KENYATTA UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE

ELEMENTS OF TRAGEDY IN SELECTED NOVELS OF NGUGI WA THIONG’O

OSCAR MACHARIA MAINA

C82/20132/2012

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL

SCIENCES IN FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF

THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF KENYATTA UNIVERSITY.

MAY 2016

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 Declaration

This thesis is my original work and has not been presented for a degree in any other
university or any other award.

Signature ………………….......... Date …………………………..

Name: Oscar Macharia Maina

C82/20132/2012

We confirm that the work reported in this thesis was carried out by the student under
our supervision.

1. Signature …………………… Date …………………………….

Dr. Mbugua wa Mungai

Department of Literature

Kenyatta University

2. Signature …………………… Date ………………………………

Dr. Paul M. Mukundi

Department of Literature

Kenyatta University

DATE: MAY 2016

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Dedication

To my family

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 Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the following for making the writing of this thesis

possible: my supervisors, Dr. Mbugua wa Mungai and Dr. Paul Mukundi, for their

insightful guidance right from the proposal stage to the final draft. Their support and

advice has greatly improved the thesis. I also thank other lecturers in the department

who directed my thoughts right from the proposal stage. Specifically, I thank Dr. John

Mugubi for his advice as I struggled to conceptualise the topic.

I acknowledge the support of my friends and colleagues: Dr. John Muhia, Dr.

Ezekiel Kaigai and Mr. Macharia Mwangi who unselfishly shared their resources and

gave insightful comments on my work. Mr. Kariuki Banda, Mr. Mark Chetambe, and

Mr. Kariuki Kiura gave me unwavering support as I struggled to conduct this research,

and for that I am greatly indebted.

I am grateful to my family, especially my wife, Bilha for her support,

encouragement and understanding as I wrote this thesis. I also thank my parents; The

late George Maina, and Susan Wambui for their sacrifices. My brothers, especially

Drs. Githaiga and Kihara, for numerous ways in which they have made everything

possible.

I also thank those whose names have not been mentioned, and who in one way

or the other, made my research and writing possible. May all of you be blessed

abundantly.

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 Abstract

This study investigates Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s use of tragedy as a method of

literary representation in his rendition of postcoloniality. The study focuses on five
novels;The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood, and Devil on
the Cross. As its objectives, the study investigates: the various elements of tragedy
used in his selected novels; the use of tragedy in the emplotment and representation of
thematic concerns in these novels; and the use of the tragic form as an expression of
wa Thiong’o’s postcolonial vision in the selected novels. The study interrogates the
presentation of characters, their narrative world, and the conflicts that these characters
represent. The ideas that these characters espouse stir the conflicts that wa Thiong’o
highlights through these novels and contribute to the literary signification of the
postcolonial discourse. With close analysis of key novelistic features such as narrative
plot and structure, representation, characterisation, motifs, and point of narration, the
study interrogates how wa Thiong’o uses tragedy not only as a means of evaluating
the different causes of tragic conflicts but also as a means of proposing avenues for
entrenching both ideological and a literary discourse in response to these tragic
conflicts. In its analysis of the selected texts, the study uses tenets of postcolonial
criticism and tragic realism to facilitate its evaluation of not only the narrative
structure but also the novels’ discourse. The study uses descriptive analysis of the
selected novels to qualitatively interrogate them in line with the study’s objectives.

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 Table of Contents

Declaration ...................................................................................................................... i

Dedication ...................................................................................................................... ii

Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... iii

Abstract ......................................................................................................................... iv

Chapter One ....................................................................................................................1

1.0 Background to the Study ............................................................................................1

1.1 Statement of the Problem ......................................................................................3

1.2Objectives of the Study ...............................................................................................4

1.3 Research Questions ...............................................................................................4

1.4 Research Assumptions ..........................................................................................4

1.5 Justification for the Study .....................................................................................5

1.6 Scope and Delimitations of the Study ....................................................................6

1.7 Literature Review .................................................................................................7

1.8 Conceptual Framework ....................................................................................... 14

1.8.1 Postcolonial Criticism ........................................................................................... 15

1.8.2 Tragic Realism ...................................................................................................... 21

1.9 Methodology ........................................................................................................... 29

2.0 Chapter Two ............................................................................................................ 31

2.1 Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Novels and the Tragic Form ................................................... 31

2.2 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 31

2.3Tragic Failure in The River Between ......................................................................... 31

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2.4 Contention of Heroism in A Grain of Wheat............................................................. 46

2.5 Transition from Epic to Tragic Heroism in Matigari ................................................ 55

2.6 Gender and the Tragic inPetals of Blood and Devil on the Cross .............................. 62

2.7 Conclusion............................................................................................................... 73

3.0 Chapter Three .......................................................................................................... 76

3.1 Themes and the Tragic Form in wa Thiong’o’s Novels ............................................ 76

3.2 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 76

3. 3 Cultural Nationalism, Christian Revivalism and Western Education in The ............. 76

RiverBetween. ................................................................................................................ 76

3.4 Disenchantment, Betrayal and Retribution in A Grain of Wheat ............................... 87

3.5Allegory of Deprivation and Resistance in Matigari ................................................. 97

3.6 Conquest, Resistance and Restitution in Petals of Blood ........................................ 108

3.7 Resisting Imperialism and NeocolonialDispossession in Devil on the Cross ........... 116

3.8 Conclusion............................................................................................................. 121

4.0 Chapter Four .......................................................................................................... 124

4.1 Tragic Realism and Postcolonial Vision in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Novels ............... 124

4.2 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 124

4.3 Envisioning the Nation in The River Between......................................................... 124

4.4 Collective Experiences as Formation of National Values ....................................... 133

4.5 Tragic Realism and the Vision for Social Justice in Matigari ................................. 139

4.6 Post-Neocolonial Vision in Petals of Blood............................................................ 146

4.7 The Normative Heroine as Allegory of Postcolonial Nationalism ........................... 155

4.8 Conclusion............................................................................................................. 165

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5.0 Chapter Five .......................................................................................................... 167

5.1Summary of Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations..................................... 167

5.2Summary of Findings.............................................................................................. 167

5.3 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 172

5.4 Recommendations.................................................................................................. 176

Works Cited ................................................................................................................ 178

Appendix ..................................................................................................................... 192

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 Chapter One

1.0 Background to the Study

Tragedy as a literary genre has a rich history that cuts across centuries, generic

forms, cultural and geographic boundaries. Over the years, this prolific genre and

method of literary creation has been appropriated as a platform not only for

commenting on and evaluating social and individual circumstances but also as a tool for

engaging in a literary evaluation of socio-cultural and political realities.

However, the application of the aspects of tragedy in literary criticism has

mostly been restricted to dramatic works of literature. For this reason, the cross-generic

interplay between tragedy and other literary forms has been greatly affected. This

apparent restriction of tragedy to only dramatic art has, as Gassner would put it, turned

tragedy “into a value rather than a genre” (10). Gassner’s view is an indication of a

desire to enhance the versatility of tragedy by inviting a multifaceted and a less

conservative application of its aspects in accordance with changing social and literary

circumstances.

Drawing our attention to the need for a utilitarian application of literary forms to

facilitate socio-cultural and political investigation of contemporary experiences,

Gassner further queries, “what is the use of devising finely ground definitions unless

they can be serviceable to one’s own time?” (11). This rhetorical question suggests the

need to question and investigate possible linkages that may exist between literary genres

and approaches while disregarding generic absolutism.

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 Indeed, tragedy has been appropriated into the literary representation of the

challenges and conflicts that exist in the 21st century. Of interest is the use of tragic

elements in the crafting and representation of postcolonial contestation and expression.

This perspective would be informed by the view that literary representation seeks to

dramatise and contextualise the fates of characters in given socio-cultural and political

locations and interactions.

Works of literature are understood to reflect those issues that essentially define

the society. These issues determine the nature and texture of the discourse that a

particular work of literature endeavours to represent. For this discourse to be availed to

the reader, that work of literature should use a form that is concomitant with the

intention of the narrative. Hinged on the unequal relations that manifest in postcolonial

discourse, an exploration of literary forms, structures and other narrative choices

becomes necessary and well placed in any attempt to engage the thematic essence of a

literary work.

Given that wa Thiong’o’s fiction contextualises the historical and cultural

conjectures of the interaction between the colonised African communities and the

colonising West; between the powerful oppressive post-independence forces and the

oppressed masses, such fiction would explicitly highlight the consequent individual and

social conflicts that result from these unequal relations. These conflicts would be

inescapable since the quest for self-definition and restoration would result in both

individual and social struggles, best highlighted through a writer’s signification of the

tragic conflicts and their outcomes.

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 Indeed, the changing social imperatives that are dependent on a community’s

experiences dictate the change in the narrative form. This is primarily informed in the

desire for a writer to use a narrative form that not only accommodates these social

changes but also one that best represents and evaluates these experiences. In relation to

the use of the tragic form in African literature, this fact has been best illustrated in the

changes that are evident in the form and texture of the African novel. As Dan Izevbaye

explains, the centrality of the tragic hero narrative in the African novel diminishes when

a community’s fate is delineated from that of the heroic character (41).

This ideological shift in the representation of a community’s evaluation of social

and individual circumstances would invite an exploration of the subsequent effects on

the literary and narrative choices, specifically for this study in wa Thiong’o’s selected

novels.

1.1 Statement of the Problem

The study investigates how wa Thiong’o uses elements of tragedy such as tragic

characters, tragic plots and tragic motifs in the expression, representation and evaluation

of social, political, historical, ideological and other conflicts that manifest in the

selected texts. The study examines the use of these elements of tragedy not only as

allegorical representations of these conflicts but also as significations of individual and

societal contradictions and conditions. The study explores the literary import of the

tragic form to further investigate how the writer’s choice of a narrative form enhances a

literary representation of social and individual discourses in a postcolonial context.

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1.2Objectives of the Study

This study aims to:

i. Identify the various elements of tragedy used in wa Thiong’o’s five novels.

ii. Evaluate the use of tragedy in the emplotment and representation of thematic

concerns in wa Thiong’o’s five novels novels.

iii. Evaluate the use of the tragic form as an expression of wa Thiong’o’s vision for

a postcolonial society.

1.3 Research Questions

The study intends to answer the following questions:

i. What are the various elements of tragedy used in wa Thiong’o’s selected

novels?

ii. How is tragedy used in the emplotment and presentation of thematic concerns in

wa Thiong’o’s five novels?

iii. How is the tragic form used as an expression of wa Thiong’o’s vision for a

postcolonial society?

1.4 Research Assumptions

The study is guided by the assumptions that:

i. wa Thiong’o uses elements of tragedy in his selected novels.

ii. Tragedy is used in the emplotment and presentation of thematic concerns in

wa Thiong’o’s five novels.

iii. The tragic form is used as an expression of wa Thiong’o’s vision for a

postcolonial society.

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1.5 Justification for the Study

Literary works give a textualised representation of the social, historical, cultural

and political experiences of a society. It is expected therefore that a writer uses a literary

mode that affords an accurate rendition of these experiences in terms of both the generic

form and the structure of the discourse. Drawing from this observation, the study

investigates wa Thiong’o’s selected novels to evaluate the use of elements of tragedy to

constitute a narrative form that best represents social and individual conflicts in the

context of social, historical, cultural and political conflicts that are addressed in these

novels.

The selected novels represent both colonial and postcolonial polarisation that

stems out of characters’ adherence to specific predictably antagonistic social, political

and ideological perspectives. This polarisation creates conflicts that expose characters

to tragic circumstances.

This position is reinforced by Andrian Poole’s assertion that “tragedy stages

moments of crisis in a community’s understanding of itself, moments when it risks

being torn apart by conflicting beliefs about the gods, political authority, relations

between the generations and the sexes, between natives and immigrants” (36).

Dependent on the social and historical conditions prevalent in a particular context,

every community experiences a different form of tragic crisis which then is recreated

through a literary discourse that emanates from these crises. Such crises may be

represented through either a dramatic or a narrative recreation of the tragic

circumstances. However, cognisant of these two generic possibilities, this study focuses

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only on the tragic narrative as represented in wa Thiong’o’s novels to highlight and

respond to tragic conflicts in a postcolonial setting.

