如风

Henderson the Rain King - -

Tag： Henderson    the    Rain    King                                          

Henderson the Rain King (1959) tells a story of Eugene Henderson, who is a wealthy American. The story is narrated by Henderson himself, in the past tense and retrospectively. There are 22 chapters in all, and according to the text, it could be divided into three parts: the first 4 deals with the reason why he went to Africa, and the following 16 chapters deal with his journey and his experience and thoughts there, the last 2 chapters deals with his returning back.

 

The book opens on a question: “What made me take this trip to Africa?” Before leaving for Africa, Henderson, at the age of 55, was very confused and he was in a state of turmoil. He tells us all about himself: he is rich but unhappy, well educated, big and strong. He behaves like a bum, getting drunk, fighting in country saloons and so on, any way, he is considered “crazy, and with good reasons—moody, rough, tyrannical and probably mad.” He married twice and often quarrels with his wife Lily. In the first chapter, he tells us what has brought about his “craziness”, which was caused partly by his own temperament, partly by the world and the society, which he lived, and which made him more and more violent. He became more and more estranged from his wife; his family, neighborhood and he heard a voice, which raged within him, kept saying, “I want”. Henderson himself became a pig farmer and raised pigs on his ancestral estate, he took violin lessons in New York in order to cool his inner voice, but no matter what he did in order to suppress it, the voice kept repeating the same demand, louder and louder. He and Lily got reunion, but the marriage to her didn’t silence his inner voice. Finally, he decided to join his friend Charlie Albert on his trip to Africa, to the very heart of primitive Africa, to find a cure for his inner wrath and longing.

 

His friend Albert went to Africa to spend his own honeymoon with his bride and he likes photography, in which Henderson had no interest. One afternoon, he heard his familiar voice again within saying “I want, I want, I want!” So he decided to go further into the heart of Africa. So he bought a jeep from his friend and set out to see off the beaten track with one African guide named Romilaya, and shortly they abandoned the jeep. They went through villages and crossed mountains and deserts, father and farther out until they arrived in the land of the Arnewi, a tribe of cattle raisers. He found that the tribe in a way was “cow worshipper-tribe”. They were sad because they were enduring a terrible drought, which they regarded as a punishment sent by the gods. They mourned at the death of their cows but they had nothing to do with this. Actually, their cistern was invaded by frogs, which they also regarded as a curse of supernatural origin. He wanted very much to help the people and said his thoughts to the Prince Itelo, a big, muscular man whose dignified good humor appeals to Henderson. Itelo took Henderson and Romilaya to the hut where they were to stay, and told them about his own education in Malindi, his wanderings and his befriending Dahfu, the king of Wariri tribe. It was a custom to wrestle with the local people and the prince invited Henderson, who was reluctant to do so but at last he won. He told the prince that “ Your Highness, I am really kind of on a quest.” He was introduced to Queen Willatale and her sister Matalba. They took to each other and offered gifts to both ladies and Itelo, and then he was invited to kiss the queen on the belly. He was silent and embarrassed when he was asked who he was. Believing the queen could help him out; he asked her what she saw in him. Willatale told him: a strong and large personality, a mind full of thought, in love with sensations, a sore heart, full if grief, fierceness and frenzy; a man who looks like a suffering monument of flesh, who is not at home in life. Henderson was grateful to the queen for his sympathizing with his troubles, and started singing from Handel’s Messiah, whereupon the queen remarks:” Grun-tu-molani. Man want to live.”  Henderson planed to make a bomb with gunpowder and his flashlight case, so the blast would kill the frogs and the water could then been given to the cattle. One night, Mtalba visited him and said she was in love with him, however, Henderson remained engrossed in his bomb-making and frog-killing plans. The next day, Henderson, quite excited, lead the villagers to the cistern. However, the frogs were dead, but the bomb also blasted out the retaining wall of cistern so that all the water seeped in to the sandy land. Henderson was appalled by this disaster and wishes Itelo would take his life. The prince didn’t take his life and he decided to leave the Arnewi, who now considered his presence as a sign of bad luck.

 

He and Romilayu went on farther into Africa; they traveled over difficult terrain for about 10 days. The Wariri were said to be tough, and Henderson felt that he “was less likely to do any damage among them.” They were disarmed by some of the Wariri people and were ordered to sit on the ground and to wait. Biting into a hard biscuit Henderson broke one of his bridges, which filled him with “ anguish of spirit”. After this he felt compelled to recall the history if his dental work. The Wariri people neglected them and they were isolated from the rest of the tribe and committed to a hut where a man interrogates them. They are left alone to spend the night in he hut, with “neither meat nor milk nit fruit nor fire. This was a strange sort of hospitality.” He found a dead body was put in his hut and at first they had no idea of whether it was a joke or something more serious. He soon was convinced that the corpse was a challenge that can’t go unanswered. He resolved to get rid of the corpse and, fighting back his disgust, dumps it in a nearby gully. Immediately there came an examiner, as if he wanted to measure how strong Henderson was. When they woke up in the dawn, they found the corpse was put back again. Early in the say, he was aware of a special day, which there would be a ceremony asking for rain as the Warri was suffering from a drought for some time. The Wariri paid no attention to Henderson’s tall figure as he wandered in the street. Later he was introduced to the king. The first ritual took place between the king Dahful and a young woman who played at catching human skulls, which Henderson didn’t understand. He accidentally became the rain king and his involvement with the affairs of the tribe increases. He was made to conform to their customs, such us beading the title of Sungo and wearing the rain king’s clothes, which he thought ridiculous. He had a significant conversation with the king. Dahfu has “a strong gift of life” and began to instruct Henderson in the ways of life as he saw it. The king’s dignity and nobility struck Henderson, though he still found it a little difficult to understand how a man ho had received a university education still managed to submit primitive. But he got to learn. Henderson confronted with the lion Atti, the beast is a symbol of danger, strength, and beauty, and Dahfu seemed to enjoy a relation of total trust with Atti. He had an understanding of the lioness, f nature, which he tried to convey, even transfer, to Henderson: “ try, better to appreciate the beauty of this animal. In his conversation with Dahfu, Dahfu revealed that there was a connection between insides and outsides, especially as applied to human beings. What is outside is just the creation if the mind, and it can in turn have an influence on one’s whole attitude to life. Later Dahfu said that the mind, or imagination, could change a person utterly: “ imagination, imagination, imagination! It converts to actual, it sustain, it alters, it redeems!… what Homo sapiens imagines, he may slowly convert himself to.” Although as he said “ to tell the truth, I didn’t have full confidence in the king’s science”, he understood that “ maybe, every guy has his own Africa…, why which I meant that as I was a turbulent individual, I was having a turbulent Africa.” He sent Romilay away to avoid getting him involved in the trouble he senses was about to happen and wrote a letter to his wife Lily. Chapter 19 ends with the words “I had a voice said, I want, I want! I? It should have told me she wants, he wants, they want.”

 

The last two tells us that he tried his best to escape from being the king in Wariri with the help of Romilayu.

- 作者： 如风 访问统计：　2005年10月23日, 星期日 22:15 加入博采