Summary Of Dark Heart Of The Night

In Dark Heart of the Night, political upheaval triggers a multitude of questions that challenge the patriarchal society in Mboasu, in Central Africa. As a rebel group comes in and creates turmoil in the small village of Eku in the span of a single night, there is a shift in the gender hierarchy from man to woman when the chief gets decapitated as a symbol of weakness in his leadership, and strength in the young man who performed the decapitation. In that horrific night, members of the village began to question their sense of community with one another, despite the symbolic unifying of the clan through the cannibalistic sacrifice of one of their own. Rebel leader Isilo reminded the people of Eku what it meant to be African, and the efforts they
His leadership style was seen as poor, for upon looking at the village members, Isilo found the majority of them to be children too young of an age to fight in a war when the village required them of it (Miano 53). Challenged by Isilo to prove his manhood and driven by the “desire to appear a man in the eyes of men he so much wanted to join” young Eku member Epa decapitated Eyuom in a single motion (Miano 54). Ié, the eldest woman in Eku who carried herself with the upmost knowledge of her own importance, took it upon herself to step up and ask that the children, pregnant and nursing women leave the intruded ceremony, for they were tired and there was no need for them to hear about the sacrificial message (Miano 65). Noting
One is a personal level, between Ayané, Ié, and Eku, while the other case is amongst the members of the clan with one another. Ayané was the daughter of Eku native Eké and non-native Aama, which made the women of the village talk about her and call her bewitched for not having the same colored skin as everyone else (Miano 9). After she went away for educational purposes to France, she returned to Eku with a lack of open arms welcoming her. Contrasting this with Epa welcoming the rebels like brothers, it’s evident that Ayané, no matter her intentions, will always be seen as an outsider and unwelcomed. Since both her parents passed away, Ayané felt a personal detachment to the land of Eku with nothing keeping her from leaving. This detachment to the land only increased after the sacrificial ceremony. Because Ayané was not physically with the rest of the village during the entirety of the ceremony and was hiding afar in a tree, Ié claimed “her absence during the events proved that she had no place there”; if she was a true member of Eku, she would have known what happened during the intrusion (Miano 92). With Eku being her homeland, the land and the customs here represent some part of her, and if she let Ié tell her that she didn’t belong, then she would lose all parts of her personal history. During the ceremony, Ayané felt just as disturbed and afraid as everyone else,