1.6 Scope and Delimitations of the Study

Wa Thiong’o’s fictional and critical oeuvre is evidence of his sustained

evaluation and representation of issues that affect African communities. His many

publications in prose fiction (Weep Not, Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat,

Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, Wizard of the Crow), autobiographical writing

(Detained and Dreams in a Time of War), drama (The Black Hermit, The Trial of Dedan

Kimathi, and I Will Marry When I Want) and critical as well as literary essays

(Homecoming, Moving the Centre, Decolonising the Mind, Writers in Politics,

Something Torn and New, and Globalectics) are a testimony of his desire to highlight

socio-political, historical and cultural circumstances that the Kenyan postcolonial

society grapples with. However, this study delimits itself to wa Thiong’o’s novels, and

specifically confines itself to those novels that use characters, plots and motifs whose

creation and development display elements of tragic nature. These characters must have

a prominent role in the narrative as well as in the narrative community. Using these

factors, this study focuses on:The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of

Blood, and Devil on the Cross.

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1.7 Literature Review

This section reviews literature that relates to the nature, function, form, and

content of tragedy as an aesthetic form, literature on wa Thiong’o’s fiction, and also

literature on postcolonial fiction. First, literature on tragedy affords the study a

foundation for the assessment of the characters, plots, form, themes and other features

that are requisite in enhancing an accurate understanding of the sources used for the

study. Secondly, literature on wa Thiong’o will inform the study on the perspectives

that influence the creation of the narratives, ideas and standpoints taken by the author,

while postcolonial literature will aid the study in assessing the standpoints that influence

wa Thiong’o’s literary perspective.

1.7.1 Literature on Tragic Realism and wa Thiong’o’s Fiction

Different researchers and critics have interrogated tragic realism as a concept,

and have interrogated its appropriateness in giving a literary rendition of conflicts that

arise in the course of social, political, economic and cultural formations inherent in the

human society. The study is also interested in interrogating other scholars’ views on wa

Thiong’o’s fiction as a way of strengthening its research premises and grounding its

objectives.

While reviewing the centrality of myth in The River Between, Ato Sekyi-Otu

concludes that Waiyaki’s tragedy is a consequence of “a trained refusal to risk the

practice of action and the will to meaning made possible by the auspicious

indeterminacy and rival promptings of the world’s founding covenants” (177). To

Sekyi-Otu, Waiyaki’s tragedy is a result of his failure to meet his obligations not only as

a result of personal failures but also as a result of the conflicting role in a fictive and

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mythic sense. As a participant in the conflict between African values and Christianity’s

abnegation of these values, Waiyaki is torn between the different possibilities that can

redeem and preserve the community from imminent self-destruction. However, Sekyi-

Otu’s study confines itself to characterisation and fails to demonstrate how the novel’s

use of tragic narration enunciates wa Thiong’o’s discourse on colonial and postcolonial

dislocation, and provides a perfect setting for the plotting of a tragic narrative as a

means of laying bare the contradictory forces that a postcolonial community threatened

by a dominant force endures.

James Ogude discusses the historical imperatives in wa Thiong’o’s novels and

notes the centrality of characterisation in evaluating both the authorial and historical

concerns in a colonial and postcolonial setting. However, despite his admission that wa

Thiong’o’s heroes and heroines “are tinged with tragedy” (82), Ogude does not evaluate

how the elements of history and aesthetic choices reflect wa Thiong’o’s creation of

characters whose demeanor and fictive reality revolve around the tragic narrative

genre.Literary creativity functions to enhance a writer’s mediation and evaluation of

those factors that are determinant of a community’s reality and experiences. In wa

Thiong’o’s fiction, Ogude observes that “the narrative is a tool for shaping, ordering,

and reinterpreting history” (Ngugi’s Concept of History 88). The study interrogates how

wa Thiong’o’s narratives use tragic realism to, as Ogude notes, shape, order, and

reinterpret history.

Simon Gikandi, on the other hand, engages in a critical evaluation of wa

Thiong’o’s works with particular emphasis on literary and ideological imperatives that

influence wa Thiong’o’s fiction. But most important is Gikandi’s exploration of the

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shift between irony and allegory as a means of aiding the identification “with the grand

narrative of nationalism and its desires, and an ironic scene in which we are asked to be

alert to the discrepancies between the structure of the narrative and the experiences it

represents” (113). In Gikandi’s view, this narrative tendency is an artistic appropriation

of the thin line between narrow individual choices and their wider national significance,

“given content and form […] by the series of tragedies and mishaps” (115). Beyond this

immediate acknowledgement of the role of individual characters in the literary

exposition of underlying concerns in the process of colonization and decolonization,

Gikandi does not further evaluate the role of tragedy as a creative narration of

conflicting and ambivalent national and individual loyalties.

In “Narrative Method in the Novels of Ngugi”, Florence Stratton argues that wa

Thiong’o’s stylistic choices give his novels a unique polemic and narrative advantage.

To Stratton, wa Thiong’o’s use of dialogue that borders on dramatic exchanges has

semblance to drama. This observation resonates with the view that works of literature as

art-forms can use inter-generic fusions as a means of enhancing a social and literary

dialogue. Moreover, such an inter-generic approach expands critical tools available to

literary scholars and enhances the appreciation of literary discourse.

David Cook and Michael Okenimkpe agree that the main heroic characters in wa

Thiong’o’s novels endure “sad, ironic vision(s)” (60), and agree that these heroes

experience “final reversals [that] are . . . abrupt and equally telling” (256). Nevertheless,

Cook and Okenimkpe do not comprehensively interrogate the connection between these

characters as allegorical tropes representative of not only their personal tragedies but

also the tragedy of an entire community.

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 The connection between personal and communal circumstances is pursued in the

argument that wa Thiong’o’s “heroes and heroines have a curiously intellectual bent

that is at odds with their station in life” (Ndígírígí 162). This assertion foregrounds the

circumstances that precipitate the conflicts that necessitate the use of the tragic form in

the representation of the “essentialized identities” (Ndígírígí 162) of the deprived

characters in wa Thiong’o’s novels.

In addition, these characters must be seen as representations of the writer’s

reading of socio-political needs of a society at a given period in time. In line with this

argument, wa Thiong’o’s characters in Petals of Blood are seen as “the victims of a

system external to themselves and their own community, a system whose exploitation

and corruption are the central evils to be overcome” (Greenfield 34). But the process of

struggling against evil systems exposes these characters to personal and communal

conflicts that may lead to tragic circumstances resulting from a polarisation of moral

and ideological standpoints.

Characterisation as mediating factor is used in wa Thiong’o’s novels to enable

the representation of socio-historical and political concerns. This is an argument that is

further underscored by Loflin’s view that character typology and socio-historical

situations enable the reader’s insight into the characters’ cultural, racial, and economic

situation (272). Tragic characters are thus used as representational tools that enhance

our interrogation of the causes of tragic conflicts imminent in the society.

To Nicholas Kamau-Goro, Waiyaki’s “failure to reconcile the tensions that tag

at his being adumbrate the concerns and actions that lead up to the violent confrontation

during the Mau Mau liberation war” (7). While pointing out the near impossibility of

10
resolving the pertinent issues experienced after the introduction of Christianity as a

dominating force before colonialism through rational means, Kamau-Goro implicitly

acknowledges the imperatives that precipitate a tragic plotting. In view of Waiyaki’s

failure, the narrative structure indicates the intricacies of the conflict and illustrates how

Waiyaki as a character functions as a literary trope embodying the tragic nature of the

conflict that seemingly defies immediate resolution and spills over to the armed conflict

experienced during the liberation struggle.

In examining the portrayal of characters in wa Thiong’o’s novels, James Ogude

argues that:

One of the major thrusts of the novel tradition has been toward the
creation of characters who appear to have motive and free will, and for
whom we as readers posit pasts and futures which extend implicitly
beyond the boundaries of the narrative. (68)

The sentiments expressed by Ogude acknowledge the centrality of characterisation in

reconciling and representing not only the narrative’s historical and social settings but

also the concerns and expectations that textual interrogation should reveal. Ogude

further notes that in wa Thiong’o’s novels “characters tend to have a significance more

typological than psychological” (68). The “typology” of character and the burden of

thematic focus would in this way determine nature of the plot or the narrative structure

while using the individual characters as embodiments of conflicts that drive both the

narrative content and the plot.

This perspective is best illustrated in the difficulty of choice that characters in

wa Thiong’o’s novel have to make as they confront different oppressive forces. Ogude

observes that while some of them engage in elitist escapism, they “also have

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associations with the heroes and heroines of their stories which are tinged with tragedy”

(82). Nevertheless, apart from this fleeting mention of the element of tragedy in wa

Thiong’o’s novels Ogude does not engage in any further analysis of these tragic

characters or even how their position in the novels affect wa Thiong’o’s rendition of his

thematic concerns in a postcolonial context. This study holds that wa Thiong’o’s novels

use these tragic heroes and heroines as ideological and narrative voices illustrating the

forceful nature of the conflicts and contradictions in the colonial and post-colonial state.

Wa Thiong’o’s fiction focuses on African communities’ struggle against

colonial and neocolonial oppressions as a way of highlighting “the complexities and

complicities of liberation struggle” (Childs, Weber, and Williams 50). The authors

acknowledge that wa Thiong’o does more than just inform us of the struggles faced by

the colonised, for, through his depiction of these struggles, hedraws our attention to the

intricate nature of the socio-political, cultural and historical challenges that the

postcolonial society faces. These challenges and the ensuingconflicts are

representedthroughtragic narration whose discourse is hinged on individual characters’

contestation of the various forms of oppression imposed on them by colonial and

postcolonial structures.

In their exploration of national allegories, Childs, Weber, and Williams are of

the view that “in the case of the single-scope allegory, the blend is construed with the

‘national destiny’ input space projected as its organizing frame . . . [and] that at least to

some extent the national destiny influences or even determines the individual destiny of

the protagonist (285). Such views agree with the argument that wa Thiong’o’s fiction

juxtaposes the circumstances and conflicts experienced by its tragic characters to reveal

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both the tragedies and contradictions precipitated by the collision of polarised

ideological intents at a wider national or societal platform.

The postcolonial writer adopts the perspective of the colonised, and enunciates

thematic concerns that attempt to rediscover the identity and the dignity of the

colonised. It is the view of this study that through his selected novels, wa Thiong’o

addresses himself to the salient issues that a postcolonial writer should focus on in a bid

to assist his/her society to recover its sense of identity. This is on the one hand aided by

the author’s choice of a narrative strategy that concretely foregrounds issues that are of

interest to the postcolonial audience.

To achieve this, postcolonial writers need to use artistic forms that affirm an

Afrocentric worldview while contesting and rejecting the sense of otherhood manifest

in the alternative. This process must begin with the effort to “transform the condition of

mimicking the colonizer’s moves into a strategy of resistance “that would “effectively

resolve the problems of negation, self-alienation, and internal hatred produced by

colonial rule” (Boehmer 162). The study will be examining how wa Thiong’o uses the

postcolonial approach to render the narratives of the protagonists who embody a tragic

resistance.

The relationship between the writer and the target audience of a literary

discourse is affirmed by the view that this relationship affects the nature of the

discourse. In this regard, the use of the tragic form in postcolonial discourse is a

rhetorical strategy that eases the audience’s identification with the narrated events and

circumstances. To this end, factors such as race, class, ideology and culture form

defining principles in the rendition of a tragic narrative and enable antiphonic

13
concealment of the authorial persona (Hall 119). Stylistically then, the use of tragedy in

postcolonial criticism enhances the writer’s detachment from the narrative while

enhancing literary discourse that cuts across the various subdivisions constituting a

society.

Timothy Brennan investigates the literary perspective of postcolonial writing

and argues that in terms of temporal nuances, postcolonial writers address themselves to

two distinctive but conjoined discourses that are anticolonial and postcolonial anti-

imperialist discourses. In this way, the writing of colonial and post-colonial literature

functions as a rhetorical tool that addresses motifs of “cultural difference,

epistemological othering, colonial subjectivity, and social contradictions” (121). In

relation to wa Thiong’o’s novels, his use of the tragic form functions as a rhetorical

apparatus for evaluating and highlighting these motifs that result from colonialism and

elite nationalism, concepts that are largely responsible for the tragic circumstances that

characters in the selected texts find themselves.

