Summary
Upon returning to Conakry in October after his vacation, Laye is pleased to find that his technical school has undergone a reorganization. There is a new director and teachers have been brought in from France. He is happy to be learning at a high level finally. He also meets Marie, a girl his age whose parents are close to his uncle. Because of this connection, she often stops by Mamadou’s house.
Laye and Marie only ever treat each other with modest friendliness, but Laye’s aunts tease them relentlessly about liking each other. They would like to see the two engaged, despite their youth. Laye comments that it was clear they loved each other mutually, but never discussed it. He wonders if love is the right term, as happiness might be more fitting. Despite being initiated into manhood, his feelings for her are a childishly innocent infatuation.
Laye knows that all the other boys are in love with Marie, but he is proud that she ignores them and only spends time with him. When not in school, she rides with him on his bicycle to the shore, where he relishes the fresh ocean air. He chats idly about going out to one of the desert islands further out. Laye comments that three years pass like this in Conakry. At the end of his studies, Laye is among the few students chosen to take the rigorous three-day examination of proficiency. His mother and aunts consult spiritual guides to help bring luck to Laye. Marie also worries for his success. Ultimately, seven of the fourteen students pass the exam, with Laye in first place.
With every visit home to Kouroussa, Laye finds that his mother has made improvements to his hut. There is almost always a fresh layer of plaster, and she modifies the space to make it more European and comfortable. For instance, she changes his brick bed base to one of wood planks and a mattress stuffed with rice straw. Laye entertains friends in the hut. They pile on the bed and sing and play guitar. While Laye’s father approves of the gatherings, Laye’s mother doesn’t. She comes in unannounced and promptly kicks out any young women who have a reputation for being sexually available.
During this period, Laye’s best friends are Kouyaté and Check Omar. In Kouroussa, the three spend so much time together that their grouped voices become known to people in the community. They often eat together, rotating between their family supper tables. At one point both Laye and Kouyaté notice their friend Check looks ill: his face is grayish and his stomach is sticking out. Check assures them there is no pain. However, his condition worsens and the boys alert his mother.
By then Laye and his male friends have far less faith in the medicine men their families consult when someone is ill. Still, Check goes along with the medicines his mother gets for him. His condition doesn’t improve. Eventually Check goes to the hospital, and Laye hopes the white doctors can heal him, doing what their medicine men couldn’t.
Check is emaciated everywhere except his distended belly, which is hard and cold, as though already dead. Kouyaté and Laye stay at Check’s bedside as he tells them who he’d like his few possessions to go to. They are with him when he dies. Writing about it for the memoir, Laye feels as though he is reliving those awful nights in the hospital. He now thinks of Check as simply having gone first on God’s highway, a route that he will inevitably follow.
In the twelfth and last chapter of The Dark Child, Laye recounts how the director of his school in Conakry asks him, upon graduation, if he would like to continue his studies in France. Without thinking very much or consulting his parents, Laye accepts the offer. This becomes a conflict when he returns to Kouroussa. It is supposed to be an occasion of celebration, but Laye’s mother is outraged to learn her son wants to leave her again for France. She insists that he must not go.
Laye consults his father in private, admitting that he already accepted the offer and needs parental permission. Laye’s father, to Laye’s surprise, supports his son taking the opportunity before him. It is Laye’s mother who will be difficult to convince. Together they find her pounding millet with a large pestle and mortar. Laye’s mother knows what the conversation is going to be about, and she erupts into a monologue in which she laments how her son is being taken from her once again. She calls Laye ungrateful and a nobody. However, she then weeps and clings to him. Laye understands she has already accepted the inevitable, perhaps many years ago.
Laye returns to Conakry, where Laye is given a map of the Paris metro system and directions about what to do upon arrival. He and Marie board a propeller plane to Dakar, as Marie will continue her studies there and Laye will board another flight. She makes Laye promise that he will return to Guinea. He promises that he will. They both are wracked with sobs, their faces wet with tears. The memoir ends with him feeling the metro map folded in his pocket.
Analysis
In the final chapters of The Dark Child, Laye discovers that the Technical College has undergone a reorganization and brought in more highly educated and committed teachers from France. Laye builds on the theme of independence as he details his adolescent crush on Marie, a fellow teenager with whom he first experiences the anonymity and freedom of city life. He is also proud to be chosen by a girl everyone seems to want to be with: Marie ignores them all to spend her time with Laye. Laye is also proud to learn that he has received the highest grade among the seven students who passed the final examination.
In Chapter Eleven, Laye shows how his visits to Kouroussa reflect his growing independence. Having received his own hut after getting circumcised, Laye is allowed to entertain guests with singing and guitar-playing late into the night. While Laye’s father approves of his son’s behavior, Laye’s mother has more difficulty accepting her son’s independence, and she continues to hover over him, kicking out any young women she suspects of being promiscuous.
The carefree, fun-loving lifestyle Laye enjoys in Kouroussa is hampered by the revelation that his close friend Check Omar is ill. Check is too proud to admit he is sick, downplaying the warning signs of emaciation and a hard, distended stomach. Unfortunately, neither traditional remedies nor Western medicine can cure him of the unspecified illness, and Laye is at his friend’s bedside as he dies. The traumatic episode stands as another important part of Laye’s coming-of-age story, as it shows him firsthand the value of the life he has.
The last chapter of The Dark Child sees Laye’s conflict reach a climax. Throughout his childhood and youth, Laye has fretted over his uncertain future, worrying whether he is right to stay in French school over taking over his father’s forge. The excellent results of his final exam lead to an opportunity to continue his education in France. Laye accepts without thinking about how the decision is going to upset his parents.
Upon his return to Kouroussa, Laye informs his mother, who reacts with anger and hostility. She refuses to let her son abandon her again, as she has already been without him for the years he studied in Conakry. Ironically, she sees his desire to move to Europe as a show of disrespect for the family who has supported him on his journey to get there. Luckily, Laye’s father foresaw the event, perhaps as far back as the time he wept over his prophecy that Laye would one day leave him. Regardless, he approves of Laye taking the opportunity. When they speak to his mother, Laye realizes that she too has accepted the inevitability of his departure. She is simply acting out of grief.
The book ends with Laye and Marie crying over the prospect of Laye’s uncertain future in France. While he promises to return, he doesn’t know when he will come back to Africa to be with the people he holds so dear. The Paris metro map in his pocket is all he has to help navigate his new life—a stark contrast to the overwhelming love and support he has enjoyed in Guinea. In the end, the influence of the colonial French education system has pulled him away from his traditional culture and toward Europe. But ultimately, Laye’s memoir stands as a testament to the respect and admiration he has for the culture and family he left behind.
