📚 Need a custom study guide on any literary text? Get the best study guide money can buy from us at Literature PADI! Detailed, insightful, and crafted by literature experts to give you maximum value for your money.
[See Pricing & Details!]
Chapter 1 of At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop paints a catastrophic war environment. It is a battlefield characterised by “bloodstained water” and “rats feed(ing) on human flesh”.
Alfa Ndiaye, the protagonist of the novel, is with his dying friend, Mademba Diop, whom he describes as his “more-than-brother”, childhood friend”.
Mademba Diop is dying as his stomach is already split open with his insides out. He begs his friend, Alfa Ndiaye, to slit his throat to save him the torturously slow death.
Ndiaye, however, refuses to oblige to the request on the account of not wanting “to disobey the laws of humanity”. Consequently, his friend dies a very painful death after moments of groping to pack in his insides.
Mademba’s death opens Alfa Ndiaye’s eyes to the social construct around him. He is guilt-stricken and regrets not slaughtering his friend when he asks that of him, allowing him to die in so much pain instead.
He realises he can’t remedy what has happened and stuffs his friend’s insides back into his belly with his “regulation trench coat and … shirt”. He carries the body across the battlefield while he asks for the dead’s forgiveness for not coming through for him when he needed him the most.
Chapter 1 of At Night All Blood is Black is significant in that the death of Mademba Diop opens Alfa Ndiaye to a new perspective about the world. It changes him and forces him “to think for himself”.
Final Thoughts
The names “Mademba Diop” and “Alfa Ndiaye” vaguely hint at two Senegalese soldiers fighting in the trenches of a war. What war they are fighting, we have not been able to establish yet. The immediate setting of chapter 1 of At Night All Blood is Black is a battlefield characterised by human destructions and gruesome deaths.
The themes in the opening chapter of this novel include the brutal realities of war, death, regret, and the psychological transformation of war, as in the case of Alfa Ndiaye whose shift in perception comes as a result of Mademba Diop’s death.
Join Our Social Media Channels:
- WhatsApp: Literature PADI
- Telegram: Literature PADI
- YouTube: @literaturepadi
- Facebook: Literature PADI
We also have two WhatsApp chatrooms with a little above 1,300 like-minded members. You can join any of them for further literary discussions:
Ensure you join one at a time to allow others to be part of our wonderful community.
 on human flesh”.){kind=link}