1.8 Conceptual Framework

Literary criticism demands the application of theoretical tenets as a means by

which the critic grounds his or her reading of literary works.Such tenets avail to the

critic tools for focusing on specific narrative, textual and ideological components

central to his/her research perspective and stipulated objectives. Since the current study

investigates how wa Thiong’o’s use of elements of tragedy (a structural component)

reinforces the rendering of postcolonial concerns (the ideological component), the study

uses the tenets of tragic realism and postcolonial criticism in its reading and analysis of

14
the selected novels. On the one hand, postcolonial criticism will guide the study as it

interrogates how wa Thiong’o’s novels engage colonial and postcolonial social,

cultural, political and economic subjectivities, while tragic realism will, on the other

hand, guide the study as it interrogates the use of elements of tragedy to facilitate wa

Thiong’o’s interrogation of the various forms of colonial and postcolonial

(dis)engagement, conflicts, dominance and resistance.

1.8.1 Postcolonial Criticism

The study usesdifferent strands that comprise postcolonial criticism that include

but not limited to propositions advanced by critics such as Homi Bhabha, Edward Said,

Gayatri Spivak, Karin Barber, Elleke Boehmer among others. Theoretical stipulations

as advanced by these scholars facilitate the study’s interrogation of issues such as

marginalisation, hybridity, syncretism, and postcolonial resistance, that largely lead to

tragic conflicts in colonial and postcolonial social, political, and economic contexts.

Tragic realism in the postcolonial setting thus reinforces the postcolonial writer’s

interrogation of those hegemonic practices that have reinforced neocolonial subjugation

of the hitherto colonised societies.

The study’s use of postcolonial criticism is justified by the concern that the

tragic narrative in the African setting is highly influenced by social, political, cultural,

and economic contestations and conflicts emanating from colonial and postcolonial

experiences. As an approach to literary analysis, postcolonial criticism has been used by

writers to explore and validate the perspective of the colonised, and “in a much broader

sense to signify the wide range of discourses, ideologies and intellectual formations

15
which have emerged from cultures that experienced imperial encounters” (Newell 3).

Postcolonial criticism therefore creates a platform from which the contestation of

colonial and postcolonial inequalities and misrepresentations can be conducted.

This contestation is in line with Bhabha’s view that “the objective of colonial

discourse is to construe the colonised as a population of degenerate types on the basis of

racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and

instruction” (qtd. in Childs, Weber, and Williams 73-4). Thus the study uses such views

to investigate how wa Thiong’o engages in the deconstruction of the colonial and

postcolonial discourse through the various conflicts represented in the novels, and the

circumstances that the characters used to represent these conflicts find themselves

struggling with.

Postcolonial sensibility in a literary text emanates from central textual or

novelistic features such as themes, style, characterisation, plotting and

contextualisation. These aspects enable the evaluation of both the coloniser’s and the

colonised’s discourse, with the intention of providing a counter-discourse that enhances,

“a rereading and exposing of [. . .] underlying assumptions, and a dis/mantling of these

assumptions from the cross-cultural standpoint of the imperially subjectified” (Tiffin

101).To the postcolonial critic, Postcolonial writingmakes use of literary creativity to

provide an alternative rendering of the colonised’s socio-cultural and historical reality.

In this way, the postcolonial writer disputes subjugation that the imperial discourse

attempts to engrain.

Furthermore, postcolonial criticism provides two theoretical foundations that

helppostcolonial critics to avail to us an accurate reading of textsthat emanate from the

16
colonies. According to Karin Barber, the postcolonial theoretical framework should be

understood in two perspectives; the representation of the colonised in the imperial

narrative, and the representation of the colonised’s narrative by the colonised (4-5). To

this end, the study will employ the postcolonial framework to examine how wa

Thiong’o’s use of tragedy on one hand counters the colonizer’s narrative, and affirms

the perspective of the colonised on the other.

Beyond these two immediate achievements accruing from the employment of

the tenets of postcolonial criticism, the study benefits from the understanding that

postcolonial literature functions as a means of apprehending and subverting the fact of

past and existing domination. Postcolonial literature is thus a discourse that aids the

reclamation and celebration of the perspective of the colonised. To Gareth Griffiths,

“writing, literacy, and the control of literary representations are vital in determining

how the colonizers and colonised viewed each other, and how the colonised established

or renewed their claims to a separate and distinctive cultural identity (164). In effect,

the study examines how wa Thiong’o uses elements of tragedy both as a creative model

and a literary contestation that structures and affirms the reality of the colonised.

The use and application of postcolonial criticism has been termed as the

interrogation of “time and how it shapes experiences and histories” (Ganguly 163). This

argument is informed by the notion that our analysis of postcolonial discourse relies

heavily on temporal considerations of cultural and historical convergences that help us

evaluate the effects of colonial and postcolonial interactions between Africa and the

West. This extends to the evaluation of the influence of colonial thought and culture in

post-independence African societies, and how this relationship influences social,

17
cultural and historical nuances that determine both individual and social conditions that

lead to the tragic conflicts that the study investigates.

Colonial occupation and domination thrived on the denial of self-definition and

a forced acceptance of an identity as willed by the coloniser. A big part of this denial of

self-definition was textually and intellectually administered, meaning that the

postcolonial writers needed to respond in kind through textual and intellectual

engagement. According to Elleke Boehmer, “postcolonial [discourse] sought to

undercut thematically and formally the discourses which supported colonization – the

myths of power, the race classifications, the imagery of subordination” (3). In essence, a

post-colonial text is expected to present a dichotomy between the structures that support

domination and those that scuttle it. This is to be concretised through a focused

presentation that thematically and intellectually negates colonial supremacy.

The postcolonial writer thus makes deliberate choices in terms of the means

used to enhance a dichotomous textual creation of a reality that enables a reaction of

“the historical, political, cultural, and textual ramifications of the colonial encounter”

(Boehmer 340). To this end, the study will be guided to explore how the postcolonial

discourse in wa Thiong’o’s novels reacts to the notion of historical, political, cultural

and literary exegesis of the colonial contexts and narrative.

The application of the theoretical insights of postcolonial criticism helps the

study to explore how wa Thiong’o responds to, and deconstructs these inequalities in

his choice of themes, characters, form, content, and the settings for his creative works.

The study is informed by the understanding that writers aim at representing literary,

cultural, historical, political, and social desires, fears, hopes and aspirations of their

18
societies. This representation, in the postcolonial context, is understood as an express

means of reacting to the infiltration of Western culture, history, and economic and

intellectual structures largely viewed as foreign and detrimental to the African society.

In terms of the aesthetics of literature, the colonised has contested the use of

comparative aesthetics in the writing and criticism of African works of literature. To

this end, the study explores, using this contestation, how wa Thiong’o adopts the

Western perception of tragedy but contextualises it so that it dovetails with the

postcolonial discourse that seeks to deconstruct hegemonic and literary domination of

the other by the imperial centre.

To James Ogude, “early African narratives have always been seen as writing

against colonial discursive practices in an attempt to validate Africa’s historiography

denied by colonialism” (1). Reading from this context, the study uses the post-colonial

theory to explore how wa Thiong’o uses his narratives not only to subvert colonial

representation, but also to assert the African perspective that was distorted by the

colonial experience. The study further investigates, through the postcolonial theory,

how wa Thiong’o uses the tragic plot and character to foreground the contest between

the colonizer and the colonised.

Reaction to European past and present domination attracts different regional

intellectual responses. To Edward Said, this reaction involves a consolidation of

attitudes that can set free the Orient from Orientalism, a concept he argues is evident of

“the limitations that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of

another culture, people, or geographical region” . . . and which perceives “entire periods

of the Orient’s cultural, political, and social history [as] mere responses to the West”

19
(284). Similarly, postcolonial criticism antagonises the untamed sense of otherhood

with which the coloniser perceives the ex-colony, and seeks to establish a discourse that

can guide an accurate means of self re-invention and re-definition.

In its application of the tenets of postcolonial criticism, this study is guided by

the understanding that this framework invites a multiplicity of theoretical insights,

emanating from the numerous applications that the framework facilitates. Indeed, Paul

M. Mukundi cautions:

postcolonialism, must not be perceived as one monolithic, homogeneous

body. Instead, despite the limitations implied in its ambiguity,
postcolonialism must be considered as encompassing a series of actions
pertaining to the hegemonic and post-hegemonic activities by and for
both colonizers and the colonised. (3)

Mukundi’s sentiments demonstrate the fact that the use of the tenets of the postcolonial

framework should be directed at a specific discourse determined by both the nature and

the objectives of a textual investigation.

According to Abiola Irele, “imagination plays a crucial role in any narrative

recollection of the past, if only because that past is no longer part of the immediate

experience of the modern storyteller” (158). As such, it is the objective of the

postcolonial writer to use the literary text as a means by which the African historical

identity is re-imagined and re-invigorated. This objective can only be achieved if the

postcolonial writer uses a narrative strategy that emphasises on historical rediscovery,

and demonstrates the convergence between such rediscovery and the aspirations of the

post-independence African society.

To achieve this rediscovery, postcolonial criticism focuses on what Graham

Huggan refers to as “a complex process of legitimization negotiated through the

20
interactions between the producers and consumers of symbolic goods” (4). Literary

creativity is, from Huggan’s point of view, a site for symbolising postcolonial subjects’

negotiation for cultural and historical rediscovery. Postcolonial writing can then be

appropriately considered as a conscious effort, on the part of the writer, to represent the

desire of the postcolony in contesting the historical and social effects of colonialism and

postcolonialism.

1.8.2 Tragic Realism

This study uses the concept of tragic realism to facilitate an evaluation of elements

of tragedy in the selected novels. This intention is hinged on the expectation that the

different theoretical insights into the nature of tragic conflicts, plots, and characters

would aid the study in contextualising and investigating the concerns addressed in the

selected texts.

Raymond Williams underscores the usefulness of tragedy in the exploration of

various conflicts that societies may find itself grappling with, for “tragedy . . . is not a

single and permanent kind of fact, but a series of experiences and conventions and

institutions” (46) that can be used to investigate the representation of “suffering:

degeneration, brutalism, fear, hatred, [and] envy” (77). Williams demonstrates the

possibility of expanding theoretical and literary grounds for the use of tragedy and

tragic elements as a model for literary criticism. These sentiments are in line with Dan

Izevbaye’s observation that “there is a sense in which literary genres are symbolic

representations of their age” (38), pointing to the fact that a shift in the social and

ideological orientation demands a shift in the nature of literary genres as we know them.

21
 As an investigative approach, tragedy has had a problematic existence resulting

out of the imperative to adhere to social and ideological shifts. Raymond Williams

acknowledges this problematic nature by first cautioning that “we come to tragedy by

many roads. It is an immediate experience, a body of literature, a conflict of theory,

[and] an academic problem” (33). This is in reference to the different thinking on the

nature and use of tragedy as an aesthetic and theoretical form as influenced by socio-

historical and cultural imperatives.

In the classical tragic schema, Aristotle points out basic components of a tragic

plot; a noble protagonist, the tragic death of the protagonist, and the unjustifiable yet

inevitable downfall of the hero. These components have in essence shaped and

determined the understanding of tragedy as a dramatic form. Furthermore, tragedy is

viewed as a construct of metaphysical beliefs; forces that heroic characters cannot

overcome, hence their tragic destruction. This understanding is particularly limiting in

light of the view that just like determinant social institutions, tragedy as a literary form

is dynamic and subject to change. This change is in tandem with social organisation,

structures and contexts.

According to George Steiner, tragedy is “a narrative recounting the life of some

ancient or eminent personage who suffered a decline of fortune toward a disastrous

end” (11). Steiner’s view may be accurate in a particular context but wrong in his

restriction in terms of the nature and uses of tragedy. This perhaps is a result of the

tendency to limit tragedy as an art form that can only be found in the 4 th and 5th century

Greek society and culture.

22
 John Gassner, in discussing the use of tragedy, laments that there are aesthetic

bottlenecks such as “latent idealization” of tragedy as a creative method by arguing that

such an attempt would misguide us into perceiving works of literature that are informed

by tragic aesthetics “as necessary descents from some isolated individual achievement [.

. .] or some golden age [that is] never recovered or recoverable” (8). Gassner’s view

encourages the use of tragic elements in literary creativity and analysis, considering

evolving social and literary circumstances. Such use of tragedy should put into

consideration various social and literary norms, and interrogate their influence on the

use of tragic elements as a means of staging context specific discourses.

