Existentialism and Religious Intolerance

Ngugi’s book does a lot more than it seems at first blush. The book seems to me, to be an existentialistic piece. The river, Honia is continually referenced in times of struggle and at the very end during Waiyaki’s condemnation: “the two ridges lay side by side, hidden in the darkness. And Honia River went flowing between them, down through the valley of life, its beat rising above the dark stillness, reaching into the heart of the people of Makuyu and Kameno.” This exemplifies existentialism in that life seems meaningless and absurd. It is absurd that the trial religions and the Christians have similar values and cannot get along or coexist. The river also symbolizes the circle of life in that when one dies such as Muthoni for example, the river continues to flow even during this great injustice. Life continues to go on.
Likewise, Ngugi also does a great job of encouraging the reader to take an open-minded approach when considering the values of other religions. He talks about the positive aspects of each religion and describes them as centered on love, but people have altered the meanings of these two religions. Their distortions have brought on negative stigmas which have hurt Christianity and the tribal religion. This is applicable today with the issue of terrorism. Many terrorists claim that they are abiding to their religious beliefs included in Islam. These Islamic fundamentalist commit violate acts in the name of jihad which they distort to mean “holy war.” This can also be seen when Christians went on the Crusades in the middle ages and presently when Christians bomb abortion clinics. All these situations are distortions in which a religious group alters the interpretation of their holy doctrine to their specific liking. Like these radical religious followers, the characters in the book shut out any person with a conflicting view than theirs.
In the end, the point of the book was to illustrate the foolishness of religious intolerance and also portray the ubiquitous aspect of existentialism.