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Plot Summary of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is a work of prose fiction that explores the deep disillusionment of a newly independent Ghana under the increasingly corrupt, pseudo-socialist regime of Kwame Nkrumah (Osagyefo) and his Party men. The deliberate graphological deviation in the title— that is, spelling “beautiful” as “beautiful”—carries connotative implications. It points to a unique, inner purity; the “beautyful ones” are those rare individuals who manage to maintain their moral integrity and refuse to be tainted by the overwhelming societal rot.
The novel centres on an unnamed protagonist, simply called “the man,” who works as a traffic control clerk at the grimy Railway & Harbour Administration Block. He is an upright individual trapped in a society that has normalised corruption as the national game. The man is burdened by the monotonous poverty of his daily life on the one side, and the death of his past aspirations on the other. He had once dreamed of furthering his education at the University of Legon, but the unexpected pregnancy of his wife, Oyo, forced him into a life of premature responsibility and unending struggle.
The man is alienated by his immediate society. This is mainly because he refuses to associate with unsavoury characters or participate in the pervasive bribery around him. His integrity earns him condemnation by his society. He faces the heavy reproach of his wife and mother-in-law, who are desperate to escape their poverty. This tension peaks when the man refuses a bribe of two ten-cedi notes from a wealthy timber contractor looking for wagon space. When he confesses this to Oyo, she reacts with sarcastic fury. She compares him to the chichidodo, a proverbial bird that hates excrement with all its soul, yet feeds on the maggots that grow best inside the lavatory.
The man feels like a criminal for his honesty. So, he seeks solace by visiting his estranged friend, Teacher. Teacher is a cynical man who reads in the nude and has chosen to live completely isolated from his family to escape the corrupting “call of the loved ones”. Though the man views Teacher as free, Teacher admits he is merely a coward who has lost all hope, comparing himself to a ghost or the “walking dead”. Teacher explains why society attacks the man’s honesty. He recounts the myth of Plato’s cave: society is trapped in a darkness of its own making, and it will fiercely hate and mock any “madman” who tries to break the chains and bring in the light of truth.
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The man’s perceived failures are contrasted with the success of Koomson, a former classmate who, despite lacking intelligence, has become a wealthy Minister in Nkrumah’s government. Oyo and her mother view Koomson as their saviour. They eagerly agree to a corrupt scheme to act as the legal front for Koomson to secretly purchase a fishing boat.
When Koomson and his haughty wife, Estella, visit the man’s impoverished home to discuss the boat, the class divide is stark. The man is unable to provide the expensive foreign liquors the wealthy couple expects. Estella openly insults the local beer. She claims it does not agree with her “constitution,” though the man firmly defends it. The visit reaches a climax of embarrassment when Koomson asks to use the restroom. The man bluntly informs the Minister that they do not have a toilet, only a public latrine. When Koomson attempts to use it, the overpowering, nauseating stench of the facility forces the pampered politician to retreat in utter disgust.
As regards the boat scheme, Koomson reveals that because socialist ministers are not supposed to own such property, the boat must be purchased in the names of Oyo and her mother as a front. However, the family’s dreams of sudden wealth are shattered when Koomson admits the boat costs twelve thousand pounds and yields only one thousand pounds annually. The man calmly calculates that it will take twelve years just to pay off the cost of the boat itself. While the mother-in-law is visibly deflated, Estella Koomson carelessly remarks, “What matters is that there will be plenty of fish to eat”. This goes to show that Estella is completely blind to the agonising poverty driving the family’s desires.
The narrative takes an unexpected turn when a sudden military and police coup overthrows the President and his corrupt Party men. While opportunistic unionists and crowds take to the streets to demonstrate their new loyalties, the man refuses to join them. He harbours no hope that the military men will bring a true turnaround. For him, the coup merely represents a “change of embezzlers” and that the new leaders will simply use their power to fill their own paunches.
Meanwhile, Koomson seeks refuge in the man’s bedroom. He is now a hunted fugitive stripped entirely of his “gleam” and arrogance. He has been reduced to a shivering, pathetic figure who soils the air with the overwhelming stench of his own fear and flatulence. Seeing the disgraced Minister in this state, Oyo’s perspective shifts entirely. She grasps her husband’s hand with newfound gratitude and whispers, “I am glad you never became like him”.