In his analysis of the utilitarian value of 4th and 5th century Athenian tragedy

Peter Burian observes that “the rise of tragedy as an art-form gave Athens a powerful

instrument for the celebration, criticism, and the redefining of its institutions and ideals,

for examining the tensions between heroic legend and democratic ideology, and for

discussing political and moral questions” (206). The import of Burian’s stipulation is

not in the exposition of the functions of 4th and 5th century tragedy, but in the

elucidation of the artistic and socio-political value of tragedy not only to 4th and 5th

Athens but also to rest of human cultures and literary contexts.

To William McCollom, there are four distinctive aspects that should characterise

tragedy regardless of the context of the narrative; significance of the tragic character,

just personality, destruction by forces external to the tragic character, and ambivalence

in the actual cause of the character’s downfall (53-53). McCollom’s stipulation

encourages our application of elements of tragedy to enhance our investigation of the

23
literary representation of characters, ideas and the contexts that lead to a narrative that

can best be described as tragic.

Augusto Baol proceeds to explain the convergence between tragedy and

characterisation, and points out that a character’s ideology or perception of the

immediate circumstances catalyses that character’s predisposition to a tragic ending

(12). When analysing the nature of tragic heroes, Baol’s observation is important for it

guides the study in investigating characterisation through the vista of tragic narration so

as to identify and explore those characters depicted as facing tragic circumstances.

For a tragic plotting to evolve, the tragic character must fall victim to the

passions and habits that manifest in the creation of an incorrigible desire for self-

fulfillment which follows, as much as it veers off, the creation of a myth surrounding

the individual’s exploits. In other words, the tragic hero must engage in a quest or a

search for a desired objective, must be significant in the society as evident from the

myth that must be created around the hero, and must experience either personal or

social contradictions. These qualities of the tragic give significance to not only the

tragic hero, but also the themes or issues that the tragic form represents.

Furthermore, in terms of the narrative’s presentation of the hero’s character,

such a character must rise to, or be assigned a prominent role in influencing the events

that happen in the narrative and the community. In terms of the character’s traits, the

hero must be just in the practice of his/her sense of judgment under prevailing

circumstances. This does not necessary imply fairness, but would imply a rigorous

though not fair attempt to adopt the most noble option available to the tragic character.

These options are the main cause of the hero’s inability to evade the consequence that is

24
his/her inescapable end. This specific aspect seemingly exposes the character to

destruction by external forces not directly a consequence of his/her character. For this

reason, the hero’s downfall is both just and unjust.

The fall, and in essence the tragedy behind it, are philosophical lamentations of

the failure of the individual hero to tame the passions and the habits generated by the

pursuit of subjective personal and social ideals. These lamentations and reflections

form the basis for textual and literary evaluation, and they are therefore important

aspects for the study. In the works under study, wa Thiong’o creates characters who

embody socio-political ideals that precipitate split loyalties which bring forth the

making of hard choices; between self preservation on one hand and ideological or

philosophical consistency on the other.

These choices are the essence of the injustice in the suffering and the ultimate

downfall of the tragic character, as well as the source of our pity for the suffering of the

hero. As readers, we interrogate the conditions of a literary character whose suffering

makes the audience realise that “(our) own evil-doing is fundamentally connected with

the human condition” (McCollom 55). This sense of identification with the character’s

circumstances means that as the audience, we should be presented with a character

whose nobility must not essentially make him/her alien to the limits of human nature.

McCollom’sobservation intimates that in modern tragedy, the mythic influence

of the gods is not a necessary condition in the conception of the tragic narrative.

Nobility or significance as dictated by philosophical thoughts may be acquired through

the character’s ideological disposition. Furthermore, the study benefits from the

understanding that literature responds to prevailing circumstances. As such, different

25
settings will provide different thematic and stylistic circumstances that will influence

the way a work of art is conceived and developed by the writer. As argued by Peter

Burian, even our understanding of tragedy should be awake to the difference of plot and

setting. He cautions that we need to understand that “there is not a single tragic

narrative, but rather a number of story patterns characteristic of tragedy” (181). Indeed,

tragedy arises out of the need to foreground the crises that a community may be

experiencing.

In addition, the shift from the Classical Greek tragedy to a modern notion of

tragedy invites the replacement of some elements so that tragedy is no longer limited in

its representation. To Robert Cohen, the insistence of the presence of gods, ghosts, and

fate makes tragedy appear as a form “that belongs to an earlier world, a world in which

audiences could be expected to accept without dissent the presence of divine forces

mixing in with everyday human affairs” (33).

In line with the difference in structure, tragic plots present different forms of

conflict, but which are almost universal in the rendering of a tragic narrative. To this

end, Rubrian opines that there are three characteristic components; an unyielding

collision of wills, demanding yet opposed choices, and the presence of extremely

threatening circumstances (181-2). In the context of postcolonial writing in general and

wa Thiong’o’s writing in particular, the collision between the colonised and the

coloniser, the collision between the pro and anti colonial forces (and the refusal of each

to supplicate), and the overall threat to the existence of the characters in particular and

the community in general, provide a perfect recipe for a tragic narrative.

26
 The setting of the selected texts is heavily influenced by the urge to confront

adversities, in the form of colonial and postcolonial oppression, dispossession, and

subjugation. In the quest for justice and the restoration of an acceptable order, the

characters created in these works of literature find themselves embodying the struggles

of their communities. As the protagonists, they bear the weight of ideological

representation and this exposes them to tragic conflicts necessary for a tragic narrative.

In the tragic narrative, therefore, the character is not essentially engaged in a

personal struggle, but in a struggle that has a communal bearing. The crisis that the hero

finds him/herself in is by extension a communal one. Wole Soyinka affirms the African

communal nature of the tragic experience by noting that theatre “becomes the affective,

rational and intuitive milieu of the total communal experience, race-formative,

cosmogonic” (43). Soyinka argues that the African perspective is more liberal in its use

of tragic drama as a means of appreciating a communal reality as opposed to an

individual experience.

In contrast, Soyinka argues that the Eurocentric perspective “sees the cause of

human anguish as viable only within strictly temporal capsules” as opposed to the

African view “whose tragic understanding transcends the causes of individual

disjunction and recognizes them as reflections of a far greater disharmony in the

communal psyche.” (46). Soyinka’s argument foregrounds the necessity of evaluating

the tragic narrative in line with socio-historical attitudes and experiences that inspire the

creation and understanding of works of literature. In this way, culturally and historically

distinctive realities must be taken into consideration while evaluating works of

literature.

27
 Furthermore, the tragic form is a useful literary tool that foregrounds gender

inequalities, and enhances the writer’s evaluation of the social and cultural factors that

give rise to such inequalities. For instance, John Mugubi’sstudy of Rebeka Njau’sThe

ScarconcludesthatNjau’s use of elements of tragedy enhancesthe text’s critical

evaluation and reflection on the effects of discriminatory socio-cultural institutions.

Works of literature are read within the context of their reflection of the nature of

relations that influence their content. As such, works of literature consciously or

otherwise avail to the reader the prevalent socio-political, historical, and economic

determinants that guide the writer’s choice of the stylistic and thematic concerns that

warrant attention. In this regard, Michael Hattaway argues that “in his studies of the

degradation of powerful men and women Shakespeare inevitably engaged not only with

morality but with the nature of power and political authority” (105). Just as

Shakespeare interrogated social and political conditions prevalent in his society, wa

Thiong’o interrogates colonial and postcolonial conditions that lead to tragic conflicts.

To the postcolonial writer, the tragic narrative can be useful as a means of

representing the play of power, domination and resistance, and also a means by which

the writer indicates how the practice of power to exert dominance affects a society’s

sense of its social and political identity. The emanating conflicts are thus best

highlighted through the tragic circumstances that the tragic heroes and heroines

experience, and in this way works of literature are able to influence readers’

appreciation of the significance of socio-cultural, historical, and political issues

addressed through postcolonial writing.

28
1.9 Methodology

Research methodology is largely concerned with the establishment of a rationale

behind a researcher’s research design and the preferred data analysis method. According

to David Silverman, this approach makes it easy for the researcher to “anticipate and

answer reasonable questions about his/her research” (304). The study uses purposive

data sampling to identify those novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’o whose narrative structure

and discoursedisplay reliance on elements of tragedy, that are being investigated in the

study. For this reason, the study focuses on five novels; The River Between, A Grain of

Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross. In its investigation of the

elements of tragedy and postcolonial discourse, the study engages in descriptive literary

analysis of the selected texts and any other literature that aids in the qualitative

interpretation of these texts. To this end, the tenets of the selected theories will be used

to guide, evaluate and clarify the ideas identified in the texts.

The study reviews ideas expressed on tragedy, postcolonial criticism, and also

literature on the primary texts used. These ideas help the study to interrogate the linkage

between tragedy and postcolonial literature, and to explore the nature of the conflicts

highlighted in wa Thiong’o’s novels. On the one hand,postcolonial criticism aids the

study in locating the texts to their appropriate cultural, political and ideological

contexts. This makes it possible for the study tointerrogate the novels’ discourse, and

specifically the conflicts that are represented in the novels. On the other hand, tragic

realism facilitates the study’s evaluation of structural and narrative properties used in

the novels to enhance wa Thiong’o’s representation of both colonial and postcolonial

conflicts. The use of tragic realism helps the study to focus on narrative aspects such as

29
plotting, characterisation, tragic irony, social and ideological alienation of heroes and

heroines,tragic motifs and other tragic elements used in the selected texts. The use of

the tenets of postcolonial criticism and tragic realism offers the study an opportunity to

explore areas of convergence between the two conceptual frameworks.

Using secondary sources such as print and electronic books and journals,

together with other relevant resources, the study hopes to respond to the research

questions and meet the stipulated objectives.

30
 2.0 Chapter Two

2.1 Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Novels and the Tragic Form

2.2 Introduction
A literary text enhances the rendition of its inherent discourse through the

conflicts characters find themselves grappling with, and the circumstances that surround

and shape these characters’ interactions. The representation of these conflicts

contextualises the writer’s evaluation of social, historical, and political conditions that

shape the background of the community and the narrative. However, for the writer’s

discourse to meet the objective of literary representation, the writer must utilise an

appropriate method that packages the conflicts and aids the reader’s interpretation of

these conflicts. This chapter explores Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s use of the tragic form as an

artistic method for interrogating social, historical and political conflicts in The River

Between, A Grain of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross.

2.3Tragic Failure in The River Between

Tragic narration is largely intended to illuminate a community’s collective

encounter with social, historical and political realities through the presentation of the

tragic hero’s individual circumstances. This is as observed by Aristotle who argues that

tragedy is a representation of the actions of characters “who necessarily display certain

distinctive qualities both of character and thought . . . the two natural causes of actions”

(39). Characters, their circumstances and their reaction to these circumstances are,

therefore, the driving forces that enhance the rendition of the tragic narrative.

31
 Tragic narration is an excellent model that facilitates representation of social

issues that are more distinctively characterised by social upheavals and contestations

addressed in The River Between. According to K. M. Newton, despite the

“foundationalist discourse” inherent in tragic representation, it is a useful tool in

addressing conflicts that “are intrinsic to life in the world” (159). This view is best

evaluated through the concession that human societies are coalitions of wills that are

safeguarded by a variety of rules and sanctions which are at times subject to self

contradictions and varied interpretations particularly in moments of uncertainty and

social change.

Consequently, in using the tragic form to interrogate social change and its

representation in the novel, such interrogation must evaluate the narratives’ and the

characters’ interpretation of this change. In this endeavour, the novel can be best

interrogated through the examination of formative aspects that constitute its discourse.

These range from elements such as narrative devices and techniques, modes of

portrayal, and in totality the rhetorical contexts that enhance the rendition of a narrative.

In this way, the tragic form enhances our appreciation of the narratives’ view of both

the specific changes that a community experiences and the writer’s evaluation of the

social and historical significance of them.

According to Joanna Sullivan, “the modern African novel seems to consistently

generate four categories of heroes: the tale hero, the epic hero, the tragic hero, and the

comic antihero” (182). From this observation, the African novel is identifiable not

necessarily by the uniqueness of the issues the genre addresses, but through the

uniqueness of the central characters. The demeanour of the hero, from Sullivan’s

32
argument, is highly dependent on the issues that the character hero represents at a

particular social and historical period in the specific society. Given that mostprecolonial

African communities are communalistic, the demeanour of the hero is mostly defined,

not by individual characters’ social or ideological perspectives, but by the collective

experience of the community.

