Mum is crying when they return home, so Dad orders Azaro to buy him some ogogoro, the local whisky. Azaro notes that all the beggars were now sleeping outside their house. Mum yells at them to go away, telling them the family has nothing to spare. But Dad begins to think of them in grandiose terms and believes them to be an integral part of his political future. Azaro begins to think of himself as an essential part of “many things” (446).

The next morning, they awake to find that the beggars have vandalized Madame Koto’s bar and other stalls and homes. They have set up a semi-permanent camp on the edge of the forest. As Azaro contemplates this turn of events, a man in an immaculate white suit comes looking for Dad, who is out. He returns later that evening with the group of beggars in tow. He has tried to organize them into a civic congregation, directing them to clean up trash in the streets and to beautify the area with fresh paint and newly planted flowers while he goes door-to-door asking for votes. His efforts come to naught, as they instead sow more destruction. The Photographer shows up again, snapping pictures of the beggars’ damage.

That night there is a great party at Madame Koto’s bar to commemorate her political ties and newly connected electricity. Meanwhile, Dad is still trying to mobilize the beggars in the service of the community and of his political ambitions. Azaro introduces himself to one of the beggars, a beautiful girl with a damaged eye who has been following Dad closely; her name is Helen, she says, and she claims that her real interest is in Azaro, not Dad. Azaro decides to take the beggars to Madame Koto’s grand party.

Section 2, Book 7, Chapters 5-8 Summary

Dad is also trying to gatecrash the party, and after some noisy attempts, he is invited in by Madame Koto. Azaro and his beggars also come in. There is much political talk, especially from Dad. A duiker has wandered into the bar, and it stares at Azaro as he dreams of ancestors and spirits. When he awakes, the “female midget” with “a demented smile” (459) excitedly accosts Azaro and puts his hands on her breasts. Azaro quickly realizes that most of the patrons in the bar are shape-shifting spirits. He laments that the four-headed spirit is still trying to take him away from the real world into the spirit realm. As he sinks deeper into that otherworldly realm, he cries out for Mum, and she helps him return to reality. She is wearing strange blue glasses. She promises to tell Azaro the story of how she procured them someday soon, but first, she wants to speak to Madame Koto.

The party is still in full swing, with drunken patrons and arguing politicians. Azaro realizes that Madame Koto’s swelling size does indicate a pregnancy—but not a normal one. She is carrying triplets, all spirit children with bad intentions. Feeling physically miserable, Madame Koto finally has enough of the beggars and orders her minions to beat them until they leave. Dad tries to intervene, but he is held back. During the melee, Azaro takes the chance to free the duiker. Once the beggars are taken care of, the thugs turn their attention to Dad, but before they can administer a beating, they are stopped by the man in the white suit.

The man challenges Black Tyger/Dad to a fight, boasting that he can beat him “without even staining my white suit” (468). Dad takes a mighty thrashing, and it looks like he cannot win—until Azaro shouts encouragement at him. Dad rushes the man and rips his white suit off his body. His armor gone, the man is quickly defeated as Dad wins against the odds. Azaro’s friend Ade is there to witness the spectacle, as well as the blind old man whose window Azaro had broken earlier in the book. The old man grips Ade, wanting to see through his young eyes, and Ade descends into an epileptic fit. When he comes out of the fit, he warns that “[s]omething is happening” (475) just as the skies open and rain pours down. The electricity quickly goes out.

Section 2, Book 7, Chapters 9-12 Summary

Dad is carried into the house, so brutally has he been beaten by the man in the white suit. Even though he was victorious in the end, Dad “was in a far worse condition than in all of his fights put together” (476). Ade, too, is unwell, and he tells Azaro that he believes he is dying. His voice becomes that of the blind old man, and he begins making terrible predictions about coups and wars before telling Azaro not to be afraid. They sleep, and Azaro sinks into his Mum’s dreams. She is “trying to draw back your father’s spirit” (479). Dad instructs them—in their dreams—to “OPEN THE DOOR” (481), and Mum will not let Ade and Azaro sleep again. They will help her find Dad’s spirit.

Mum sits in Dad’s chair, seeming to become him, and tells the boys how she got the blue sunglasses. A white man had come to her stall, saying he could not find his way out of Africa. He gives her his blue sunglasses. Then, Mum coerced him into buying all her wares, saying she would tell him how to leave; the message is cryptic: “If you don’t know you will never find any road at all” (483). A short time later, a Black Yoruba man comes to her stall, asking her to recognize him. It is the white man, now turned Black. He claims he has lived an entire lifetime back in England—marriage, work, retirement, death—before returning. Yet, for Mum, it has only been two weeks. At the conclusion of her story, dawn is upon them. Dad suddenly sits up in the bed, shouting “KEEP THE ROAD OPEN” before falling back asleep (484). Mum seems relieved.

Ade’s father shows up at the house to retrieve his son. Azaro knows that Ade is a spirit child, like himself, but Ade wants to return to that world. He has had enough of the material world with its depredations and decay. His father carries him home with determination.

The final chapter in this section muses on the nature of spirit children and how they are connected to history. The author also speculates that there are entire nations, specific events, and styles of art—among other things—that are “of this condition” (487), the condition of the abiku. Azaro knows he has been a rebellious spirit child; he has become attached to the material world and wants to live out his life with his family here. This is partly because he has hope for what the world may bring.

