Moon Witch, Spider King

“And the city change at night. Now it look like the back of an animal, black with shadow and spikes.”

From the window of Mistress Komwono’s house, Sogolon sees, for the first time, the city of Kongor at night. The animal metaphor is significant as it foreshadows Sogolon’s relationship with Keme, as well as the mysterious and frightening Sangomin. Cities at night are also very different from cities during the day, and the sight of Kongor is alluring, allowing the girl with no identity to venture out into the darkness and hide from the outside world. Much of Sogolon’s life is lived at night, and the cloak of night allows her to live a life outside the confines of her daytime servitude.

“She think of the cat that just ran across the yard who only live to eat, piss, shit, just like the master.”

A recurring theme in the narrative is humanity’s bestial nature. Despite their “civilized” accouterments—their magnificent cities, art, and culture—human beings are ruled by their animal instincts, especially men like Master Komwono. Animals know only self-preservation and the demands of the body, and the men in the story often seem to be more beast than human, driven by their need to eat, defecate, and have sex. They regard sex as an entitlement, something women must consent to any time of the day or night. It’s an archaic mindset, but in this world of misogyny and oppression, it fits perfectly.

“This appall the Komwonos for their grand name is all they have.”

As Mistress Komwono and her sisters mourn the death of her husband, tensions flare over the family‘s fortune and property. In this world of courts and social status, names have great power, and Mistress Komwono longs to return to the king’s court. Time, however, has drained her wealth to the point that her reputation is all she has left, and she hopes that her name—once a symbol of a “legendary warrior clan” (47)—will be enough to help her regain her old position.

That is the only way she can think of it, this creeping heat that is not heat, pain that is not pain, madness that is not mad.”

As Sogolon wrestles with guilt over killing Master Komwono, she struggles to define the feeling, laden with contradictions. It speaks to the inadequacy of words to accurately capture emotions. At one point, she likens the feeling to the first time she tasted coffee but then feels bad for comparing her overpowering guilt to “something so light” (48). Her comparison makes sense, however, since she has so few reference points to which she can compare this feeling. People can only make comparisons based on what they know.

“But even a god is still like the man he did not yet create, meaning he raising his sons wild and careless, meaning he not raising them at all.”

James opens this chapter with a mythical tale of the “great god of the sky” (61) and his sons, Dumata and Durara. Their respective mothers, the sun and the moon, cannot care for them, so they hand the boys over to their father, who allows them to run across the sky unchecked and unsupervised. James alludes to the propensity in myths to create gods in the image of humans and with all of humanity’s faults. In this case, the god of the sky is no better than any absent father, letting his children run wild without providing the moral guidance all children need.

“I wonder if these will always be your ways. You see it and you call it. A vulture is never a hawk with you.”

When Keme offers Sogolon pity for her harsh childhood, she rejects it outright. Through Keme’s perspective, readers get a glimpse of an important part of Sogolon’s character—her independence and refusal to acknowledge her life is beyond her control. She is also relentlessly honest, and Keme’s recognition of that suggests something about the circles he travels in as a member of the court. Honesty is in short supply in an environment of duplicity, where a lie is simply a means to gain political advantage.

“The King is being about the ancestors’ business. Most magnificent Kwash Kagar is about his business.”

As Okyeame (heralds of the court) walk through the marketplace and account for the king’s absence from public life, they cloak their announcement in euphemism. The king is not sick or dying, but he is “about his business.” The Okyeame are skilled in this, “for the beauty is what come out of their mouth even if they describing a puddle of mud” (82). The panic that would ensue if the truth were to come out precludes any kind of honest proclamation, and it further explains why dishonesty is such a fundamental aspect of the court.

“He never did give reason to believe he mean to do her wrong that night. Like man need reason. But he wasn’t like any other man. But he is a man.”