A literary text, from Richard Bradford’s point of view, is “a cohesive unity of

patterns, structures and effects” (72). The wholesome meaning of a text is, therefore, a

result of the writer’s effective use of narrative patterns, motifs, structural and stylistic

choices that in combination highlight thematic concerns in The River Between. These

are deliberate stylistic and formal choices that the writer picks to formulate a narrative

that is representative of a particular way of assessing the existent realities presented

through the text.

Indeed, through literary representation, wa Thiong’o mediates between the

existent reality and his or her perspective of this reality so as to influence the worldview

of the readers. To achieve this, the writer focuses on the nature of the existent conflicts

that result from the practice of social interactions that are subject to social, political,

historical, cultural and economic conditions prevalent in a community. Conflicts

emanating from skewed power relations are, in The River Between, illustrative of the

polarisation that centres on the aesthetics of colonial discourse and colonial conditions.

The River Between explores these conditions and evaluates the human capacity

to resolve and interrogate them. The use of the tragic form makes the discourse more

distinctive or identifiable through specific narrative aspects that range from the plot, the

33
nature or behavioural demeanour of characters, the motifs, and the narrative imperatives

used to elucidate and interrogate the narrated discourse.

Tragic mimesis, the use of elements of tragedy to reflect social, political,

cultural and other conflicts evident in our societies, represents contestations and

contradictions that characterise the nuances of domination, contest and freedom that our

societies have experienced at various phases of their existence. These universal forces

are evident any society that struggles to establish an acceptable social and political

order. In essence therefore, there are expected contradictions, conflicts and negotiations

that may warrant a tragic mimesis or representation. This idea of a universal tragic

representation at specific historical moments in a society is to Kwaku Labri Korang, “a

reiteration of the story of the quest for human freedom coming up short in [spite of]

men’s and women’s commitment and best efforts to negotiate the constraints” (13).

This acknowledgement explains the basis for application of tragic realism in a critique

of literary works that offer narratives concerning themselves with historical moments

that carry indelible truth of social conflicts and contestations.

In his description of the nature and function of tragedy, Aristotle refers to this

genre as a form of imitation of actions “brought about by agents who necessarily

display certain distinctive qualities both of character and of thought” (39).

Characterisation and the ideals that characters represent are in this way highlighted as

defining qualities of a tragic narrative. Characters, through their actions, give form to

oppositional discourse thus constituting the conflict that moves the events that make the

narrative. Aristotle’s identification of character and thought as primary qualities in the

composition of a tragic plot dovetails with Geoffrey Brereton’s view on what

34
constitutes tragic mimesis, which mostly focuses on characters and the situations they

represent.

According to Geoffrey Brereton, tragedy is both a literary and a philosophical

evaluation of human circumstances, and the human reaction to these circumstances (5)

that are, in works of literature, expressed through specific narrative principles. To start

with, Brereton argues that a tragic narrative is a composite structure that is constituent

of elements such as disaster, failure, irony, and status. These elements are best

discussed through specific interrogation of narrative elements such as character, plot,

motifs, and point of view, and with specific textual reference to the novels selected for

this study.

In the novel, the context for tragic mimesis is first introduced through

characterisation, and predictably lays ground for a tragic plotting. In anticipation of the

events that will unfold in the plot, the novel attempts to announce Waiyaki’s nobility

which is linked to his lineage, territory, and individual traits. The fact that he is from

Kameno, a land the narrative attributes to greatness and possession of superiority

emanating from the myth of creation of the the Gikuyu, Waiyaki’s nobility and superior

status is well enunciated right from the beginning of the narrative.

The announcement of the primordial conflict between Makuyu and Kameno is

significant in that it offers textual opposition that is useful in two ways: on the one hand

it expositions the hegemonic contest between the ridges and, on the other hand, it

emphasises the superiority of Kameno, the ridge that was bestowed with the sanctity of

the sacred grove, and a lineage of great leaders and heroes, a fact that “could be seen, by

anyone who cared to count, that Kameno threw up more heroes and leaders than any

35
other ridge” (2). In this gesture, the narrative anticipates Waiyaki’s superiority by

juxtaposing him to great heroes and leaders such as Mugo wa Kibiro the seer, Kamiri

the great magician, and Wachiori the great warrior. This part of the narrative is

conscious of the argument that “tragedy is not easily associated with trivial

personalities” (Brereton 16), and thus seeks to assign to Waiyaki an appropriate context

for his requisite nobility while at the same time laying bare the facts of the conflicts and

contestations into which he is born.

Apart from this constructed opposition that abnegates Makuyu’s unqualified

claim to superiority over Kameno, The River Between elucidates other constructions of

this opposition in the portrayal of Waiyaki’s stature. Waiyaki, at a very tender age, is

bequeathed unmeasured authority and influence. For instance, when he finds Kamau

and Kinuthia fighting, he has an aura of command and authority around him that make

Kamau shudder. As the narrative tells, “He [Kamau] quickly looked up and met the

burning eyes, gazing at him. Meekly he obeyed the unspoken command [although

Waiyaki was] quite young; not of Kamau or Kinuthia’s age. He had not even gone

through his second birth” (6). These textual disclosures steer the reading of Waiyaki’s

character to function as textual presuppositions of Waiyaki’s centrality in the narrative.

In addition, the narrative further invites the reader to appreciate the importance

of Waiyaki’s character in the events that will constitute the narrative. In this regard, The

River Between acknowledges character as a central formative element of meaning

creation in the tragic form and literature in general. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas

Royle are of the view that “characters are the life of literature: they are the objects of

our curiosity and fascination, affection and dislike, admiration and condemnation” (63).

36
Through this observation, Bennett and Royle stipulate prerequisites for any narrative

that seeks to impress upon the readers a degree of either attachment or alienation

dependent on a narrative’s desire.

Waiyaki’s nobility which is further demonstrated by the declaration of his

worldview as elucidated through the narrative’s description of his gaze: “not a man

knew what language the eyes spoke. Only, if the boy gazed at you, you had to obey”

(10). In this way, this part of the narrative agrees with the assessment of a literary

narrative as a “conventional power of action assumed about the chief characters in

fictional literature” (Coupe 151). The novel creates a narrative that from the outset

affirms Waiyaki’s powers and influence both at the community level and in the

constitution of the narrative. Furthermore, the narrative admits that Waiyaki’s

uniqueness lies not in his built or his status but in his eyes:

Waiyaki was now a tall, powerfully built man who struck people as
being handsome. Even so this was not the most striking thing about him.
It was his eyes. They looked delicately tragic. But they also appeared
commanding and imploring. It was his eyes that spoke of that yearning,
that longing for something that would fill him all in all. (69)

It is no coincidence that the novel gives significance to the description of Waiyaki’s

eyes several times in the course of the narrative. This is stylistically an instance of

symbolic dualism which is meant to establish a link between Waiyaki’s traits and his

social and philosophical worldview. In analysing the connection between narrative

choices, inference and discourse, Seymour Chatman is of the opinion that the discourse

that is represented through a text is availed through “the capacity of any discourse to

choose which events and objects [. . .] to state and which only to imply” (28).

37
Consequently, the novel’s attention to Waiyaki’s eyes as a narrative object functions to

enunciate his social vision and the tragic nature of this vision.

Laurence Coupe, in his assessment of the usefulness of myths in the

investigation of narrative archetypes, identifies four narrative models all of which

revolve around the influence of central characters in the narrated events. Besides the

mythical and the ordinary hero characters, the hero-leader who “has authority, passions,

and powers of expression” yet who is “subject to social criticism” (151) has more

bearing to the tragic hero who must, according to Brereton, conform to the notion of

philosophical evaluation of human circumstances (6). It is this authority that Waiyaki

gets nurtured into when Chege, his father, takes him to the sacred groove and reveals to

him that he hails from the lineage of Mugo wa Kibiro, the great seer. More specifically,

Chege, confesses that Waiyaki is the descendant of “those few who came to the hills”

(18), and emphatically reminds him that he is “the last in the line” (20).

Besides acknowledging Waiyaki’s noble status, as demonstrated by his

admission into the secrets of the sacred grove, the narrative further predicts the

enormity of the challenge that he will have to face as the bearer of Mugo wa Kibiro’s

prophecy that “salvation shall come from the hills. From the blood that flows in me, I

say from the same tree, a son shall rise. And his duty shall be to lead and save the

people” (20). This prophecy concurs in principle with the myth-ritual thinking that

attributes the fate of the hero-leader to the existence of a myth and the carrying out of a

ritual that accentuates the destiny of the hero, and in Bascom’s stipulation, results to

either death or deposition (110). With the numerous failures of his predecessors in the

noble lineage, Waiyaki’s status exposes him to a tragic destiny and is arguably

38
projected as a continuation of the tragic circumstances that revolve around the social

ideology and vision for the community.

Indeed, The River Between projects itself as the narrative whose driving conflict

revolves around the question of social ideology and social failures. These failuresgive a

mimetic representation of the state of social thought and situations experienced by a

community that finds itself at socio-historical crossroad. In the context of tragic realism,

the genre pronounces the conflicting social forces and ideologies through what

Northrop Frye in “Archetypes of Literature” refers to as “the myths of fall, of the dying

god, of violent death and sacrifice and of the isolation of the hero” (104). In The River

Between, this isolation is intimated at the very beginning of the narrative and well

before Waiyaki takes the status of the hero-leader. His predecessors have found

themselves engrossed in a chain of failures and disillusionment that ultimately leads to

their isolation from the community.

Essentially, the isolation of the tragic hero is a consequence of both destiny and

the choices made by the individual tragic hero. In Waiyaki’s case, isolation results from

the divergent social and cultural perspectives inherent in the philosophies adopted by

Makuyu and Kameno, and also from his own evaluation of these social and cultural

issues. As the narrative recounts, “where did people like Waiyaki stand? Had he not

received the white man’s education? And was this not a part of the other faith, the new

faith?” (69). This part of the narrative discloses the reasons that inform Waiyaki’s

isolation; ideologically, socially and psychologically.

Brereton, in his elucidation of tragic elements, concurs with the Aristotelian

view that the main character should be confronted with inevitable disaster. In The River

39
Between, Waiyaki is equipped with double attributes of greatness both by birth and by

nurture. Chege, his father, sends him to Siriana, the missionary school, to “learn all the

wisdom of the white man” so that he may “save the people in their hour of need” (21).

With the quickly shifting events that are precipitated by Muthoni’s death, Waiyaki is

quickly immersed into the rivalry that existed between Makuyu and Kameno. The

primordial conflict that Waiyaki’s predecessors were confronted with catches up with

him, albeit with cultural contest being the new front for this unending rivalry.

Works of literature, according to Bennett and Royle, invite readers to identify

with the circumstances in which characters find themselves as means of provoking the

readers’ understanding of the text’s discourse (69). In tragedy, this identification heralds

to the reader a sense of apocalypticism, a sense of “a shattering of society or the world

as a whole” (Bennett and Royle 100). In The River Between, the polarisation that is

occasioned by the introduction of Christian values that rejected African traditional

cultural beliefs threatens not only to shatter the relations between the ridges but also to

destroy individuals, families, and other social relationships. In this way, the novel

prompts readers to evaluate the place of new western values in influencing changes in

the African cultural ontology.

The middle ground in this context should be the understanding of the conflicts

inherent in the positions taken by each side of the political and cultural divide. By

taking the precarious position, Waiyaki ot only exposes himself to social and

ideological isolation but also plays into the hands of a tragic ending. As Sullivan points

out, tragic heroes in African fiction are a product of such polarisation and that “the

tragedy of their stories speaks to the complicated social dynamics arising from the clash

40
of modernity with traditional values” (182). From this argument, it is evident that apart

from the circumstances that produce the tragic characters, other elements of tragedy

such as motif (the pattern that such narratives take) and plot are important in the making

of a tragic story.

