The Dark Child (The African Child) Essay Questions

What is Camara Laye's attitude toward his family in The Dark Child?

In The Dark Child, Camara Laye displays a deep respect for his family. The respect for various members of his family becomes a theme Laye returns to throughout the memoir. From his early childhood, Laye observes the mystical and ritualistic gold-smelting processes his father regularly undertakes, recognizing and appreciating the exalted position his father enjoys in their community. Laye also shows appreciation for his grandmother and uncles in Tindican, who accept him as an honorary member of their rural community despite him living a different lifestyle in the city of Kouroussa. Laye also reveres his mother, whose fiery attitude and strong will he views not as faults but as expressions of her inherent dignity as a Guinean woman. It is because Laye has such immense respect for his supportive family that it is upsetting for him to leave them behind for a new and uncertain life in Europe.

What role does pride play in The Dark Child?

As a major theme, pride plays a significant role in The Dark Child. The theme arises early when Laye details how customers would send praise singers to his father's workshop. His father knows his worth as a goldsmith, and he appreciates when customers recognize his pride by supplying an entertainer to praise his virtues. Laye's grandmother is also a deeply proud woman who shamelessly celebrates the arrival of her favorite grandson by parading him by her acquaintances and ensuring they recognize his handsomeness. Ultimately, the pride Laye observes among his family members transfers to him. Proud to show his cultural background to an audience of readers, Laye writes a memoir that celebrates his family and his people.

How does French Guinea's status as a colony affect Camara Laye's life?

While Camara Laye never directly comments on the impact that French colonial governance of Guinea has had on his life, colonialism's influence is at the heart of Laye's conflict. In depicting his childhood and adolescence, Laye shows how he grows up taking part in Malinke and Muslim cultural practices while simultaneously receiving a French-language education. This creates a rift in Laye's life, as his academic career steadily pulls him away from his people's traditional ways and toward a European lifestyle and career. While custom would dictate that he take over his father's possession, everyone around Laye senses that he is destined to stay in school and become an academic—a career path that was likely not available to his father. Laye achieves good enough grades that he is offered an opportunity to study in Paris. It is from France that he looks back on the life he left behind, composing a memoir in the colonizer's language, intended for a Francophone audience. In this way, colonialist influence determines the trajectory of his life, leading him to become torn between literary pursuits in Europe and the beloved culture he left behind.

What role does uncertainty play in The Dark Child?

Uncertainty plays a significant role in The Dark Child as one of the memoir's key themes. Early in the book, Camara Laye recounts a childhood memory of his father expressing grief over his son's destiny being not with him in the forge but at school. Laye is anguished at the sight of his upset father, and he wonders what to do: stay in school, or follow in his father's career path. Uncertainty arises again in a similar scene during the December rice harvest in Tindican. When Laye asks if he can learn to use the scythe, his uncle tells him he will never become a farmhand. While Laye doesn't disagree with the assessment, the comments provokes his anxiety, and he trembles over the fact he doesn't have a circumscribed life or vocation in his future. To underscore the importance of the theme, Laye touches on uncertainty in the book's final scene. Heading to Paris, he weeps over the familiar culture he must leave behind for the unknown in Europe. It is impossible for him to know when he will return—or whether he will return at all, and thus if it is wise to leave in the first place.

Why is it significant that Camara Laye receives a circumcision as a teenager?

While circumcision in Western societies is routinely carried out not long after one is born, Camara Laye writes extensively about his people's tradition of circumcision for post-pubescent boys. This ritual is a rite of passage that marks the symbolic evolution from child to man. Writing for an audience he assumes will not be familiar with Guinean customs, Laye depicts the ritual in thorough detail, focusing on the preparatory elements of the ceremony, which involve uncircumcised boys dancing in public for a week before the operation. They also wear specially made boubou garments that are dyed dark colors to hide blood stains. Laye doesn't spend much time detailing the surgery at the center of the ritual, in part because the circumcisionist does it in an instant, and in part because it is everything around the surgery that carries the most meaning. To emphasize the boys' passage into manhood, they are kept separate from society while they convalesce, only returning to society once they fully heal. At this point, the whole community welcomes them back with celebratory feasts, and people look upon them as young men, no longer boys.