When Sogolon follows Keme to the floating city, he saves her from falling to her death. She recalls a previous encounter with him in which Keme wanted to show her something “out back” (a euphemism in her mind for rape). She tries to reconcile the contradiction in her mind; thus far, all her encounters with men have been violent, and she cannot conceive of any man being different. Keme seems different, but appearances can be deceiving. She is torn between trusting her instincts and her experiences and wonders whether a man who pities her and saves her life is capable of violence toward her.

“A library is a place to read a text. An archive is a place to hide it.”

When Sogolon and Olu bump into each other, literally, in the palace library, she is overwhelmed by the sight of so many books—so much knowledge she cannot decode because she can’t read. Sogolon confuses the library with the archive, and Olu distinguishes between the two. An archive is generally a place to store knowledge for later reference, but for Olu, whose memory is fading, an archive is where knowledge goes to die. Olu believes his memory loss is an intentional act of sabotage, and so he equates hiding information in an archive with removing information from his own mind.

“Maybe all of these things is what she get from learning, that he is not only leaving words in her mind but a weight attached to every one.”

As Sogolon begins to decipher the writing on Olu’s walls, she is dismayed by the burden of all this knowledge. Coupled with the lurking presence of the spider child and the threat of the Aesi, it’s almost too much for such a young girl. James makes an observation about knowledge and education: Information doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it comes at a cost. For Sogolon, that cost is the awareness that she is caught in the middle of deadly court intrigue. These early trials, however, mold her into the warrior she will become.

“‘The only difference between who is a witch and who is not is one man’s mouth,’ say the cook.”

As the king’s witch hunt continues, the palace cook makes a cynical but historically accurate observation: In a patriarchal society, the mere accusation of witchcraft by a man is enough to condemn a woman to death. These accusations are easy to make in an environment filled with herbalists and shamans, two practices that are often associated with witchcraft. Male oppression of women through accusations of this kind is not uncommon in the history of the world.

“The King is always the King Sister’s firstborn son for a reason, for all that is truly kingly, not the seat of power, but the strength and wisdom to bear the burden of responsibility come from the sister.”

The feminist themes—the strength and wisdom of women—are emphasized here in the structure of royal ascension. Believing the best qualities of a leader are passed down from the female side, tradition states that the true king is born not to the reigning monarch but to his sister. When Kwash Moki interferes with that tradition by banishing his sister to Mantha, he upsets the stability of the monarchy. When Sogolon meets Lissisolo in the future, she finds the subversion of that tradition has become standard practice.

“Chains been on you so long that you believe the shackle is part of your neck.”

Sogolon longs to flee Fasisi, and she can’t come up with any reason to stay. Emini has told her she is not enslaved, so she should be free to come and go at her pleasure, but something prevents her from simply mounting a horse and riding off. For her whole life, she has been controlled by men and women in positions of power, and so she can’t imagine taking any action without explicit permission. James makes an observation about the psychology of trauma—when one has been oppressed for so long, freedom seems impossible.

“A woman who is but air to everybody can do what air do, slip into anything, enter any room, and be anywhere, with nobody giving a care.”

Sogolon realizes the advantage of being a nobody in a court of royals and wannabes: She can come and go as she pleases, and no one is keeping tabs on her. Unfortunately, anonymity has its downsides too. People make assumptions about her—men think she wants to be “spoiled,” and women assume that “she lose all use as woman” (213). She has also become a target of the king’s sadistic sons, and should she die, no one would notice her death. James’s use of “air” as a metaphor is prescient as well, alluding to Sogolon’s as-yet untamed power.

“Anything you can’t fathom you call witchcraft and anybody you can’t fathom you call witch.”

The fear of the unfamiliar is a natural human trait, but when that fear is used to persecute one segment of society, it veers into totalitarianism. In myths, women are seen as mysterious creatures possessing powers that men will never know, and the fear of that power has motivated many violent campaigns against women over the centuries. While witches are traditionally herbalists, practitioners of natural healing, and devotees of the spirituality of the cycles of nature, the label “witch” is a convenient epithet when seeking to eradicate women and their “unfamiliar” ways.

“Nobody is pure, but yes, we work toward divine purity like the goddess who has never been touched.”

