Who Fears Death

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010

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Themes

Racism and Ethnic Conflict

The heart of Who Fears Death is the ethnic conflict and the day to day racism that accompanies this. (Or vice versa—the day to day racism that exists in the Seven Rivers Kingdom and the ethnic conflict that arises.) The Kingdom, which exists in a future version of Darfur, in Sudan—Daib’s town in fact recalls this in its name of Durfa—is populated primarily by the light-skinned Nuru, who are the dominant class, and the dark-skinned Okeke, who are subservient to the Nuru.

This subservience exists in several ways: primarily, within the confines of the Kingdom proper—“in the West”—the Okeke as a people exist solely as slaves of the Nuru as a people; individual Nuru do not own individual Okeke, but rather all Okeke are simply slaves to all Nuru. There is no opportunity to escape bondage—as we see toward the end of the novel, the bondage is such a part of life in the Kingdom that the Nuru will simply order any random Okeke to perform tasks for them, and may not even wait to see if they do. Secondly, to the east exist free Okeke towns; however, it is suggested that living in these towns is more like living in exile communities, as the towns exist far apart from one another in the desert, relying on capture stations and other means to procure water. This order exists systemically and gains its power and authority through something called the Great Book, the holy text of both the Nuru and Okeke, which states that their god, Ani, made the Okeke slaves as punishment for their technological progress and hubris many years ago. This belief is so strong that even the Okeke who live well outside the Nuru community seem to believe themselves subservient to the Nuru—they choose not to live as slaves but accept that this means they must live a harsher, rural life.

Beyond this division, there are further subclasses of people. The most important for the purposes of the novel is that of Ewu, meaning the child of a Nuru and an Okeke. Because of the relationship between the Nuru and the Okeke, the belief is that all Ewu are the product of rape, and therefore the product of violence; this leads people to believe that Ewu are themselves naturally predisposed to violence. Many Ewu are killed before they are born, sometimes even along with the mother; those who are born, like Onye, encounter varying levels of hostility throughout their lives, ranging from the racism and ostracization experienced by Onye in Jwahir to the outright violence experienced in towns like Papa Shee.

Although there have been uprisings in the past, leading to towns like Jwahir, in the current setting of the novel the sorcerer Daib—Onye’s biological father—is currently leading a campaign to eradicate the Okeke once and for all, beginning with the already downtrodden Okeke villages just outside the Kingdom. Because society in the Kingdom is so disconnected, particularly those in the East (like Jwahir), many don’t take the violence seriously—they hear occasional reports from photographers or storytellers, then they write the violence off as far from them and therefore not their problem. Onye and Mwita understand otherwise, however, as they not only know what things are like in the West but know of Daib’s fanaticism and power.

This violence and Daib’s tactics are meant to mirror the real life events of the War in Darfur in the early 2000s. In Sudan, non-Arab rebel groups rose against the government of Sudan because of discriminatory treatment against non-Arabs, which here would be the Okeke rising against the Nuru. In response, the government of Sudan carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the non-Arab population of Sudan, which in this case would be Daib’s campaign to kill off the Okeke. One of the tactics used in the real life war was the tactic of weaponized rape, which served as the basis for the novel, and it is this practice that creates Ewu children like Onye.

Gender and Cultural Norms

Although the dominant theme would be that of racial and ethnic conflict, running throughout the novel is the related theme of gender and cultural norms. Society in Jwahir is conservative and patriarchal in many ways; while we don’t see enough of society elsewhere in the Kingdom to know the extent to which it is similar to Jwahir, it is suggested that this is normal in the Kingdom as a whole.

One important way this arises is a way that also dovetails with the theme of racial and ethnic conflict. Parentage is meant to be defined through the father rather than the mother and further via the class system, which means that when a Nuru man, like Daib, rapes an Okeke woman, like Najeeba, the resulting baby belongs to the Nuru father regardless of the marital status of the woman. For Najeeba, this meant that her husband was in no manner the father of Onye; this allows the campaign of weaponized rape to work by splitting up families, which itself only works if the fathers buy into this. (Of course, Fadil rejects this and marries Najeeba; Fadil is Onye’s rightful father.)

Another important manifestation of this theme is the Eleventh Rite, which is, again, rooted in a real life practice known as female circumcision, or alternatively as female genital mutilation (FGM). In the novel, the Eleventh Rite is optional, but as Onye points out, it is expected of young women in Jwahir (and of course, they are only eleven when they must decide). Both the Rite and the larger practice of FGM are rooted in the idea of female purity—FGM has different forms, but its least intrusive form removes the clitoris, and its most intrusive effectively seals the labia majora shut, leaving only a small hole open for urination, with the idea that this will keep women’s sexuality pure for marriage. The Rite has the addition of juju—the scalpel used to remove the clitoris and, Onye believes, the belly chain, are bewitched so that the girls will feel unbearable pain whenever they are aroused. Naturally, though the girls undergo the Rite at eleven, they grow to regret it, and Onye seriously questions the purpose or value of such a regressive practice; however, the novel stops short of outright demonizing it by suggesting that for some, like Binta, it can be immensely valuable as a means of protection.

Gender norms and conventions create tension between Onye and Mwita (and initially between Onye and Aro, as well). Along with many other norms based on gender roles, traditionally, women are healers while men become sorcerers. Onye and Mwita, however, are reversed: Mwita doesn’t pass initiation and therefore is unable to become a sorcerer, though he becomes a gifted healer instead. Onye, on the other hand, is initially refused by Aro in part because she is a woman, though she is eventually accepted and passes initiation. Nevertheless, this remains a constant point of tension between Mwita and Onye: though Mwita loves Onye, he still buys into many traditional ideas and struggles to move past them with her, often growing frustrated that he is forced to be subservient to her power and fate, which in turn frustrates Onye for obvious reasons. This flattens the picture, however—Onye frequently discusses her own need for Mwita’s gifts as a healer, and she herself becomes frustrated that she has the tendency to fumble over her own power and require his gifts to be made whole again. In fact, the two complement one another, both as lovers and as magicians, only they do so in opposition to traditional gender roles.

The Role of Destiny and Consequences

The novel frequently returns to the nature of destiny and the necessity of consequences. Most obviously, Mwita and Onye must experience their own deaths when they go through initiation, the idea being that knowing how one dies removes the fear of death. However, the novel simultaneously raises the question of to what extent such prophecies must be followed. For one, while Mwita and Onye know how they are meant to die, it is never made clear that they had no other choice—they both choose to walk headfirst into that destiny rather than attempt to circumvent it, and there is no sense that they are being guided toward it (although they do wonder this, Onye ultimately rejects it). For another, the prophecy they are working to fulfill is not clear—Rana the Seer, the man who made the prophecy, appears to have altered it so that it isn’t clear if it is a Nuru man or an Ewu woman who is meant to be the person to end the violence. The difference is consequential: Daib believes that he is the person spoken of in the prophecy, and his method of ending the violence is to eradicate the Okeke, leaving only Nuru left. In the end, though she briefly falters, Onye makes a choice—regardless of the prophecy, she and Mwita take down Daib, and she rewrites the Great Book. Of course, when she arrives, Rana is dead, so we don’t know which prophecy was real, only which was fulfilled.