#Classic Bend in the River

Author: V.S. Naipaul
Title: A Bend in the River
Published: 1979
Contents: 278 pages
Trivia: Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize 2001.

#Classic… I never thought I would read….b/c I dislike V.S. Naipaul as a person after reading a revealing article about his dysfunctional marriage.

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Analysis:

1. Explain the title. In what way is it suitable to the story?
A Bend in the River is a metaphor for the vanishing Arab power in Africa. “…at the bend in the river there had grown up a European and not an Arab town.” (pg 23)

2. Who is the single main character about?
A Bend in the River takes place in an unnamed country, but it can safely be identified as Democratic Republic of Congo. Salim is a young man who starts a business in a town on ‘a bend in the river’.

3. What sort of conflict confronts the leading character or characters?
a. External – escape the stifling of home vs trying to go back home, the other place (pg 285)
b. Internal – Salim is constantly ‘sniffing out the falseness in others’ (pg 182)

4. Who tells the story? First person narrator (Salim)

5. Where does the primary action take place?
Naipaul does not name the river in this novel, nor the town, country or its president.The town is at the end of the navigable river, just below the cataracts. Naipaul’s description has been interpreted to point to the town of Kisangani on the Congo river. What is the timeline? I estimate between 1970 – 1977.

6. What is the structure of the story? The books is in four parts:
The Second Rebellion (Salim’s back round)
The New Domain (economic prosperity through corrupt sources)
The Big Man (Salim’s relationships and the rise of power of the President)
The Battle (seizing foreign-held businesses)

7. How does the story get started?
Salim is driving in his Peugeot from the east African coast towards interior Congo. Nazruddin, a man from his village, had sold Salim his shop cheap. He was going to “be the master of his fate only if I stood alone.” (pg 22)

8. Briefly describe the rising action of the story.
Salim works hard to find the “short-cut to power and money” (pg 105.) Unfortunately ‘the Big Man’s ( Mobutu) “Zairianization” seizes foreign-held businesses and transfers their ownership to Zairians. This is what happened to Salim (ch 16-17)

9. What is the high point, or climax, of the story?
Salim is put in preventive detention before the President visits the town. Salim cannot bribe the police, he has no money. Yet it seems Salim does have an unexpected friend in the government.

10. Discuss the falling action or close of the story.
Salim makes a frenzied dash to buy a ticket and escape ‘a bend in the river’ on the last steamer leaving.

11. What is the general theme of the story?
Africans struggle to prosper after the liberation from European colonization.

12. Did you identify with any of the characters?
a. Hunter: Ferdinand: He was frightening.This is how he will look when he sees the victim’s blood.
b. Hunted: Salim: You don’t feel malice towards your prey. You set a trap for him. (pg 63)

13. Does this story contain any of the following elements?
a. Allusion: the Latin phrase that was engraved on a monument outside the dock gates: “Miscerique probat poulos et foedera jungi” The gods would approve a mingling of peoples and making treaties in Africa. The monument was no sooner erected…than it was torn down. Not many africans in the town agreed with this truth.
b. Foreshadowing: Ferdinand is a young boy who Salim shelters in his home and guides his education. Yet this character with his lies and exaggerations makes Salim feel as if “a web was being spun around me. I had become prey.” (pg 62)
c. Deus ex machina: unexpected intervention to rescue Salim and resolve the story’s conflict.
d. Epithet: short nickname Big Man – Naipaul never mentions the name of the the President…but it is must be Mobutu. Naipaul does mention the African leader’s walking stick and leopard-skin cap.

14. How does author use symbols to propel the plot…deeper levels of meaning about the themes?
a. Masks – Salim compares the face of Ferdinand to…certain kinds of African masks in which features are simplified and strengthened. (pg 42). It was the effect of his face on Salim ..I saw then and later as one of great power. Africans don’t show what they are feeling…but when there’s danger “His face had been like a mask at the beginning. Now he was showing his frenzy.”
b. Water Hyacinths – The symbol of water hyacinths is mentioned in many chapters: lilac-colored flowers on rubbery green vines that floated on and on, night and day. On page 183 Naipaul gives us his explanation – hyacinths, floating on during the days of rebellion they had spoken of blood, […] white in the moonlight, they had matched the mood of the particular evening. Now lilac on bright green…they spoke of other people moving on.

15. What did I NOT like?
Raymond and Yvette: reading these sections….I almost fell asleep. Raymond was the right hand man to the president and Yvette’s husband. He writes history books and speeches for the ‘Big Man’. When he realizes that none of his work is meeting the president’s standards they both just disappear!

16. What is the writing style? I read the book while listening to the audio version. I recognized a ‘rhythm’ in Naipaul’s sentences. Then I started to underline certain words and discovered that Naipaul ‘repeats’ words and phrases to make his writing flow. On page 87 beginning with the paragraph [The President… ending with …captured by the rebels], if you look at these three paragraphs in chapter 5 you will see what I mean!
Style: Naipaul tells us what he is doing on page 158: I find the most difficult thing in prose narrative is linking one thing with another. The link might just be a sentence, or even a word. It sums up what has gone before and prepares one for what is to come.

17. Does the story contain a single effect or impression for me?
The book expresses Salim’s feeling of being an outsider. He feels isolated in his little part of the world. The quote that impressed me was on page 124:
“I’d been homesick for months. But home was hardly a place I could return to. Home was something in my head. It was something I had lost.”

18. Does the story have a thematic message?
Bitter resentment among the African people towards the former European colonizers.

Conclusion:

This is a good book…but not great.
I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something missing….
The title drops you into an empty river town and lets you just … wander around.
You stumble on the right spots.
You uncover bits of a story.
There is no hook and no characters to relate to.
A Bend in the River is based on V. S. Naipaul’s observations during a 1975 visit to Zaire.
This also reminded me of the book CONGO by D. van Reybrouck, a Belgian journalist.
Both authors give vivid insights into the country of changing names:
Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire
…now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Last Thought:

1. Personally I preferred Congo by Van Reybrouck which is available in English.

Score: 3