Fire & Water

In chapter nine we see the women of Dakar finally reach their breaking point. Tired of playing the passive timid women they are expected to be, the women finally take matters into their own hands. After enduring long spans of time without food or water the women could no longer manage to merely meander around town begging for food and water. They knew in their hearts that if they wanted to get things done, they needed to take more drastic measures. I think that the brutality caused by the women shows the inner struggles that they have been dealing with that are finally coming out, and the rage is being directed at the Frenchmen. Despite the graphic details depicted in this chapter that pertains to the women's actions, the main thing that stuck out to me was the symbolism of fire and water. When the police come to arrest Ramatoulaye, Mame Sofi proposes that the women light fires to spook the horses. Although they could have spooked the horses in many ways, like making loud noises I found it interesting that the author used fire. In my own interpretation I thought that the fire was an allegory to the strike itself. The Senegalese were the ones who ignited the flame and now it was quickly burning way out of their control. Just like the fire the strike was started by the Africans wanted to protect themselves from the oppression being brought upon them by the French. The Senegalese workers thought that the strike would benefit them and eventually have a positive outcome, just as Mame Sofi thought that they could combat the Frenchmen on horses with fire and win the overall battle, making them go away. But the reality of the situation was much more harsh than they had expected. The strike had left many families devastated, hungry, thirsty, and even more poor than they had started. Similarly, women thought that lighting the fire would help them achieve their purpose of getting rid of the Frenchmen when the result ended up harming them and their community. Fire also has a negative destructive connotation that has the potential to get out of hand. These aspects of fire are what lead me to believe that fire is a good symbol of the might of the strike and its potential outcomes. It also resembles that the Senegalese people are less in control of their actions. In contrast, the French fight the Senegalese with water. When the women are at the police station the Frenchmen decide that the way to get rid of the women is to blast them with water from fire hoses. I thought it was interesting that the author chose this method because metaphorically, they are trying to extinguish the fire of the strike. Also the symbolism in choosing water as their weapon represents the control that the French have in the situation. Literally it exhibits that they have control over a vital resource that they have not been providing. Metaphorically, it shows the controlled and effective methods that the French use to assert their power.