Brutes, Demons, and Ominous Imagery: The Prevalence of Evil in Left to Tell Annmicha Blugh College

The autobiographic novel, Left to Tell composed by Immaculée Ilibagiza, is punctuated by legions of demonic allusions and enveloped in an almost impenetrable shroud of evil. Although Immaculée’s halcyon childhood days appear untarnished and completely innocent, she recalls “the forces of evil that would give birth to a holocaust that set my beloved country awash in a sea of blood were hidden from me as a child” (Ilibagiza 3). The shelter of her Catholic home and pious upbringing for a period keep her in blissful ignorance until the moment when darkness becomes unleashed and anarchy reigns. She depicts the massacre of hundreds of thousands closely resembling a cataclysmic plague of the transformation of the sea waters into blood. An unredeemed Rwanda degrades into a land ‘awash in a sea of blood.’ Evil omens, animalised demons, dehumanised victims, devilish torment and mysterious presences emerge in her account attesting to the prevalence of evil as a macabre and mammoth holocaust sweeps Rwanda in April 1994.

Prior to the outbreak of the genocide, eerie omens point towards a lurking destruction. A psychic augurs, “I see thunderstorms around us now … The mother storm is coming. When she arrives, her lightning will scorch the land...