In their analysis of the convergence between plot and motif, Dominguez-Rue

and Mrotzek contest that the use of causal boundaries can be a useful instrument that

can reveal both the plot structure and the motif or thought pattern of a tragic narrative

(673). They further argue that the actions of a tragic character are dictated by both

hidden and perceived boundaries. For instance, in The River Between, both the physical

and ideological boundaries between Kameno and Makuyu precipitate the tragic events

in the novel. Waiyaki’s unawareness of the impossibility of unifying the ideologically

polarised ridges, as well as his awareness of his role as the one destined to save the two

ridges, puts him in a dilemma that pushes him to his tragedy. In Aristotelian view of

what should be the convergence of a tragic plot and tragic characterisation, Aristotle

argues that the incidences must happen out of necessity, and in line with portrayal

characters as “good,” “life-like,” and “consistent” (51). This juxtaposition of plot,

characterisation and thought necessitates the tragic effect that follows the reversal or the

disaster that the tragic hero experiences.

In the representation of a tragic narrative, motifs are important narrative

elements since they influence both the characters and the incidences of the plot. Such

motifs may range from wisdom, folly and jealousy. In The River Between, Kabonyi’s

jealousy emanates from the view that Waiyaki is “too young to be let into the secrets of

the tribe” (83). Whitmore is of the opinion that the tragic effect is enhanced by the

41
presence of evil scheming against the tragic hero who “seeks either to avoid evil when

he should face it or to turn it to his own ends” (347).

Whitmore’s contention is that the tragic hero may find himself in a dilemma,

and whatever choice the hero makes brings him closer to his destiny and disaster.

Although Waiyaki is aware of the existing polarisation between Makuyu and Kameno,

and Kabonyi’s jealousy of his growing influence, fate leads him to take the false move

and he gets emotionally entangled with Nyambura, Joshua’s daughter. This not only

exposes Waiyaki to Kabonyi’s schemes but also betrays the ideals of the tribe and the

Kiama, further aggravating his dilemma and hastening his imminent alienation.

The dilemma motif is, however, a direct consequence of the tragic hero’s quest

for consistency and nobility of character. In The River Between, Waiyaki’s quest for a

judicious disposition systematically puts him in a position where his actions and choices

relating to his ideological perspective alienate him from the rest of the community, and

lead him to what Dominguez-Rue and Mrotzek call the “boundaries of systems

archetypes” in which the tragic hero lacks “awareness or knowledge [. . . and] which

highly contributes to [his] tragedy” (673). This lack of awareness is neatly tied to a

tragic hero’s possession, in his character, of what Aristotle calls the tragic flaw, an

inherent weakness in character.

In his presentation as a tragic character, Waiyaki’s weaknesses or

miscalculations originate from three inseparable desires: his desire to play the role of

the prophesied saviour of the tribe; his desire for reconciliation between Kameno and

Makuyu; and his inexplicable romantic attraction to Nyambura. These become the

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genesis of Waiyaki’s tragic flaw, what Aristotle describes as hamartia, a false step

which apparently pulls Waiyaki closer to his tragic end.

In his contemplation of the principles of tragedy, Brereton argues that irony is an

important component of the tragic since it effectively underscores the reversal of

fortune (15). In The River Between, the overriding irony, which is hinted right from the

introduction, is imminent in Waiyaki’s quest. Just like his predecessors, he is betrayed

by the very people he tries to help, and who accuse him of betraying the oath. This

approach to tragedy interlinks tragic characters with tragic plots and motifs.

Since works of literature are premised on the need to represent and evaluate

issues affecting society, writers may place their characters in positions that make them

expressions of divergent and in some cases polarising situations. Characters in such

cases may have to make choices, some of which may lead to a tragic ending. In his

evaluation of the essence of tragedy, Newton argues that “the tragic effect depends on

the protagonist accepting that the values that define his or her sense of self cannot be

reconciled with the situation with which he or she is faced” (25). It is apparent that

Waiyaki is torn between the extremes of cultural conservatism and conversion into the

new faith, and as such the crossroads that he finds himself at predisposes him to his

isolation, betrayal and tragic ending.

As a literary choice, a text uses the hero’s tragedy to represent ambiguities in a

society’s perspective on important matters affecting the same society. Ian Glen observes

that the tragedy of the hero results from the “social dilemma” of a hero-leader who

“brings social change but is resented for it; he is someone divided between the

modernising and traditional society and [he is] misunderstood and punished by both,

43
someone finally isolated from familial and social bonds” (23). The conflict between the

hero and the community is reflected in the generic use of tragedy since it influences the

demeanour of the hero-leader, his status, his failure or disaster and the irony of his

social and ideological endeavours.

In its presentation of tragic characterisation, The River Between adopts the four

Aristotelian models that include “the complex tragedy, which depends entirely on

reversal and discovery,” “tragedy of suffering,” “tragedy of character,” and “spectacular

tragedy” (56). The River Between can be read as a narrative that primarily enhances its

tragic sensibilitythrough Waiyaki’s character, his status, and the irony of his changing

fortunes. As such, it is a narrative that can be read within the framework of “tragedy of

character” that Aristotle conceptualises, and in a sense demonstrates similarity to the

Sophoclean depiction of a character whose fate is preordained and whose struggle is

against forces that are beyond his control, and who has detrimental personal traits that

lead to his downfall.

This tragic conception is further evident in McCollom’s stipulation of four

archetypal situations that may militate against the destiny of the tragic hero and render

the narrative worth of tragic assessment; a degree of “wrongful behavior,” “a significant

fault of error,” the hero’s destruction resulting from “fate or external evil,” and where

“the hero’s action is guilty from one point of view and innocent from another” (53). As

benchmarks for evaluating the plot structure, the motifs and character portrayal,

McCollom’s distinction of these situations has helped the study in elucidating the

presence of tragic elements in the novel.

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 In contrast to the tragic form in the other novels, Waiyaki’s tragedy follows the

pattern of “the complex tragedy” that according to Aristotle is founded on reversal and

discovery, and where his suffering is a consequence of fate and evil that is manifest

from outside his personal character or his actions. However, as McCollom argues,

Waiyaki’s downfall can in part be argued to result from his choices, particularly his

ambivalence that largely exposes him to those extraneous evil forces that seek his

downfall or destruction.

Moreover, the tragedy that befalls the tragic hero is to Apollo Obonyo Amoko

evidence of the fact that through his fiction, wa Thiong’o addresses “the dilemmas of

postcolonial intellectual formation” (160). In order for the African intellectual to

foreground these dilemmas, there is need to highlight the polarisation that is an express

result of the emergent conflicts. It is this polarisation that makes it impossible for

Waiyaki, a representative of the African intellectual, to mobilise the ridges to form a

cohesive unit in response to colonial violation of African culture and history. The

intellectuals failure predisposes him to social rejection and isolation, and consequently

drives him towards a tragic ending.

In The River Between, the novel’s tragic flavour is largely availed through a

combination of several narrative components. Wa Thiong’o’s use of a language that is

deeply rooted in the biblical metaphor (that of the saviour-prophet who is rejected by

the very people whose course he attempts to advance), and the motif of a hero who

faces inexplicable misfortunes arising from forces that are beyond his control align the

narrative with the qualities of the tragic. This is reminiscent of the ritual influence in

classical tragedy that aims at highlighting both individual and public discourse

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constituting the society’s attempt to interrogate and interpret those forces that influence

human destiny. In the same way, the tragic in the novel aids the interrogation of social,

cultural and historical issues that influence the destiny of the postcolonial African

society.

2.4 Contention of Heroism in A Grain of Wheat

The texture of the tragic as an art form is determined by the cosmos that informs

the society upon which the narrative is based. This is on the one hand achieved through

the narrative’s focus on individualised contests and conflicts that are nurtured by social

interactions, and on the other, by emergent social, political and economic formations

that bring with them new conflicts that filter into the relationships between individuals

and the institutions that comprise the society.

In Korang’s evaluation, this social ordering and the accompanying conflicts are

justified by the fact that tragic mimesis is a product of both rational and irrational

“suprasocial” and “infrasocial” attempts to establish a social equilibrium (13). In A

Grain of Wheat, these rational and irrational quests are evident in the characterisation,

plotting, and the motifs that constitute the narrative and are responsible for the tragic

essence in the novel.

In the novel, as much as the conflicts are triggered by the community’s struggle

against colonial oppression, the narrative is primarily driven by interpersonal conflicts

whose genesis runs back to the precolonial period. However, the same conflicts become

foundations for the conflicts that emerge in the colonial period. The evolution of both

infrasocial and suprasocial conflicts into tragic conflicts depends on two important

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aspects: the presence of a tragic protagonist who struggles against capricious forces, and

an unyielding affirmation of a communal desire for freedom and self-definition.

However, concepts such as freedom and self-definition are just social ideals and

may not be easily achieved in realistic representation of competing human purposes,

values and social contradictions that characterise many human societies. In A grain of

Wheat, narrative features such as characterisation, plot and motifs play into the hands of

textual conditions that precipitate a tragic narration. And in line with Brereton’s four

basic conditions for a tragic narration - character, status, disaster and irony, tragic

realism evaluates the existence of these competing forces and how they impact on the

social ontology of both the society and the characters.

As regards the status of the tragic hero, Brereton contends that “tragedy is not

easily associated with trivial personalities,” and acknowledges that this as a textual

consideration is meant to establish “the high standing of the characters” (17). However,

the dynamism of tragedy as a genre has dictated other means of assigning nobility to

tragic characters and the issues that can be represented through the tragic form. In this

regard, Brereton is of the opinion that “the seriousness of the events in itself raises the

participants to the tragic level” and, thus, enables an ordinary character to do away with

“his individual ordinariness to become, through suffering and disaster, a representative

of humanity or some part of it” (18). It is with these considerations that Mugo, although

seemingly an ordinary character in A Grain of Wheat, can be investigated as a tragic

hero dependent on the stature of the issues he represents in the narrative.

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 To Mugo as well as to other characters, he has heroic status, and is perceived to

be the icon of the struggle for independence. In his vision, he is the saviour that the

people need and he sees his life as parallel to that of Moses:

He let the gentle voice lure him to distant lands in the past. Moses too
was alone keeping the flock of Jethro his father-in-law. And he led the
flock to the far side of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even
to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire
out of the midst of a bush. And God called out to him in a thin voice,
Moses, Moses. And Mugo cried out, Here am I, Lord. (137)

There are several incidences in the narrative where the saviour motif, in reference to

Mugo’s perception of himself, is evident. He has a way of earning people’s trust, and

they in turn perceive him as the de facto leader of the independent society. This

perception elevates Mugo in the eyes of the community, and heightens not only his

tragic status but also his imminent fall.

Characters, as narrative agents whose actions move the incidences that

constitute the plot of the novel, are important aspects in the narration of the tragic.

According to Aristotle’s conceptualisation of the nature of tragic characters, “tragedy is

a representation of people who are better than the average” (52), and who must be

“good,” “appropriate,” “lifelike” and “consistent” (51). Despite this seeming

prescription on the nature of the tragic plot, it is considered that the purpose of this

prescription is dependent on the desired purpose of the narration as opposed to a

particular moral determination of the character.

Undoubtedly, the goodness of character is appropriate to the intended thought or

theme, while being lifelike and consistent is dependent on the truthful and realistic

presentation of the character. It could, therefore, mean that an evil character, as Mugo is

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in A Grain of Wheat, needs to be consistent in his evil nature and be an appropriate

agent for the presentation of such evil as it may exist in society. In this way, the tragic

character as represented through Mugo underscores the relativity of goodness and

badness, which in this instance is a deviation from the moral ideal and the primary

source of the human contradictions that gives the novel its tragic essence.

Moreover, Mugo embodies the ambivalence of the social forces that make up an

ideal community: the desire to preserve which exists simultaneously with an inherently

destructive instinct. As a character, Mugo is the product of both individual

idiosyncrasies and the prevailing social forces that militate on his thoughts and actions.

