Her Three Days

Sembène Ousmane
Senegalese writer and film director, a modern griot, storyteller and chronicler, best-known for his historical-political works with strong social comment. Sembène has often turned his short stories and novels into films. He is considered one of the founders of the African realist tradition. Sembène's image of Africa has been more self-critical, less romanticized that Leopold Sedar Senghor's, who more or less glorified the past.

Sembène Ousmane was born in Zinguinchor-Casamange region of Senegal in the colonial French West Africa. After a brief period of the Ecole de Céramique at Marsassoum, Sembène turned to various occupations in order to support his family. Since the age of fifteen, Sembène has earned his living. He has worked as a plumber, bricklayer, apprenticed mechanic. During the World War II he served in the French Army in Europe. Following France's official surrender to Germany, Sembéne joined the Free French forces in 1942 and landed with them in France in 1944.
After the war Sembène returned to Senegal where he participated in the Dakar-Niger railway strike of 1947. Later, he returned to France, joining community of dock workers in Marseilles. He taught himself to read and write in French and published his first novel in 1956. The work was based on his own experiences in France.

In the 1960s Sembène developed an interest in the cinema and studied film production in the U.S.S.R. His La Noire de.. (The Black Girl from...) was the first film ever produced by African filmmaker and won a prize at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. It was a story of a girl, Diouna, who leaves her own family to become a housemaid in Antibes, France. She commits suicide, and her employees, a white retrund to Dakar, to explain what cannot explain.

As a writer Sembène made his debut as a novelist with LE DOCKER NOIR (1956, The Black Docker). It was born quite accidentally. Sembène was forced to leave work for several months, during which time he wrote down his personal experiences as a dock worker. The protagonist is Diaw Falla, who works on the docks. He kills a white woman who had tried to take credit for a prize-winning book that he himself wrote, and ends in prison in life.


Plot

- A story about Noumbe, the third wife of Mustapha, who was making all the preparations and sacrifices to welcome her husband home for her three days of having him alone. It also tells us the importance of “three days” to the narrator.
-Introduction : Introduces Noumbe as the third wife
Introduces Aida, the next door neighbour as Noumbe’s confidant.
Introduces the setting
-The conflicts : Internal conflicts - her emotions towards her husband
External conflicts - her emotions towards other characters, the village
women, her children.
-The climax : After all the preparation and sacrifices done, her husband, Mustapha
didn’t come home for her “three days”.
-The falling action: Mustapha, her husband came home.
-The ending : Noumbe’s bitter reactions towards her husband’s return

Setting

-Place : North Africa, Mali, unknown village, Noumbe’s shack
-Time : Three days durations
-Weather Condition : Very hot
-Social condition : close knit among the womenfolk

Symbol

Noumbe’s hut. “She went into her one-room shack sparsely furnished; there was a bed with white cover and in the corner stood a table with pieces of china on display. The walls were covered with enlargements and photos of friends and strangers framed in passé-partout.” The bareness of the house symbolizes her emptiness and longing for her husband’s affection.

Character

-Noumbe – the third wife (protagonist)
-Musthapa – the husband (antagonist)
-Aida – next door neighbour, her confidant.(minor character)
- Mustapha’s second wife – (flat character)
- Mactar – Noumbe’s son (flat character)

Point of View

Limited Omniscient (3rd person)
Only introduced to the narrator’s (Noumbe) thoughts

Tone

Nostalgic – when Noumbe reminiscing the sweet moments whilst the husband
was around.
Sorrowful – when Noumbe expresses her thoughts on Polygamy
Anger - when Noumbe showed her unstable emotions upon her husband’s return

Theme

Gender bias among the African.
How husband is worshipped above all; children and self.