Uncaged Beast: A Passage Analysis by Victoria Carson

About a third of the way into Mengiste’s Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, we get a scene from Emperor Haile Selassie’s point of view. As he sits in his prison cell, actually an empty great hall in the Menelik Palace, he recalls his days as emperor:

“Every minute was accounted for, every need anticipated by invisible bodies who tiptoed in and out of his presence noiselessly, their swallowed thoughts escaping only through their eyes, discernible if he’d been concerned enough to notice. But he hadn’t been. We did not see the beast, he whispered into the endless quiet punctured only by the guard’s whistle. It stood before our eyes, but we did not see” (107).

This passage offers insight into Emperor Selassie’s perspective concerning the state of his country and how it got to this point. It is clear that he does not believe the revolution came out of thin air, but rather that it had been there, standing “before our eyes.” He still characterizes the revolution as a beast, something negative and that had hunted him unsuspecting, but he accepts at least a small amount of responsibility for not being “concerned enough to notice.”

At this point, Selassie does not say how he would have handled this revolutionary spirit, this beast, if he had seen it coming. However, in the very next paragraph, Selassie describes the situation of a different beast: “Even his faithful lion Tojo, who usually whined outside his window, did nothing but jump and claw at his cage” (108). What seems so striking is Selassie’s use of the words “faithful” and “cage” in the same sentence. He keeps this beast caged up and listens to its whining, yet still believes it is a faithful pet.

So when Emperor Selassie seems to regret his lack of observation of the “swallowed thoughts escaping only through [his people’s] eyes,” it is not likely that his regrets are based in a desire to have changed his leadership to fit his people’s needs. Perhaps if he had seen this beast for what it was he would have dealt with it like Tojo, listening only to its whining from the safe confines of a cage all the while telling himself it was a faithful part of his kingdom.