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Chapter 11 Summary of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
Chapter 11 of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born opens with the man and Oyo waiting by the roadside for a taxi to take them to Koomson’s house. Oyo is extremely picky. She waves away several cars until they finally get into a shiny new Japanese Toyota. The driver remarks on the car’s make. He notes with some bitterness that “we Africans only buy expensive things” while others make them. Oyo ignores this truth, as the mere experience of riding in a comfortable taxi transforms her into a grand lady. She leans back deep into the cushions, speaking with unnatural, aristocratic airs.
The taxi drives past the Esikafo Aba Estates and enters the Upper Residential Area. The driver jokes about the absurdity of the name, “Upper Residential Area”. When the man explains it means “a place where people live,” the driver laughs at the implication and asks, “What do you mean, people? … every area is like that. So, what is the use of the name?”.
Upon arriving at Koomson’s mansion, Oyo stares longingly at the blue and gold iron gate shaped like a rising sun. Inside the compound, a tall, scarred gardener waters the lush grass, and Koomson’s daughter, Princess, confidently rides her bicycle around the yard. A shy servant girl leads the couple into an opulent sitting room filled with marble-topped tables, soft red chairs, a television, a massive stereo, and silver ashtrays. Sitting amidst this wealth, the man reflects on the seductive power of the “gleam.” He realises how easily men surrender their honesty to corruption, justifying their choice to take the “rotten ways” by telling themselves it is all “for the children”.
Koomson finally descends the stairs wrapped in a shiny dressing gown. He boasts about a busy night spent hopping between three nightclubs. He haughtily orders his steward, Atinga, to bring out expensive imported drinks. Soon after, Estella Koomson joins them, casually bragging about Oyo’s sister, Regina, who is in London on a scholarship Koomson arranged for her, and who is now demanding foreign exchange to buy a Jaguar.
Eventually, Koomson brings out the papers for the fishing boat, expecting Oyo’s mother to sign them. Oyo explains her mother is unwell. When Koomson suggests they can sign for her, the man firmly refuses to put his name on the corrupt documents. However, Oyo eagerly steps in and signs the papers herself.
The group then leaves in Koomson’s chauffeur-driven car to visit the boatman, who lives in a miserable, dark room that used to be a converted lavatory. Koomson briefly introduces Oyo to the boatman so he will recognise her as the boat’s representative. Afterwards, as Koomson’s luxurious car speeds smoothly along the coast road in the dark, the man is overcome by the sad realisation that it is impossible to look at such comfort and feel true contempt for it. He recognises the terrible, crushing power of the “gleam,” which constantly urges that nothing else matters but the acquisition of wealth.
Chapter 12 Summary
This chapter of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born opens with the man’s realisation that the corrupt fishing boat does not cast the long, oppressive shadow over his life that he had feared. When he occasionally wanders to the fishing harbour, he sees the boat named Princess after Koomson’s daughter resting on the blue-green water. He is struck by its sheer beauty and wishes he could share this feeling with his wife, Oyo, but he remains silent, knowing it would only bring her more pain and disappointment.
Meanwhile, Oyo’s mother has finally resigned herself to the truth that Koomson’s boat is not the “rainbow” that will end the darkness of her poverty. However, this realisation does not end her bitterness towards the man, as she seemingly holds him responsible for her shattered dreams.
Occasionally, Koomson remembers the supposed “owners” of his boat and sends his driver with parcels of fish for Oyo and her mother, who receive the gifts with a “childish gratitude mixed with unreal hopes”. One evening, as the man is hungrily eating a meal of fish and kenkey, Oyo deliberately points out that the fish came straight from Koomson’s boat, adding pointedly, “After all, it was not for nothing, the signing”. The man is stung with humiliation. He loses his appetite and quietly tells her, “Please don’t cook any more of this fish for me”. Oyo looks down in self-pity, and the man walks out into the dark. After this incident, the gifts of fish cease completely.
Later, there is loud public talk of a new commission, headed by a professor from Legon, intended to rid the country of corrupt trade. The citizens are completely cynical because they know the commission’s net is made in the “special Ghanaian way” designed specifically to allow the “big corrupt people” to pass through safely, while only catching the “small, dispensable fellows”.
The narrative then shifts to the man’s reflections on the meaningless, monotonous routine of the country’s workers. He finds a small degree of beauty and satisfaction in his own job; that is, the drawing of coloured lines on the railway graph. It spares him the “killing dullness” of other civil service jobs. He contrasts this with a temporary filing job he once did in the Accident Room, where he discovered that a full day’s work could actually be completed in forty-five minutes. He realises that the regular clerk survives his days only by meticulously inventing useless tasks like unnecessary alphabetical listings and habitual visits to the lavatory just to waste time and endure the crushing, inescapable futility of the system.
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Chapter 13 Summary
Chapter 13 of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born opens early in the morning in the Control Office, where the man is alone until two messengers arrive, one of them breaking the news that there has been a military and police coup.
Later, a trade unionist from the overthrown government rushes in. He hypocritically orders the workers to join a demonstration in support of the new regime, as he immediately switches his allegiance to save his own skin. The man refuses to join the opportunists. He excuses himself by asking, “If two trains collide while I’m demonstrating, will you take the responsibility?”. The unionist leaves to join the crowd.
Contrary to feeling happy about the coup, the man is cynical, having realised that this is merely a change of “embezzlers” and that the new leaders will eventually just use their power to fill their own paunches. However, when he returns home, he feels a sudden, unusual tenderness and embraces his wife, Oyo. She is confused and frightened, and quickly breaks the news that Koomson is hiding in their bedroom.
