“The Diallobé country, helpless, was turning around and around on itself like a thoroughbred horse caught in a fire.”

This quote uses a simile within the conversation about the school. The term “thoroughbred” implies the strength and cultural purity of the Diallobé community, which has preserved its traditions but is nevertheless “helpless” in the face of the colonizers’ new ways. At the end of this conversation, the important men agree to send Samba to the Glowing Hearth school the following year.

“The teacher thought that man had no reason to exalt himself, save definitely in the adoration of God. Now it was true—though he fought against the feeling—that he loved Samba Diallo as he had never loved any disciple. His harshness toward the boy was in ratio to his impatience to rid him of all his moral weaknesses, and to make him the masterpiece of his own long career. He had educated and developed numerous generations of adolescents, and he knew that he was now near death. But, at the same time as himself, he felt that the country of the Diallobé was dying from the assault of strangers come from beyond the sea. Before departing this life, the teacher would try to leave to the Diallobé such a man as the country’s great past had produced.”

Thierno realizes that he does prefer Samba to his other students, and in accepting this realization, he understands that he must push him further to save the Diallobé people. Thierno’s realization depicts the Diallobé culture as a dying way of life—one directly opposed to that of the “strangers,” or colonizers, who are coming to the Diallobé region.

“Paradoxically, all this suffering, and this rebellion of his body, aroused in the teacher’s mood a gayety which left him perplexed. Although he was bent in two with pain, he had trouble in remaining serious, as if the grotesque figure he was watching were not his own.”

Thierno experiences the duality of physical pain and spiritual pleasure. Despite the pain that he experiences, he prostrates himself for his daily prayers and will continue to do so until his final days.