Mugo is jealous of Kihika’s position for he, Mugo, sees himself as the one destined to

save the people and to acquire greatness, power and wealth for himself:

He walked in this vision. And in his dazed head was a tumult of thoughts
that acquired the concrete logic of a dream. The argument was so clear,
so exhilarating, it explained things he had been unable to solve in his
life. I am important. I must not die. To keep myself alive, healthy, strong
– to wait for my mission in life – is a duty to myself, to men and women
of tomorrow. (214)

However, the saviour motif becomes the cause of the primary tragic conflict in

the novel. It is perhaps Mugo’s perception of himself as the saviour that leads him to

betray Kihika, his perceived nemesis in the quest for the messiah role that Mugo seems

to have been obsessed with, and perhaps one more strategy for his self-preservation as

he waits for the moment of his greatness. In this regard, Aristotle argues that in the

plotting of the tragic, so as to enhance the cathartic effect, the consequent suffering

must “involve those who are near and dear to one another” (50). A Grain of Wheat plays

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into this principle of the tragic since all the characters involved in the betrayals have a

convergence in the intricacies of the struggle for independence.

In his further discussion of the ingredients of the tragic, Aristotle further states

that “the unraveling of the plot should arise from the circumstances of the plot itself,”

meaning that the events that constitute the tragic should relate in a causal sense with

preceding events evolving from the previous ones because they are “necessary and

probable” (52). This demand on the tragic is primarily the source of the surprising

reversals and discoveries that must be experienced in the denouement, and which

punctuate the disaster that the tragic hero has to experience. In A Grain of Wheat,

Mugo’s reversal of fortunes from good to bad fortune is orchestrated by his evil nature,

a motif that directs the incidences making up the plot of the novel.

Furthermore, according to Whitmore, “every real tragedy must, with whatever

preliminaries, lead to a crisis, in which the potency of evil, and the struggle of the

participants as they yield to or defy it, inexorably precipitate a catastrophe” (347). In the

novel, the coming of independence accompanies the resolution of many of the evils that

characterised the struggle for independence. However, there cannot be, to the

characters, a restoration unless the unmasking of the person that betrayed Kihika is

concluded. This is the one evil that sustains the tragic narrative and which organises the

other elements of tragedy that make up the narrative.

However, Gikandi is of the opinion that Mugo is used in the narrative as “the

archetypal scapegoat, the representation of the villagers’s pain and suffering during the

emergency and the depository of their anxieties” (109). In Gikandi’s view, Mugo is the

victim of prevailing social forces, and not the architect of his downfall. In contrast,

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when evaluated from the vista of tragic analysis, the novel reveals that, as a character,

Mugo is a literary structuration that functions to enunciate the contradictions in human

nature, and most significantly those that seek to cannibalise collective aspirations for

personal gain. Mugo’sactions are defined by his illusions of greatness and his ungainly

egocentricism which puts him in a position where he hopes to benefit from colonial and

the postcolonial socio-political contexts. It is this contradiction in his worldview that

leads to his tragic fall. The tragic form is thus used to punctuate the society’s

renunciation of such extreme expressions of individualistic desires that seek to negate

collective aspirations.

In the Aristotelian conception of the tragic, Mugo’s selfishness and his evil

conniving nature become his hubris, the weakness in character that must lead him to a

tragic ending. This observation dovetails with Aristotle’s view of the tragic character as

“the kind of man who neither is distinguished for excellence and virtue, nor [who]

comes to grief on account of baseness and vice, but on account of some error” (38). It

can then be argued that Mugo’s fall is not precipitated by the community’s ill will

towards him, but by his own weakness in character. This view is further reiterated by

Raymond Williams who contends that one of the commonest tragic motifs is the

presentation of “an individual man, from his own aspirations, from his own nature, set

out on an action that lead(s) him to tragedy” (88). Character in this case is driven by a

particular weakness that predisposes the hero to a tragic ending.

The last tragic element, in A Grain of Wheat, is the disaster that befalls Mugo

when his guilt becomes apparent. His heroism is negated and he falls, in the eyes of the

other characters, from a hero to a villain. To the tragic, the representational value of this

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irony is in engendering the crisis that the community has found itself in, in its attempt to

reconcile the colonised and the decolonised community. In this way, tragic narration

affords the novel a potent tool that aids in a literary depiction of the contradictions that

define the social and historical conditions. As a consequence of the novel’s employment

of irony, the narrative is able to create literary negations that define the ideal

postcolonial community. Mugo as a character is contrasted to the other characters who

appear to have, in the newly decolonised context, build a vision for themselves as well

as for the community.

Gikandi describes the employment of irony as “the appropriate form for

representing complex, contested, and incomplete histories” (108). Apparently, through

the incisive application of irony, the tragic narrative is able to evaluate the conditions

that influence human actions and demonstrate the effects of inappropriate choices that

human beings sometimes make as a consequence of social and individual

idiosyncrasies. Gikandi further evaluates this ironical juxtaposition of the varied

interpretations of the struggle and hope for independence, and asserts that “in its

apotheosis and betrayal, [the novel] is given content and form as much by its utopian

propensities as by the series of tragedies and mishaps” (115). Tragic form therefore uses

character betrayal to allegorically demonstrate, by its presentation of contesting

individual wills,the importance of collapsing personal idiosyncrasies into “an

intelligible source of meaning” (115) that should aid development of values and ideals

beneficial to the nascent postcolonial state.

Additionally, the novel draws from biblical metaphors to enunciate on betrayal

motif as a component of a tragic narrative. This enunciation is achieved through the

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narrative’s constant utilisation of the metaphor of a personality who sacrifices himself

for the good of the community, but who is betrayed by a selfish close confidant.

However, this metaphor is different from the rejection of the saviour-prophet motif that

is evident in The River Between. This contrast punctuates the shift in the social

discourse and marks waThiong’o’s appropriation of language of the tragic form to voice

this shift that should be read in tandem with evolving socio-historical imperatives. In

this way, the language of tragedy is used to address both to the novel’s thematic

concerns and to illustrate the dynamics of social and historical change in an emergent

post-independence nation.

InA Grain of Wheat, there is variance in the narrative’s employment of tragic

characterisation and accompanying motif. Mugo’s character, unlike Waiyaki’s, heavily

tilts the narrative towards what Aristotle refers to as “tragedy of character,” and hence

the reversal is not a consequence of what McCollom calls “fate or external evil,” but a

consequence of some evil within his character. This evil leads Mugo to betray collective

desires in pursuit of personal gratification.

Dependent then on these variations, tragic discovery and the accompanying

tragic pleasure is experienced by the community or the other characters after they

avenge both Kihika’s betrayal, and by extension betrayal of the community’s socio-

political aspirations. As Decker correctly observes, Mugo and his silences do not just

represent the stylistic lacunae that militate against a linear reading of the text, and

invites an analysis of Mugo’s execution as the destruction of the “of a symbol of that

which may arise out of imperialism” (56). Consequently, the community is engaging in

53
a reversal of fortunes of an evil force and thus the narrative places tragic pleasure into

the hands of the community.

Tragedy in this sense follows Aristotle’s argument on the supremacy of the plot

structure in making a tragic narrative. In his opinion, the plot should be perceived as the

most important ingredient of tragedy, followed by character (40). The two are however

interdependent in the sense that the plot is developedby the actions of the characters,

who then influence both the nature of the narrated events, as well as influence the

readers’ interpretation of the text’s discourse. However, Aristotle’s attempt at a

hierarchical view of these elements is primarily intended to safeguard the structure of

the tragic so as to ultimately provide a tragic sense of life. Indeed, the plot structure in A

Grain of Wheatenhances the tragic sense in which Mugo’s ending is premised, and

concretises the narrative’s evaluation of the complex social, political and economic

transition from colonialism to independence.

The novel’s use of the tragic form to evaluate changing social, political and

economic realities is in tandem with George R. Noyes who argues for an expansion of

our interrogation of the tragic to evaluate other motifs that can be used to represent

tragic action in contemporary texts.In A Grain of Wheat, betrayal functions as a primary

motif that facilitates the narrative’s evaluation of social, political and economic forces

that militate against the emergent postcolonial society. This motif is evidentin two

distinctive levels; on the one hand, there is individual betrayal that is used to expound

on the intricacies of the colonial struggle, and on the other hand, there is the betrayal of

communal values, hopes and aspirations. As a matter of fact, individual betrayal is used

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to allegorically magnify the betrayal of the dream of nationalism in the post-

independence nation.

It is evident that wa Thiong’o explicitly uses betrayal as a motif that illuminates

the obstacles that the nascent Kenyan state anticipates. Indeed, Christopher Odhiambo

observes that “[n]arrating the nation is arguably one of the most evident preoccupations

[. . .] pursued by majority of postcolonial literary writers and critics” (159). Mugo’s

betrayal of the nationalist desire provides the novel’s discourse with the means by

which it questions the validity of individualistic desires alongside wider societal and

nationalist concerns. By the novel’s effective application of tragic irony that nullifies

Mugo’s quest for prosperity at the expense of the nation, the narrative privileges the

nation over the individual. The tragic hero is used as an embodiment of the social evils

that will be detrimental to the development of a national conscience that is appropriate

for nation building.

As Adrian Poole observes, “it is tempting to see the tragic hero as a kind of

scapegoat for our crimes – or unacted desires” (51), since we are “connected, even

interconnected, by complex systems of cause and consequence, in which questions of

innocence and guilt are all caught up and embroiled” (55). The tragic hero from this

perspective is representative of the desire for a community’s cleansing of itself by

transferring its guilt on one of their own.

2.5 Transition from Epic to Tragic Heroism in Matigari

Tragic evaluation of social and historical situations and contexts stems mostly

from the existence of extremely divisive and irresolvable social and individual conflicts.

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Apparently, when these conflicts are part of the historical background of a literary text,

they determine both the thematic concerns and the typology of character that can best

illustrate the intended discourse. In the context of post-independence literature, social

injustice, inequality, and economic exploitation influence the discourse that texts

originating from this historical background must focus on. In terms of their historical

contextualisation, texts emanating from this historical backdrop evaluate the

significance of colonial heroism in the emergent postcolonial historical and ideological

phase, as it is the case in wa Thiong’o’s Matigari.

In the novel, the character, Matigari, is founded on the epic exploits of the Mau

Mau freedom struggle, although changing historical imperatives demand his transition

in line with the prevailing social and historical realities. Matigari’s historical

reemergence forces him to denounce the violence of the struggle for independence by

symbolically burying his weaponry before he can be part of the post-independence

nation:

Round his waist he wore a cartridge belt decorated with red, blue and
green beads and from which hung a pistol in a holster. He slowly
unfastened the belt, counted the bullets, rolled it up carefully and placed
it next to the sword and the AK47 rifle. He looked at these things for a
while, perhaps bidding them goodbye. He covered them with dry soil. He
rubbed off all traces of his footsteps and then covered the spot with dry
leaves so skillfully that nobody would have suspected there was a hole
there” (4)

This exposition of the incidences that constitute the plot of the novel draws a historical

and a literary boundary between the epic hero and the tragic hero. By shedding off the

rudiments of his pre-independence heroism, Matigari disembarks from his hitherto

familiar historical space, and ventures into the unfamiliar history of neocolonialism that

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presents him with unprecedented challenges, those that expose him to tragic

consequences. Furthermore, Matigari is a microcosmic representation of the ideological

and political conflict between the bona fide freedom fighters and bourgeoisie

constituted of the beneficiaries of independence. In Matigari’s perception, the conflict is

not a violent engagement but an ideological negotiation that can be amicably resolved.

The impossibility of resolving the disputed postcolonial social and historical

betrayals lays ground for a tragic reading of the incidences that make up the plot of the

novel. Such a reading should address itself to pertinent principles such as character, the

nature of the conflict, the motifs, isolation and the disaster that awaits the tragic hero,

and the resulting ironic twist that accompany the tragic events addressed through the

narrative.

At the point when the novel opens, it is apparent that Matigari’s renunciation of

violence is a symbolic gesture that is meant to concretise his nobility. As he

contemplates this transformation, he announces to the world and to himself: “I have

now girded myself with a belt of peace. I shall go back to my house and rebuild my

home” (5). The novel’s discourse is primarily rendered through the symbolism and

imagery that revolves around the metaphor of the house and Matigari’s metaphorical

search for children to occupy it. This is a heroic and noble undertaking which, if he is

successful, will cement his image as the community’s hero-leader.

Matigari’s attempt to engage post-independence socio-political and economic

leadership reveals the deterioration of social and economic conditions for low cadre

citizens, as a consequence of their exploitation by the rich and powerful. The new socio-

political and economic formations cannot accommodate his mission and his quest turns

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into a violent struggle with the powerful forces that he seeks to overrun. In this narrative

of dispossession, there is literary demonstration of the violence that can be meted out in

protection of material and political power. In such a context, the use of tragic mimesis

serves as a literary demonstration of the sense of deprivation that characters go through

in their attempt to fight their oppressors, resulting in institutionalised disengagement

that leads to tragic ending on the part of crusaders for equity and justice.