Section 2, Book 7 Analysis

As in previous sections (Book 5, in particular), the author emphasizes the connection between Azaro’s journey and that of the epic hero: Azaro reads The Odyssey to his father, Homer’s epic poem that recounts the story of a man who wanders far from home and struggles to return, surmounting innumerable obstacles along the way. Both father and son are on parallel journeys. Dad is trying to find his way, to fortify his home in an unjust world, his morale dampened by poverty and oppressed by politics: “Dad wondered aloud about how he was going to be able to do any good in the world if he didn’t learn more about politics, and didn’t infiltrate the existing organisations” (427). Dad is pushed and pulled by forces he cannot control. Like Dad, Azaro is also engaged in a spiritual tug-of-war; he is a spirit child who wishes to stay with his family in the material world. He realizes that “many things were calling me” (446), not the least of which is the weight of history and the responsibility of family—which extends to the imagined community that is a nation.

The beggars who disrupt Book 7 represent the deformative effects of extreme poverty, and they are quite literally knocking at the door of Azaro’s home: “They came amongst us not like an invasion, but like people who have waited a long time to take their place among the living” (442). Mum’s reaction is to rail against them, to demand they take their leave. However, she is almost immediately apologetic: “I didn’t mean any harm. My life is like a pit. I dig it. It stays the same. I fill it and it empties. Look at us. All of us in one room” (443). Mum’s point is that they are not very much different than the beggars, that their lives are just as precarious and impoverished. They don’t have anything to give. Dad, however, responds quite differently: “They were once a great people. Hunger drove them from their kingdom and now the road is their only palace” (444). Poverty in this instance, for him, is ennobling, and he sees in their desperation a cause to which he can attach himself: “I will build them a school. I will teach them to work. I will teach them music. We will all be happy” (444). However, his misguided energies came to naught as the beggars cannot even perform the simple tasks he asked. They represent an impoverishment of the body—a physical hunger—and the damaging effects of such poverty on the mind and the soul.

In contrast, Madame Koto continues to grow ever wealthier, ever larger, her physical appearance echoing the increase in her fortunes: “Madame Koto was resplendent in golden volumes of lace attire, feathers in her headgear. She had a new walking stick with a metallic lion’s head. Her foot had grown large. Her stomach had swollen” (451). The gold of her clothing symbolizes her newfound wealth; the lion on her walking stick represents her predatory power. Her foot has grown in proportion to the larger footprint her presence makes within the community, and her pregnant stomach harbors portents to come. Indeed, Azaro, with his highly attuned spiritual senses, suddenly understands that “Madame Koto was pregnant with three strange children” who “had no intention of being born” (464). These spirit children—the three reflecting a twisted trinity (it is later referred to as an “abiku trinity” [494])—inhabit her body and influence her actions. They are partially formed adults, one sporting a beard, one with “fully formed teeth,” and another with “wicked eyes” (464). They are devouring and demonizing Madame Koto, who replicates such behavior in the real world.

The party thrown in her honor to celebrate her increasing influence becomes a space in which histories converge, in which technological development impinges on the natural world. Azaro, of course, has the visions: “I saw the ghost figures of young men and women, heads bowed, necks and ankles chained together, making their silent procession through the celebrations” (455). The colonial past—including the darkest chapter of that story, slavery—haunts Madame Koto’s party. Her involvement in politics, her acquisition of electricity, and her growing power and influence are inextricably linked to the exploitation wrought by the “white men” earlier in the nation’s history. Colonialism is an inherently deforming enterprise, and its consequences reverberate down through the hallways of history.

The impact on the natural world is profound, as well. When Azaro sees the duiker, he sinks into another vision of history: “I saw the flotillas, the gunwales, the spectral great ships and the dozens of rowing boats, bearing the helmeted ones, with mirrors and guns and strange texts untouched by the salt of the Atlantic” (457). This time, though, he sees the destruction brought to the land itself, not the people: “The white ones, ghost forms on deep nights, stepped on our shores, and I heard the earth cry” (457). They bring with them “destruction” that resonates “through deluded generations, through time” (457). He recounts a long list of what the foreigners’ ghostly presence wreaks, such as the death of the forests and the devastation brought by mining activities. It is notable that Azaro later frees the duiker, siding firmly with the forces of nature against the technologically advanced destruction represented by the colonizer: “When human beings and animals understood one another, we were all free” (457). The political climate and technological development left behind by the colonizers are quite the opposite of freedom.

The man in the white suit also represents the effects of colonialism in a general sense. When he is winning the fight against Dad, his punishment reads like a colonial manifesto: “The man went on pounding Dad’s nose, extending the territories of his physiognomy, disintegrating his philosophy, dissolving his reality, dislodging his teeth, and sapping the will from his sturdy legs” (472). The white-suited man conquers Dad’s territory, stripping him of his belief system, way of life, and dignity—in a clear echo of colonial policy. As soon as Dad rips the white veneer from the man’s body, Dad has the upper hand: The white-suited man’s “eyes filled with fear and shame at being unmasked” (473). Underneath the façade of the white suit is only emptiness and purposelessness, “the legs of a spiderous animal” (473); because Dad has something to fight for—his family, his independence, his future—he summons the strength to win.

Finally, the contrast between Azaro and his friend, Ade, closes the Book. Ade has been rocked by seizures and haunted by nightmarish visions, while Azaro has seen the possibilities for evolution in his visions of the impure past. Ade wishes to return to the spirit world, while Azaro sees himself carving out a better life in the material one: “I wanted the liberty of limitations, to have to find or create new roads from this one which is so hungry, this road of our [the spirit children’s] refusal to be” (487). He notes, "I was not necessarily the stronger one; it may be easier to live with the earth’s boundaries than to be free in infinity” (487). Azaro hopes to find a new and better world, an independent nation of great creative prowess, unchained from history and poverty within those limitations and boundaries.