Summary
Narrated in the first person by Camara Laye, the memoir’s author and protagonist, The Dark Child opens with a memory from when Laye was five or six. He recalls seeing a snake outside the hut of his father, a metalworker. Laye feeds a reed into the snake’s mouth, not fearing the creature’s fangs inching closer to his fingers. Before the snake can bite, an apprentice of Laye’s father scoops the boy up. Adults come swarming. In the commotion, Laye’s mother slaps her son and makes him promise never to play that game with snakes. Laye says he won’t, but the game doesn’t seem dangerous to him.
Laye’s father’s hut, like all the huts in the community, is built with mud bricks and has a thatch roof. The child Laye spends his time under the veranda of the hut, or in his mother’s hut, or under the shade of the large orange tree that stands between them. Laye’s father, a generous man, always shares the fruits with local people. Laye’s mother is sure to set aside Laye’s portion.
Laye’s family’s property is next to a railroad. It is so hot and dry that sparks from the tracks routinely set fires. Laye speculates that the scent of hot oil from the trains might attract the snakes. Regardless, he sees many snakes of different varieties, and his mother always beats them to a pulp when she is alerted. However, one day Laye warns her of a glimmering black snake. Laye’s mother tells him he must never kill this snake because it is his father’s guiding spirit.
Although Laye is familiar with the idea that there are good and bad spirits all around him, he is perplexed by the notion that this one snake—no different from any other, as far as he can tell—is important. At dinner that night, after his father’s guests have left, Laye asks about it. Laye’s father explains the snake is “the guiding spirit of our race.” He says he is the person the snake has “made himself known to” in their time, just as someone from every time period is chosen. This makes sense to Laye, because his father is head of their concession (the settlement in which they live) and in charge of the local blacksmiths.
Laye’s father explains that the little black snake first came to him in a dream. He was fearful of the snake and prepared to attack it. The next night, the snake returned in another dream, this time speaking. In an antiquated, formal voice, the snake told Laye’s father that he could sense the man wanted to harm him. The snake warns Laye’s father that he should not reject him, because he is the guiding spirit of the man’s race and brings good fortune. From that point on, Laye’s father has looked upon the snake kindly. Although he is a man no different from any other, he knows exactly what will happen in a day, including which customers will come in with machines or objects in need of repair. He can fix anything because he has already worked out the problems in advance while sleeping. He says all this good fortune is due to the snake.
Laye’s father says Laye must act more like him if he wants to inherit the guiding spirit snake. However, Laye’s father fears Laye already doesn’t spend enough time with him because he is always at school. He knows Laye will leave him one day. Laye grows distressed when he sees that his father’s heart is heavy with grief. Under the hurricane lamp, he suddenly looks to be an old man. Laye isn’t sure whether he is supposed to continue going to school or stay close to home. Laye’s father sends Laye away to sleep. In his mother’s hut, Laye cannot sleep. He weeps, thinking about his father and wondering what is the right thing to do.
After that, Laye’s father never speaks to him about the snake again. But whenever Laye sees it, he goes to his father’s workshop and watches the snake enter through a hole in the wall. His father pets the snake, whose tremors seem to communicate something into his father’s hand. Laye never senses hostility or danger from the snake. He wishes he too could talk to it, but he suspects it wouldn’t have anything to tell him. He will continue going to school. Whenever his father has stroked the snake enough, he returns to his work, and the snake coils itself under a corner of the sheepskin Laye’s father sits on.
In Chapter Two, Laye recalls how he was most fascinated by his father’s work with gold. Women who bent over rivers collecting gold fragments would bring their pieces to him so he could smelt them a trinket. Because he was in demand and considers such work to be less important, Laye’s father must have his ego catered to. The women would hire a praise-singer to set up a cora (a harp-like stringed instrument) in the workshop, and the player would sing the praises of Laye’s father and his ancestors.