The man goes into the dark bedroom and is immediately hit by a corrosive stench emanating from the former Minister. Koomson is now a pathetic, shivering figure who whispers “they will kill me” with breath that smells of “rotten menstrual blood”. He is so terrified that his belly rumbles with loud, uncontrollable farts. Unable to bear the stench, the man asks if Koomson wants to bathe or use the latrine, but Koomson refuses. When Koomson admits he is hungry, the man asks Oyo to prepare some food.
While the food is being heated, Oyo grasps her husband’s hand tightly and, with genuine gratitude and a newfound respect, whispers: “I am glad you never became like him”.
Suddenly, the sound of marching boots and angry searchers is heard outside. The man quickly leads the terrified Koomson out to the public latrine. When he finds the latrine window barred, the man realises the only way out is through the wooden box seat’s shithole. They push the excrement-filled pan aside, disturbing a massive cockroach that flies onto Koomson’s white shirt. The man orders the disgraced Minister to dive headfirst into the foul hole. When Koomson gets stuck at the waist, the man physically rams him through, and then plunges down the faeces-crusted hole himself to follow Koomson out into the latrine man’s alleyway behind the building.
Chapter 14 Summary of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
The chapter opens with the man and Koomson walking through the dark, smelly lanes towards the fishing harbour in the east, retracing the “latrine man’s circuit through life”. They cross an open field full of rusty cans and compacted mud. At the big bridge, they spot a police barrier; Koomson, walking like a doomed, senseless man, almost walks straight into it, but the man guides him down to the sea’s edge where they creep carefully along the base of the breakwater to avoid being seen.
They eventually reach the boatman’s low house in the Anafo area. Here, the power dynamic completely shifts. The boatman, previously a frightened, subservient hireling, now looks at his former master with hardening eyes, fully aware that the powerful Minister is now weak and at his mercy. Koomson speaks in a subdued, pleading voice. He reminds the boatman of his own proverb, “When the bull grazes, the egret also eats,” and promises him half the boat if he helps them escape. The boatman grudgingly agrees.
At the harbour gate, the night watchman stops them, putting a whistle to his lips without actually blowing it. The watchman recognises the fugitive, and says, “You tink say ah no sabe. Ah sabe. Ah sabe sey you be Nkrumah party man. You no fit pass”. However, the watchman is merely waiting for a bribe. The boatman orders Koomson to pay. Koomson, acting “like a dead man,” pulls out his wallet as if to hand over everything he has. The boatman takes charge. He extracts a fifty-cedi note, but the watchman demands, “Put one more for top”. At the protagonist’s urging, the boatman hands over a second note, which the watchman receives with “loving awe,” and they are allowed to pass.
They board the boat, and the man helps the boatman start the engine. As the boat speeds out into the dark sea, the man breathes the clean air, only to be hit once again by the stench of Koomson’s fear as the Party man moves next to him. Koomson confirms that the man will be going back to shore and assures him that Estella will be alright. She has money, is with her mother, and has relatives in Abidjan and “friends who will look after her”.
As they approach the bay near Essikado, the boatman steers the boat into a wide curve towards the shore. Without any formal farewells or handshakes, the man leaps from the boat directly into the dark, cold sea. He holds his breath, swims to a floating inner tube, and slowly makes his way to the firm, wet sand of the beach, watching the boat and Koomson disappear into the distance.
Chapter 15 Summary
Chapter 15 of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born opens with the man waking up cold on the beach at dawn, having slept there after swimming ashore the night before. The sea is clear and the sky is open. He watches a lone figure advancing along the sand. It is a woman whose face looks as if it had been “finally destroyed a long time back,” moving with the unmistakable gait of madness. When she draws closer, the man realises it is his old friend, Maanan. She stops in front of him, scoops up handfuls of sand, and lets it drift through her fingers, desperately complaining: “They have mixed it all together! Everything! They have mixed everything. And how can I find it when they have mixed it all with so many other things?”. When the man calls her name, she merely laughs with a remote recognition and walks away into the distance. The man at least knows that he will find no answers from her or anyone else.
As the sun rises higher, the man watches his inner tube float away eastward and realises he left his sandals at the bottom of the sea. He walks back barefoot and passes a cemetery where little boys are chipping marble off the headstones. At the town boundary, near the bottom of the Roman Catholic school’s hill, he encounters a road barrier manned by soldiers and policemen. He squats by the roadside to watch.
A neat, new green bus pulls up to the barrier and is stopped. The young driver gets out and approaches a policeman, pleading that his passengers are in a hurry. In a quiet gesture that proves the new military regime is just as corrupt as the overthrown Party men, the policeman merely raises his hand and points to his teeth asking for his “kola”. The driver immediately understands; he slips a cedi note into his license folder and hands it over. The policeman expertly rolls the money into a hidden ball in his palm as he pretends to inspect the document, and then gives the all-clear.
As the bus pulls away, the driver spots the man watching by the roadside and smiles and waves at him. On the back of the green bus, the man sees an oval inscription with a solitary, unexplainable, and very beautiful flower in the centre. The words read: “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born”.
The man watches the bus disappear around the curve, unable to shake the imprint of the painted words from his mind. Nearby, a bird sings a strangely happy song while perched over the school latrine. However, the man’s mind is quickly consumed by the heavy reality of what he is returning to: Oyo, the accusing eyes of his children, his grimy office, and the knowledge that this “aching emptiness” will be all that the remainder of his life can offer him. The novel concludes as he walks very slowly back to his home.
Related:
- Chapter 1 to 5 Summary of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
- Chapter 6 to 10 Summary of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
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