It is very ironic that the upright man who detests the societal rot becomes the instrument of escape for Koomson, the very symbol of that corruption. When searchers arrive at the house, the man is forced to lead Koomson to the public latrine and ram the disgraced Minister headfirst down the filthy, excrement-crusted shithole to escape. They navigate the dark, foul-smelling lanes to the harbour, where Koomson, now acting “like a dead man,” is forced to bribe a night watchman with fifty-cedi notes to secure their passage. They board the fishing boat, and Koomson reassures the man that Estella will be safe with her relatives. As the boat speeds away towards the Ivory Coast, the man leaps into the sea and swims back to the shore.
The morning after the escape, the man walks slowly back to town. At the town boundary, he encounters a police and military barrier. Any lingering illusions that the new government has eradicated corruption are instantly destroyed when he watches a policeman casually demand and accept a bribe from the young driver of a small green bus.
As the bus is cleared to leave, the driver catches the man’s eye, smiles, and waves. On the back of the departing green bus, the man sees an oval inscription with a solitary, beautiful flower in the centre: “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born”. The novel concludes with this poignant realisation that true change and untainted purity have not yet arrived in Ghana. The man walks slowly back to his family with the heavy knowledge of his society’s unending cycle of corruption.
Background
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born was written by Ayi Kwei Armah, a Ghanaian author born in Takoradi in 1939. Armah was educated in Ghana, the United States (Groton and Harvard), and lived in various places including Algiers and Paris. The novel was born out of his experiences returning to take part in his newly liberated country’s rebirth, only to witness a society consumed by sloth, rot and greed. It is set against the backdrop of a newly independent African state (Ghana) transitioning into a materialistic society. It deals directly with the deep disillusionment of the post-colonial era.
The novel is a clear depiction of how the new black leaders (the Party men and Nkrumaists) betrayed the masses in the years following Ghanaian independence. These new politicians promised to bring socialist salvation, only to renege on their promise. They ended up stepping into the shoes of the departed white colonial masters. They moved into the gleaming bungalows and old slave castles left by the colonialists. They acquired chauffeurs, imported foreign luxury goods, and flaunted their wealth while the common people continued to struggle in desperate poverty.
Corruption became a national game. It was normalised to the extent that bribery was expected at every level of society. Taxi drivers request for it. Clerks take it. Timber contractors give it. Even high-ranking Ministers like Koomson are not left out of this national game.
This political situation culminates in a coup d’etat that overthrows the government of Osagyefo the President (Kwame Nkrumah). The overthrow sends his corrupt ministers into hiding. But the protagonist does not consider the sudden historical shift as liberation in its truest sense. He believes instead that this cosmetic change of government is merely a change of embezzlers, as echoed by Ayi Kwei Armah himself in his poem titled “News”.
Setting of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
The novel is set in a coastal Ghanaian city. It moves between several starkly contrasting locations. The first is the Railway and Harbour Administration Block. This is the protagonist’s workplace. It is a grimy, gloomy building coated in years of dust, engine grease, and peeling murk-yellow paint. It houses the Traffic Control Office. The second is the slums where the poor live. The daily paths of the poor are lined with overflowing, rotting garbage dumps, such as the ironically named “Keep Your Country Clean” receptacle. The streets are filled with open, scum-filled gutters, foul-smelling public latrines, and the sights of exhausted peddlers working under weak streetlamps. The third is the spaces occupied by the wealthy. One is the Atlantic-Caprice hotel which sits atop Yensua Hill. Another is the Upper Residential Area where corrupt politicians live in opulent, gated mansions filled with imported furniture, marble-topped tables, and well-stocked cocktail bars.
Temporally, much of the novel’s day-to-day timeline takes place during the Passion Week. This is the agonising, impoverished period just before the end of the month when workers have exhausted their wages and are forced into a survival cycle of debt and borrowing. The setting, however, shifts in the novel’s climax. It shifts from the monotonous workday to the chaotic hours of a dawn military coup that sees a frantic escape through excrement-filled latrines to a vast open sea.
The setting is without any doubt a physical symbol of the nation’s moral state, as evident in the thematic atmosphere of rot versus “gleam”. Armah illustrates the claustrophobic atmosphere of rot using visceral, grotesque sensory details. This is best symbolised by the staircase banister at the railway office, which is coated in “diseased skin” made of old polish, dirt, and the sweat of thousands of hands. This right here is a metaphor for how the system’s underlying rot inevitably defeats all attempts at cleanliness. On the opposing side of the rot is the “gleam,” which captures the shine of the wealth possessed by the corrupt elite. It represents the seductive materialism that constantly mocks the poor and tempts honest men to abandon their morals for a chance to escape the filth.
Related:
- Characters in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
- Themes in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
- Chapter 1 to 5 Summary of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah
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