Hopeless

In this picture we can really appreciate how hard the revolution was on the Senegalese people. Although in God's Bits of Wood Ousmane Sembene does not focus as much on the people who lost hope, here through this woman's look we can see how hopeless she felt.

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Religion

What role did religion play in the mentalities and attitudes of the workers?
Ramatoulaye's brother, Mabigue, said. "It is not our part in life to resist the will of heaven. I know that life is often hard, but that should not cause us to turn our backs on God. He has assigned a rank, a place, and a certain role to every man, and it is blasphemous to think of changing His design" (p45).
Is this the mentality of all the Senegalese at the time? Does wanting to change His design make people more or less religious?
In my opinion, my impression on the people in Ousmane's book is that although not all of them may be as religious as Mabigue, the great majority of his characters are religious and I don't think that wanting to change their current situation affects their faith.
Even earlier on the novel we can see in their greetings how they are always mentioning God.

Irony

Irony plays a big role in God's Bits of Wood:
-Ad'Jibid'Ji's grandmother thinks the french are savages
-Houdia and her baby die after all the effort Ramatoulaye put in saving them
-Isnard's wife commits suicide
-Women start playing the most important role in their houses
-Women go to the streets to fight
-Women march
-Women participate in the strike

Bakayoko

Bakayoko, whose reputation is built throughout the book, does not make his first appearance until chapter 15. Enven though we haven't heard him talk directly, the people's opinion make us have a great respect for him. He was one of the main leaders of the strike; he went from city to city giving speeches and helping the oppressed workers. It is said that he is a man “(…) whose shadow reached into every house, touching every object. His words and his ideas were everywhere, and even his name filled the air like an echo” (p. 64). Some people even argue an suggest that he may be the hero of the novel. When Bakayoko makes his first appearance on chapter 15, he does the let down the readers. He lives up to the readers’ expectations and thus far appears to be the same man people had been talking about since the beginning of the story. He is an intelligent man who weighs the consequences and takes everything into consideration before making any sort of decision. Ousmane Sembene portrays him as something even better than a hero, whereas one of the main characteristics of heroes is that they are all defined by their hubris, Bakayoko seems like a down-to-earth, humble, people’s person. In the novel he is portrayed as an almost flawless man. 

Women - contrast USA/SENEGAL

Historically, women have not only been considered intellectually inferior to men but also a major source of temptation and evil, and unable to perform work requiring strength.  Women have generally had fewer legal rights and career opportunities than men. Wifehood and motherhood were regarded as women's most significant professions. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Christian theologian, said that a woman was "created to be man's helpmeet, but her unique role [was] in conception . . . since for other purposes men would be better assisted by other men." As we can see in Ousmane Sembéne’s God’s Bits of Wood and through what I am going to tell you next, we can see how this belief is still going around in Senegal.

By the 20th century in America, women were seeing more job opportunities than they had ever seen before. Whereas in the 1850s where they could only be teachers and perform few other jobs, they were even introduced into the medical and scientific worlds. Laws passed in 1911 and in 1913 set maximum hours and minimum wages for working women. Perhaps most importantly, they fought for and to a large degree accomplished a reevaluation of traditional views of their role in society.

Meanwhile, in Senegal, where women had a status that remained marked by the weight of tradition and religion, they faced even more disparities in their social status. They had an absurdly high illiteracy rate, it was socially unacceptable for them to work outside of their houses or perform any jobs that required intellect or strength, and legally they had no rights that protected them if they ever wanted to work.

American women have had the right to vote since 1920, Senegalese women got the right to vote two years before God’s Bits of Wood takes place in 1945 and have played a very minimal job in politics ever since.

While in the US women got the right to own property in most states by the end of the 19^th century, in Senegal women were not allowed to own property under their own names, which made them extremely dependent on their husband, brothers fathers, uncles and even grandfathers.

Although polygamy has never been popular in the United States, by the 20^th century when this book takes place it was illegal for anyone to marry more than one person, while in Senegal it was legal and very common as shown by Mariam Ba in her novel So Long a Letter.

In Senegal, the position of women in most ethnic groups is one of dependence: husbands, fathers, brothers, and uncles all have rights over women and much of what they produce. Despite constitutional protections, women face extensive societal discrimination, especially in rural areas, where Islamic and traditional customs, including polygamy and Islamic rules of inheritance, are strong and women generally are confined to traditional roles. More than half of all women live in polygynous unions.

In mid-20^th century, a group of women formed the Association des Juristes Sénégalais to protect the rights of Senegalese women, but not many associations like this exist because for the most part they are not aware of their rights, or they are afraid because still today it is not socially acceptable for women to be independent in Senegal.

Chapters 9-10

Amongst all the deaths on this novel, Houdia M'Baye's was the one that stroke me the most. After we see all the effort that Ramatoulaye puts into finding food for Houdia and her baby so that they don't die of hunger, I find it sad that she ends up dying but also to an extent ironic. After Ramatoulaye devoted part of her time to keep them alive, they still end up dying.

"She is dead, and I am living. And everything I did was done so that she and her baby would not die of hunger” (p126). In this quote Ramatoulaye is basically ratifying what I just explained. She is vexed because she feels like all of her efforts were in vain and she even says that she would have preferred to be in Houdia’s place. Unlike in other countries, especially nowadays, where people die all the time and only a couple of people seem to care about it, since this was such a close community, everyone cared about each other and there is this feeling of familiarity that makes Ramatoulaye feel even worse than if it had been elsewhere.