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.

MUST WATCH, GOD'S BITS OF WOOD VIDEO! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JtD3NFZ2PM

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. 

Change in the role of women

At the beginning of Ousmane Sembene's novel, God’s Bits of Wood, the role of women is no different than in most countries at the time, and as a matter of fact still today in a number of countries. They were expected to fulfill the needs of their husbands, take care of all domestic affairs and bring up their daughters so that when they grow up they can do the same. After the strike broke, something unexpected in the role of women in Thies. Since men stopped working as a strike method to show their disapproval of the current methods, they stopped producing money to provide food for their families. Given this new situation, the women of Thies felt the need to take care of this and little by little became the new provider of the house.

I believe this is very interesting because women before were seen as almost useless, yet now the family up to a point depends on their ability to feed them.

Title

So far in the story although we still can't figure out completely the meaning of the book, there have already been some hints on what it may refer to. First let's start with God from God's Bits of Wood. There are two main perspectives on God. The people who rely on him and expect him to help them out of that preoccupying situation, in Ousmane's novel this people tend to be the older ones, and the people who although believe in God, think that they don't have time to spare and need to start taking action now despite the fact that God's will is for them to succeed. And the second part of the title, Bits of Wood, so far represent the base of Thies. The whole city is made out of pieces of wood. The city functions thanks to pieces of wood. Everything in the story is made out of wood.

Brotherhood

After the strike, many people, on the worker's side especially, are injured, and some other are dead. I found it very interesting that two women, maybe more, stopped doing their chores or whatever they were supposed to be doing to help the injured. No one told them they had to do it, but they still did it. This is a cultural phenomenon that can still today be seen in many countries in Africa, and some others in Latin America. It is some sort of brotherhood feeling. As Ousmane clearly describes it in the beginning of the book, these people lived in a very small and closed community, it could even be said to be isolated. This closeness allows people to get to know each other better and care about one another more. This is why, unlike in many other countries, having people stop doing their chores to help others is actually normal in the story while if someone were to do that in the USA they would most likely be cheered on.

Background and purpose

As I started reading God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembene, the first thing I did was to try and locate the story in a specific time period and geographic place and this is what I concluded:

This book was first published in 1960 but it actually takes place in the 1940s in Senegal. I found it interesting that the book is about the strike of the 1940s that occurred because the workers, especially the railroad workers, weren't happy and it was published in 1960, on the same year Senegal got its independence from France. This book lets us appreciate how the independence started. First the workers formed unions to complain about the status quo of Senegal, the Senegalese weren’t happy with the French dominance. Then, not only the workers but all types of people joined in the movement and little by little they started to get more organized. I think that the main purpose of the book is to contrast how a simple workers’ strike lead to the independence of Senegal.