The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1969

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Essay Topics

Important Quotes

Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary

The man walks home slowly. He passes life on the street: people selling fruit and food, a mother and a sick infant, a prostitute. He watches a rich man buying bread from a street vendor. When the rich man sees the unnamed man, he says that he and his wife Estella (Estie) will come to the man’s house soon for dinner. Koomson tells the man to say hello to Estie, who’s sitting in the car, waiting. When the man shakes her hand, he cringes at the feeling of a copious amount of wet perfume that’s transferred from her hand to his.

Later, when the man sits on the bus going home, he realizes that he can recognize the places they pass by smell alone. The man has a quiet homecoming to his wife and children. The man feels guilty and ashamed when his wife tells him that she doesn’t understand why he won’t take bribes and become successful like Koomson.

Chapter 5 Summary

The man becomes restless at night and decides to go for a walk. He sees a naked man lying on a cot reading. The man enters the naked man’s house, and they listen to the radio together. He calls the naked man, “Teacher,” and it becomes clear that they speak to each other regularly. The man wonders aloud whether, like his wife Oyo believes, he really is a coward or a fool. He questions Teacher whether it is possible in the new Ghanaian society that honesty has become a form of selfishness. The man reveals that Koomson—his old classmate, it turns out—has told Oyo and her mother about a scheme involving fishing boats. Oyo and her mother are convinced that this scheme will make them rich, although the man is doubtful. He speaks to Teacher about his feeling of being a criminal for not conforming to social pressure. The man thinks about a dream he had that his own mother drove him out of her house.

Chapter 6 Summary

In Chapter 6, the man reflects on the speed at which things in Ghana are changing, for good and for bad. He thinks about his old classmate Aboliga the Frog, who owned a book of oddities in which there was the story of “an old manchild” who was born, grew old, and died within seven years (63). The man also thinks about the effects of war on Ghana. The war resulted in broken families, violence, and an emphasis on wealth. The man remembers his childhood during the colonial past—including an attempt to steal mangoes and almonds from the British-built golf course estate, or as he calls it, the “white men’s hills” (67). He also remembers smoking marijuana (called “wee”) with his friends Kofi Billy and Sister Maanan by the ocean. The man remembers when Kofi Billy hanged himself with a sheet, and the unease their community felt in the aftermath of his suicide.

The man recalls another friend, Egya Akon, who was murdered for a few British pounds by friends. The man reflects on the terrible phenomenon of watching Ghanaian politicians grow to resemble their British colonizers. The man also reflects on the day that Sister Maanan urges them to go hear a new politician, who is implied to be Kwame Nkrumah.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

In Chapter 4, the author introduces the character of Joseph Koomson, a wealthy minister in the new Ghanaian government. Koomson’s familiarity with the main character belies the fact that neither Koomson nor his wife, Estie, are able to see him at first. This emphasizes the main character’s invisibility—and the regular citizen’s invisibility—in this new administration. Koomson used to be a man like the main character, but he made choices that allowed him to reach a level of wealth and financial security that the main character can only dream of. The text implies later in the chapter that Koomson succeeded thanks to his questionable financial dealings, thus, the figure of Koomson constantly reminds the main character of the potential benefits of a more corrupt way of life.

When the man goes home, he feels an intense amount of guilt and shame when he looks into his wife’s “flat” (43) eyes. Oyo represents the social pressure to do as everyone else and accept bribes and corrupt financial dealings in order to gain standing in the new government. Oyo compares the man to a “chichidodo” (44), a bird that hates excrement but must feed on the maggots in the lavatory to survive. This is Oyo’s metaphor for her husband—in her view, he must accept the unsavory source of financial success if he is to allow their family to prosper.

The man initially leaves the house because “the confusion and the impotence had swollen into something asking for a way out of confinement” (47). The pressure that he feels after speaking to Oyo—and seeing that his children are beginning to adopt their mother’s attitude towards him—forces the man outside. Throughout the novel, the main character often goes for walks when the stifling atmosphere of his workplace and home become too intense to bear. While the outside world offers visible reminders of the stagnation and deterioration of Ghanaian society, it also offers the potential for escape. This “freedom from dirt” (23) is rare, but it gives the main character a welcome reprieve from the grinding futility of his everyday life and routine.

Chapter 5 introduces the character Teacher. His background and relationship to the main character are unclear; however, it is immediately apparent that Teacher is the man’s confidante—the main character does not speak to anyone else as openly. They discuss the reality of the political situation in Ghana. Teacher is older than the man, and he has given up on expecting anything out of life. Teacher was one of the people who had hope for the new government, but after seeing that nothing changed after the British colonizers left, he has given up that hope. Teacher represents the people who have sunk deeper into resignation and disappointment.

The man tells Teacher about how his honesty breeds feelings of shame and criminality. Although he is making what some would consider a moral choice to abstain from correction, the man does not feel empowered or righteous from choosing to live this way. Instead, he feels the judgment and condemnation of the people around him, including his wife and children.

The man’s reflections, memories, and internal dialogue mostly compose Chapter 6. In the bulk of the chapter, the man is concerned with the passage of time, and the legacy that the past has left for postcolonial, post-independence Ghana. The man remarks early on how “horribly rapid everything has been” (62). The pace of political change has been daunting, and not always beneficial for average Ghanaians. The man thinks of his childhood during colonial times with a mixture of fondness, awe, and shame. The man’s memory of the colonial past is from a distant perspective. When he remembers trying to steal mangoes and almonds, it’s almost as if he is remembering someone else’s memory. The end of the story—being chased from the golf course by guards and dogs—is tinged with violence and fear.

The narration also slips into the second person during Chapter 6—a rarity in this novel. The chapter ends with the man’s indictment of Ghanaian leaders: “there is something so terrible in watching a black man trying at all points to be the dark ghost of a European” (81). The man goes on to say that “the only real power a black man can have will come from black people” (82). The man’s leaders have failed him, and he adds that people like Nkrumah are “not the only one[s] whom power has lost” (88). Power has corrupted the men who had been heralded as the saviors of Ghana—now the leaders of Ghana are all too similar to the British colonizers of the past.