[3][4][5] The play was published in a small edition by Makerere University Press in 1963, and republished in the Heinemann African Writers Series in 1968.
This struggle runs deep, as he finds it at the heart of his afflictions between himself, his marriage and familial relations, and his greater sense of obligations to his people and the country.
His self-imposed exile into the city leads him to find contentment in Jane, his new lover, and nightly clubbing.
Scene 1 The play opens with Remi's wife and mother, Thoni and Nyobi, respectively, carrying out household chores.
Nyobi seeks to comfort her daughter-in-law, directing her to escape her sorrow: "I hate to see your youth wearing away, falling into bits like a cloth hung in the sun.
Uhuru, or freedom, was promised yet not delivered by the Africanist Party and their neighbours who they conceive to be aspiring against them are surely to be blamed for their misfortune.
Scene 3 Nyobi fears the elder's efforts will not work without divine intervention from the God of Christ.
She visits the tribe's priest for spiritual guidance and comfort, not only for herself but for her daughter-in-law, Thoni, whose demeanour is affected by Remi's absence.
In his return, he detests the tribalistic urges pushed by the elders and rejects the efforts of both his mother and the Pastor to reunite with his wife.
Scene 3 Remi remains blinded to Thoni's love until the delivery of her letter, where she pours out her heart.
[citation needed] Multiple themes reoccur throughout the play and factor into the plot and character development.
This can be seen directly in Scene three of Act three where Remi and his friend, Omange, agree that to deal with tribalism with ruthless vigour is a part of the solution.
However, it is believed that the chief of his influences for writing The Black Hermit is his personal experience of regime change following independence from a colonizer.
In the words of James Ogude: "In the early 1960s, when Ngugi was writing, the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism was clearly a vexed one.
[3][4][5] The play was published in a small edition by Makerere University Press in 1963,[3] and republished in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 1968.
Later on, however, a change in perspective of writing in English rather than his native tongues drove him to print the work in Swahili and Giyuku.