34 pages • 1 hour read
Paul RusesabaginaAn Ordinary Man
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Paul describes his uneventful but happy childhood. The village where he grew up, his house, his family, and Rwandan culture have all shaped him—everything from the interesting role that banana beer plays in Rwandan social life, to the Rwandan system of justice have made him the man he is: “if geography creates culture, then the Rwandan mind is shaped like solid green waves. We are the children of the hills, the grassy slopes, the valley roads, the spider patterns of rivers” (3). Paul greatly admires his father, Thomas Rupefure, who enjoys a lot of respect in the community and his words carry a lot of weight. Thomas is a heroic figure in Paul’s life who always wants the best for him, pushes him to be successful during his childhood, and teaches him many important lessons—particularly, the importance of family history: “[w]hoever does not talk to his father never knows what his grandfather said” (12).
Thomas tells his children stories that capture the Rwandan concept of hospitality: in Rwandan culture, those who are suffering must be given shelter, regardless of their circumstances. Paul embraces this notion and carries it into adulthood.
Chapter 2 Summary
When Paul is five, his father provides shelter to fleeing Tutsis in Paul’s family’s village during the “Hutu revolution of 1959” (14). Even then, Paul realizes how arbitrary tribal distinctions in the community are, an incongruity amplified by his own mixed background: Paul’s mother is a Tutsi, but his paternal line makes him a Hutu.
The chapter describes in detail the lineage of the two races, Hutus and Tutsis, and the “invented history” (16) of physical and historical differences that distinguish them from each other. In 1863, when Tutsis ruled the Hutus, British explorer John Hanning Speke formulated his Hamitic hypothesis: that the lighter-skinned Tutsis had migrated to the area and were therefore not native, whereas the Bantu-featured Hutus were. This hypothesis is exploited by European colonizers like Germany, which got ownership of Rwanda in the 1884-85 Conference of Berlin, and Belgium, which received Rwanda as a spoil of the war after World War I. Both Germany and Belgium allow Tutsi regimes to exploit Hutus as a way of preserving colonial power.
In the 1950s, African colonies began to break free from European rule. In Rwanda, independence is a revolution: Hutus win 90 percent of the seats in the open election, displacing the Tutsis in an attempt to redress the economic and social inequalities between the ruling class and everyone else.
Paul describes the effect of this power shift on ordinary Rwandans. His friend Gerard is expelled from school because he is a Tutsi. Afterwards, Gerard is never able to get a good job or education: “[h]e was a Tutsi by accident and he had to live the rest of his life under that taint” (28).
Chapter 3 Summary
Paul providing describes the Hotel Mille Collines, which is “a modernist building of five stories, with a facade of stucco and smoked glass. From the outside it would look perfectly at home near any large American airport” (30). People from diverse fields and racial backgrounds mingle inside the opulent and elegant hotel” “Worlds intersect here. Whites and blacks mingle comfortably here inside a thin cloud of cigarette smoke and laughter” (33).
Paul becomes the hotel’s manager by chance. Several years earlier, after marrying Esther, Paul studied to be a pastor in college but lost interest in this profession. Naturally gifted with languages, he and Esther moved back to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, where a friend offered him a job at the Hotel Mille Collines. Paul was thrilled to get the job as, “the hotel already occupied an exalted spot in my mind—it was the symbol of urbanity I had been craving—and I seized the chance to be a part of it” (40).
Paul and Esther get divorced, and after a courtship of two years, Paul marries a nurse named Tatiana. Paul’s father dies in 1991, and, shortly afterwards, his mother passes away.
Meanwhile, his career takes off. He is promoted to assistant general manager, and in 1992 is hired by another luxury hotel, the Hotel Diplomates, where he becomes general manager.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Rusesabagina’s childhood is steeped in Rwandan culture, natural landscapes, and family. He gives us an idea of the importance of the landscape in the life of a Rwandan when he speaks of “the millions of rivulets and crevasses and buckles of earth that ripple across this part of Central Africa like the lines on the tired face of an elder” (3).
Paul’s father provides a legacy to his children through proverbs and stories that explain Rwandan traditions and provide the most important lessons of life. Through the example of banana beer, which is symbolic of the art of friendship and shared even by people who are in conflict with each other as a sign of renewed unity, Paul learns that to be human with an enemy or aggressor is the only way to deal with conflict. He learns that solutions can always be found in a sense community.
Even though Rwandan culture promotes renewed friendship between enemies, practical applications of this ideal don’t always happen. Historical “truth” changes depending on who holds political power—an instability that leads to the biggest and most dangerous racial conflict in the history of Rwanda. The story of division between Hutus and Tutsis fabricated by colonial powers eventually hardens into historical reality and cleaves the nation in two— a “dark epiphany [that] is an essential rite of passage for anyone who grew up in my country” (21).
Western countries are no longer colonizers, but they still play a role in Rwanda as advisers helping alleviate its economic, environmental, and humanitarian devastation. While they are in country, these outsiders want to live in splendor, which is where the Hotel Mille Collines comes in. It is also a beacon of hope for Paul, for whom the hotel is a respite, a place where he learns the art of conversation and techniques for making people feel comfortable and appreciated.