The gold smelting process involves apprentices working sheepskin bellows to get the fire roaring. Laye’s father demands absolute silence as he stirs the gold flakes with charcoal in a smelting pot over the flame. He mouths words that Laye knows to be incantations. This is part of the gold-processing ritual his father abides by: he calls on the genies of fire, wind, and gold, and exorcises evil spirits. He also always pats the coiled-up snake first. Laye comments that the snake isn’t always in the workshop, but he is always there when Laye’s father works gold. This means Laye’s father and the snake know in advance that a customer is coming.
At the end of the ceremony, Laye’s father celebrates the delivery of the finished gold trinket by dancing the douga, a traditional Mandé chant and dance reserved for men of high social position. He then distributes cola nuts, a Guinean custom. In high spirits having witnessed the smelting ritual, Laye always leaves the workshop to find his mother pounding rice or millet to process it. She expresses her dismay over her husband smelting gold, because the process is damaging to his eyes and lungs, which the douga will not protect him from. She advises Laye not to hang around breathing in the dust and heat of the workshop.
Analysis
The opening chapters of The Dark Child see Camara Laye establish several of the memoir’s major themes: respect for family, supernaturalism, ritual, colonialism’s influence, and uncertainty. Laye’s childhood brush with danger—feeding a reed into the mouth of a large snake—is an anecdote that introduces the fearlessness that will be a constant throughout his adolescence. However, Laye’s minor encounter transforms into a more significant anecdote about Laye learning of his father’s spiritual relationship with a snake.
As members of the Mandé-speaking Malinke ethnicity of Guinea, Laye and his family adopt certain animals as totems—objects or animals that have spiritual significance. When young, Laye discovers that his father’s totem is the snake. As a consequence, a particular shiny black snake regularly visits Laye’s father in his dreams to inform him of future events. Laye’s father believes the snake is the guiding spirit of their people and that it has chosen him as a respected public figure in their community. It is worth noting that Laye’s father relates these details as unquestionable facts, evincing his faith in the supernatural. Laye has no reason to doubt his father. If his respect for his father was not enough to convince him, Laye even sees the snake slither into his father’s workshop and curl up like an obedient dog.
The fantastical revelation of Laye’s father’s relationship with the black snake takes a somber turn when Laye’s father reflects on the growing distance between himself and his son. Laye’s father insinuates that Laye is unlikely to inherit the snake as his totem because Laye spends so much time at school. He also implies that pursuing a French-language education will inevitably lead Laye to leave one day. In this emotional scene, Laye brings in the theme of colonialism’s influence: Rather than take over his father’s profession and belief system, Laye is destined to excel in a school system brought in by French colonizers. Under the influence of this system, Laye will be drawn further into Francophone culture and away from his people’s traditional way of life.
The emotional moment with his father also gives rise to Laye’s first significant experience of uncertainty—one of the memoir’s most important themes. His father’s prophetic words, combined with the look of grief on his aged father’s face, provokes Laye to feel divided, and he isn’t sure whether he should stay in school or stay close to his father. Perhaps sensing his son’s anguished uncertainty, Laye’s father sends Laye away from him, deciding for him that he must continue on in school.
In the second chapter, Laye focuses on his father’s commitment to carrying out the rituals expected of a Malinke blacksmith and goldsmith. More than simply heating gold flakes and melting them into a piece of jewelry, Laye’s father purifies himself with oils and abstains from sex prior to working with gold. The ritual also involves consultation with his guiding spirit snake, who he strokes and seems to communicate with. Laye observes his father’s work with amazement and fascination, reveling in the celebratory atmosphere that follows. His respect for his father is also raised when he sees so many people treating him as an exalted figure.
However, the sense of celebration is undercut by an instance of situational irony. Upon leaving his father’s workshop, Laye inevitably encounters his mother, who sees the gold smelting process and its associated rituals as insignificant compared to the damage it does to Laye’s father’s eyes and lungs. She sees this potential harm as another reason Laye should stop hanging around with his father and focus on school.