On the road to Mantha, Emini and Sogolon endure harsh treatment captives of the divine sisters. For the sisterhood, however, purity has nothing to do with morality or kindness but rather abstention from sex. It’s an observation of the way religious institutions equate sex with sin, a belief that, over the years, has led to an association of sex with guilt. It has also prevented women from having the freedom to enjoy their sexuality without being denigrated.

“‘My book is written and closed, but yours? Yours is not even a book,’ she say.“

As the caravan of the divine sisterhood nears Mantha, Emini reflects on her life and the power plays that have led her here. She, of royal birth, has nowhere to go but down, but Sogolon, “‘late of a termite hut’” (228) has her entire life ahead of her. Emini sees the trajectory of Sogolon’s life and believes the sky’s the limit for her. It’s a prescient statement considering she will be the central figure in restoring the true king to the throne.

“Maybe it is not a gift from the gods but a god for true, doing what they do mostly, which is to fuck with people.”

The history of belief in the divine is also the history of violence and oppression—witch hunts, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and prohibitions against marriage equality, to name a few. The history of Greek mythology is likewise rife with stories of gods coming to Earth in human form and raping women. The unreliability of Sogolon’s power, she fears, may be the same thing: A “gift” that is no gift at all if she can’t control it. Maybe the gods have given her a taste of this power only to take it away during the times she most needs it.

“Comfort is a lie that shame the gods. Comfort is how you fool yourself. Comfort, like happiness, can’t last.”

Sogolon, now living with Keme and his wife, tries to distinguish between peace and comfort, noting that she longed for peace and comfort is a poor substitute. Living with Keme reawakens her love for him, but as long as he’s married, she will always be the other woman. Now free from the shackles of the royal court and the divine sisterhood, she realizes she is still not free. She is trapped by her love for a man she cannot have wholly. They have sex, but Yétúnde is the looming presence in the background.

“I wish it was for me what it is for him, but I done tired of every kingdom making a ceremony for boys.”

As Keme explains the sacred rite of “Iologo,” the ceremony by which boys are initiated into manhood, Sogolon reflects on how such rituals perpetuate the patriarchy. The elaborate parades are not celebrating a military victory, but simply the fact that these boys have penises. No such ceremony exists for girls, and that strikes Sogolon as profoundly unfair. At the same time, however, she rues the fact that she cannot appreciate these rituals as Keme can. Gender is a line that will always separate them.

“Man whip, man beat, man threaten, man swallow all he space but still she won’t flee, for he done leave her with nothing but the need for him.”

Sogolon, waking up with years of her memory lost, feels a powerful longing, the source of which she cannot recall. She thinks of women she’s known, women whose dowries gave their husbands more than they ever earned on their own, and in a cruel twist, those women lost control of their wealth and property. With the men in charge of financial affairs—not to mention the legal owners of everything—they have nothing left except their ties to the men who control their lives. It’s another example of how James infuses his fiction with historical realism. Dowries and forced marriages are not whimsical creations of a novelist but cultural artifacts that have kept women subjugated to men for centuries.

“A boy is not a boy. A boy is never a boy. A boy is potential.”

As Sogolon contemplates killing the child Aesi, her conscience torments her. Having witnessed the murder of her own child, the thought of killing another nearly stops her. However, she reminds herself that killing a boy in the short term is for the greater good. He is not only potentially the next Aesi, corrupting generations of future kings, but in a metaphorical sense, he is potentially another abusive misogynist, ready to uphold the status quo.

“I want to think that this too is the Aesi, but nobody need enchantment to write history any way they wish.”

As Sogolon prepares to ambush the Aesi, she is struck by how the citizens of Malakal are so ready to welcome the king, Kwash Dara, and his chancellor when they are responsible for so much injustice. The fact that “nobody in Malakal know their own history” (509) is a comment on the collective amnesia that has affected so much of the kingdom. In a larger sense, James reflects on history in general, how the stories of the vanquished are often lost in the “official” records, which are written by the conquerors.