In “Goodbye Africa” by Ngugi Wa Thiong, a complex narrative revolves around marital relationships. Arguably, the central tension of the story arises when the protagonist’s wife informs her husband that she has had a lover before they return to Europe; Thiong perhaps can be said to leave open the question as to why this information is conveyed from wife to husband. In other words, understanding the motivation behind this gesture is crucial to understand what Thiong wishes to communicate to the reader. In this regard, the woman’s decision to tell her husband is a reflection over the protagonist’s own existential doubts about his role in Africa.
For example, in so far as the protagonist is a white European involved in the colonization of Africa, the protagonist tries to ascertain what his role or mission was in colonization. It seems to him to have been in some way an unethical action. In this regard, the woman’s decision to tell her husband mirrors the husband’s own doubts about why he came to Africa: at the outset, he did not possess such doubts, these arose over time. With the wife telling her husband about the lover, this symbolizes a certain destruction of the protagonist’s own world: this is the same destruction he feels when he becomes uncertain about his life’s work.
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The husband’s response to the wife’s disclosure immediately strikes him dumfounded. He does not respond to his wife, instead demonstrating a remarkable coldness. To paraphrase how Thiong describes the protagonist’s reaction to the news, the latter somewhat without any emotion goes about his routine, finishing his cup of coffee. This is the cold, outward reaction to the news. However, at the same time, there is a sense in which this news of betrayal confirms his own doubts about the entire colonization process. There is a sense in which what Thiong calls morals have left the man by participating in empire-building and exploitation of indigenous peoples in Africa. From this viewpoint, his wife’s own apparent betrayal of their trust as husband and wife is insignificant in comparison to his own violation of moral and ethical codes by participating in the great imperialism in Africa by European nations. The husband in this sense will only respond by remaining cold to the outside world, while he understands that his own ethical and moral code has collapsed both in his professional and personal life. There is a sense in which he is a destroyed man at the end of the story, but the husband’s cold reaction corresponds to the sense in which he has also lost any sense of morality and ethics, essentially become numb to the world and therefore losing a part of his humanity.
There is a sense in which the protagonist’s life ends with the disclosure of his wife. Not only does he experience profound existential doubts based on his own professional career, he now must encounter a profound doubt and betrayal on a personal level. However, in one sense this is justice, as his own moral bankruptcy is now reflected to him by his wife’s decision: it is as though an effect of kharma was now at work. The husband will most likely not leave his wife, to the extent that his life is already over: there is a sense in which the protagonist, after these series of failures, no longer exists, is numb and has lost all hope for the future. His story is one of a broken man, unable to act further, because he feels the existential trauma that has left him at the apparent end of his life.