Indeed, it has been argued that “the greater courage demanded of men deprived

of comforting ignorance, [and] the increase in man’s awareness can be viewed as a

factor in making tragic art” (Gassner 13). As such, tragic realism enforces the novel’s

deconstruction of neocolonial oppression, primarily enhanced through the hero’s

conscientisation of the masses to the fact of their oppression.

The novel further enhances its interrogation of neocolonial deprivationthrough

its portrayal of Matigari as a noble character who sheds off the violence of epic heroism

as he seeks to negotiate for social, historical and economic justice. However, post-

independence political and economic elite, in protection of their privileges, respond

with extreme violence meant to deter further contestation of their right to privileges of

power and authority.As such, this disengagement can only have tragic consequences on

the part of those that do not relent in their crusade for socio-economic justice in the

post-independence nation. In Brereton’s discussionof principles of tragedy, he argues

that the tragic can result from two possible contexts; awareness “of the unbridgeable

gap between desire and achievement” and the awareness “of [. . . .] conflict between the

actual material order of the world and a preferred ideal order” (60). In the novel,

Matigari is portrayed as a character who is driven in his quest for social and historical

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justice by these two forms of awareness and the narrative of this quest is framed within

the literary confines of the tragic.

The tragic character as a literary trope has an ennobling effect on the issues that

he or she may be used to represent and, in Aristotelian view, the tragic protagonist

should be superior in his actions so as to excite pity and fear. These emotional responses

to the rendition of the tragic are express consequences of the tragic protagonist’s tragic

error and the resulting disaster or failure. A close examination of the novel’s

presentation of Matigari assigns him attributes of a tragic protagonist. He engages in the

noble cause of fighting deprivation, while on the other, although aware of the

impossibility of reconciling the extremes of “desire and achievement,” he attempts to

fight for equity and social justice through ideological negotiation.

This approach becomes Matigari’s tragic error. He is acutely aware of some

looming failure after a series of encounters with the authorities. First, his experience

with the policemen who were harassing Guthera is quite revealing. When he goes for

his gun, he finds out that “there was nothing there. No guns. He remembered that he

was wearing the belt of peace. But he was very angry. Of what use is a man if he cannot

protect his children?” (30). This excerpt tells of Matigari’s awareness of possible

failure, yet he continues with his quest to repossess his metaphorical house and gather

his children amidst such glaring adversity. Then follows his arrest by the police and a

subsequent revision in his quest to search for “no justice other than the justice which

has its roots in truth” (82). His failure to negotiate for post-independence truth and

justice causes him to mobilise the masses so as to confront the oppressive socio-

economic order, but this only punctuates his failure.

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 It is apparent that Matigari’s failure results from his misapprehension of the

bourgeois’ determination to deny the desires that informed past national history and

struggles. However, tragic irony is used as a literary signification of the near

impossibility of finding the ideal truth and recapturing “patriotic victory” (Matigari 6).

In his quest, the only truth that he finds out is the extent of the violence with which

those in possession of power are prepared to employ for their self protection.

However, the narrative itself deconstructs Matigari’s failure by its use of

narrative oppositions that condemn misuse of governance structures to entrench

injustice. In this way, the narratives use of pity and fear steels the readers’ conscience

against the wielders of power and their excesses. The tragic form is thus used in

Matigari to expose irreconcilable dilemmas that human beings encounter in their search

for an ideal social order. According to Newton, tragedy demonstrates that “human

beings can never completely free themselves from a humanly-centred perspective on the

world and life” (147). This means that societies have to experience conflicts emanating

from divergent interpretations of its social and historical experiences, which may result

in ideological polarisation that gives rise to tragic conflicts.

Literary representation of such conflicts must entrench a discourse that indicates

how such conflicts may be resolved. In Matigari, for instance, the hero’s rejection of

individual salvation becomes a means of entrenching collective protest which evokes

identification with the readers, and consequently raises his status to that of a hero-

leader. The narrative in this case intimates at the need, for the entire society, to seek for

ways of resolving outstanding social, political and historical disputes.

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 In Matigari, the study evaluates how the tragic, from Blends’

perspective,functions to enunciate how “destiny [acts] as a force that destroys man . . .

[who] inflicts suffering on his fellows and so forces upon them an awareness of their

fate” (99). With this view in mind, Matigari can be interrogated as a tragic narration on

suffering, character, fate and external evil in line with Aristotle’s and McCollom’s

stipulations of tragic situations.

Matigari is a narrative that is woven around the motif of heroic failure. This

motif enforces, on the character,what Blends refers to asthe tragic hero’s “awareness of

[his] fate.” Heroic failure, in this sense, functions as the narrative’s strategy that

exposesirreconcilable socio-historical contestations that the community must contend

with. A hero in this sense serves as an embodiment of the struggle between different

discourses existent in society, while the hero’s failure serves to punctuate the narrative’s

critique of socio-political and historical injustices.

The novel projects Matigari as an influential figure both in thought and action,

and as an instigator of social change and ideology. In Aristotle’s view, this projection

enhances the status of the hero-leader through a tragic character’s rhetoric, and reveals

to the reader “the kind of thing a man chooses or rejects . . . where something is shown

to be true or untrue” (41). However, this reliance on rhetoric as a strategy for

advocating for Matigari’s vision for socio-economic and historical justice functions as

his hubris - his weakness in character and the cause of his certain annihilation. Poole’s

contention that “tragedies are always concerned with the mysteries of timing . . . with

the difficulty of knowing the right time to act or refrain from acting” (97), further

illuminates the tragic texture of Matigari. The novel demonstrates Matigari’s failure as

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resulting from his choices of what to do and the appropriate time for his actions.

Matigari’s inability to achieve his goals forms the background of the novel’s castigation

of the ruthlessness of power and those that wield it to oppress the weak.

2.6 Gender and the Tragic inPetals of Blood and Devil on the Cross

Part of this chapter has demonstrated how tragic mimesis can be useful as a

means of evaluating social conditions in a given society achieved through the

employment of a multiplicity of ideological and literary variations. For instance, tragic

art has been used to represent the most base of human characters being destroyed by

their evil acts, it can be used to represent the degradation of the most noble by social or

preternatural forces, or it can be used to explain the mystery of human suffering and the

continuous search for redemption and healing.

In these uses of tragic mimesis, the creation and representation of women

characters has predominantly used such characters as allegorical formation enunciating

the miseries of love, particularly as “nurturers, killers, as loving mothers and as bearers

of the responsibility for both mortality and the ‘sin’ of human sexuality” (Callaghan

53). However, in wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood, there is a

variation where female characters are used as a lens through which social, economic

and historical conditions affecting a postcolonial society are investigated.

In Devil on the Cross, the novel opens with the prophecy of the Gicaandi Player

pronouncing not only his prophecy but also indicating the ideological context in which

the novel is premised. In this way, the novel, as in Classical tragedy, uses the song of

the Gicaandi Player as an equivalent of the song identified as requisite by Aristotle, who

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stipulates that “the chorus should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be a part of

the whole, and should assume a share in the action” (57). From this observation, the

Gicaandi Player tells us of Wariinga’s tribulations, in her interaction with the

exploitative social order, as an omnipresent witness.

In the novel, the “Gicaandi Player, the Prophet of Justice” discloses “what now

lies concealed by darkness” (8). With these confessions from the narrator, Devil on the

Cross proceeds to narrate how “misfortune and trouble had trailed Wariinga long before

she left Nairobi” (10). This introduction to the events that will constitute the plot seeks

to depict Wariinga as an undeserving victim of social and economic forces against

which she is seemingly powerless.

From the foregoing, the Gicaandi player’s role in the novel can be appreciated in

two ways: the Gicaandi Player provides a dialogic form that foregrounds the novel’s

discourse, and also dovetails into what Gĩtahi Gĩtĩtĩ refers to as decentring the narrative

into “a model for interpersonal and public discourse” (124). From Gĩtĩtĩ’s observation,

the narrative then acquires significance as a communal lamentation on the inequalities

nurtured by a skewed and self-seeking aristocrat that thrives on exploitation and abuse,

heightened by the philosophical and textual interactions that precipitate the tragic

rendition.

According to Kimani Njogu, gĩcandĩas a genre promotes “a simultaneity of

interpretation of the narrative” thus promoting “a dialogue of genres [and] a dialogue of

narration and metacommentary” (Reading Poetry188).Njogu continues to aver thatDevil

on the Cross“consciously and overtly [uses] the gicandi performer unconstrained

spatially and temporally [to tell] people’s struggles in post-colonial Kenya” (“On the

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Polyphonic” 48). From the foregoing, it is evident that the Gicaandi Player uses generic

versatility of gicaandi to interrogate the narrative’s social context,and to provide

unpretentious evaluation of neocolonial circumstances that lead to Wariinga’s tragedy.

The fact that gicaandi as a genre appropriates a popular dialogic form that the

masses can easily relate with infuses into the narrative a level of familiarity that

enhances the audience’s ability to decode thematic referents alluded to in the novel.

Indeed, as Mikhail Bakhtin explains, such dialogic rendition “elevates the social

heteroglossia [. . .] with dialogized overtones [to create] artistically calculated nuances”

(278-279). Apparently, the novel invokes the Gicaandi Player to break down artistic and

ideological boundaries and by so doing disambiguate the narrative’s discourse.

Wariinga’s tragedy is in this way represented as a heteroglotic commentary on

collective experiences of the neocolonial society.

This idea can be interrogated further through Aristotle’s elaboration on tragic

mimesis in relation to the creation of plots, characters and motifs that constitute a tragic

narrative, identifies four categories of the tragic: “the complex tragedy, which depends

entirely on reversal and discovery,” “tragedy of suffering,” “tragedy of character,” and

lastly “spectacular tragedy” (56). Although Aristotle appears to be distinguishing

between different types of tragedy, a closer examination of these distinctions affirms the

thought in essence these types of plots may be combined in eliciting the tragic effect.

The ultimate objective of the tragic narrative should be to appeal to our human feelings,

fears, hopes and aspirations. This is achieved through the use of tragic characters to

interrogate human interactions, motivations and socio-historical circumstances of their

societies.

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 With reference to Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood, the misfortunes that

befall Wariinga and Wanjaare a consequence of their encounter with an inhumane and

exploitative socio-economic order that denigrates the weak and vulnerable. The tragic

heroines quest is thus to right the wrongs by collapsing the dominant exploitative order.

The two novels do not only share in their use of allegorical female characters that used

to demonstrate the evils of a denigrating socio-economic order but also in the narrative

motifs that organise the events for a tragic reading.

This representation can be attributed to wa Thiong’o’s creation of characters that

are “highly schematic and stereotyped” and “the embodiment of a tradition of struggle

and sacrifice” (Ogude 138). This reading of wa Thiong’o’s presentation of his

characters demonstrates not only the writer’s fixation with an ideological rendering of

his intended discourse and character types, but also his use of the narratives to represent

the postcolonial society’s struggle for socio-economic and historical justice.

In essence, these characters are used to give form and meaning to the tragedies

of their communities in terms of suffering and the influence that this suffering has on

the conscience of the oppressed. Wariinga and Wanja are sexually abused by men who

have the economic might to defeat their quest for social justice, and who are aware of

these women’s inability to defend themselves. However, these abuses only awaken a

violent attitude towards inequality and abuse of the vulnerable. In Petals of Blood, the

nature of the tragic relationship between the anti-imperialist forces and the imperialist

forces is perhaps best captured through Munira’s reflections: “how does one tell of

murder in a new town? Murder of the spirit? Where does one begin?” (45). Munira’s

apprehension of other characters and their thoughts avails to the audience the “razor-

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blade tension at the edges of [their] words. Violence of thought, violence of sight,

violence of memory” (45).It may be argued that such reflections foreground the

festering psychological torment that neocolonialism has forced its victims to endure.

Apparently, this torment predisposes the dispossessed to potential violence both in

thought and action.

This bottled up violence becomes a nurturing ground for the violence of

character that may predispose these characters to violent responses and consequently

drive them to act in a manner that offers their actions for a tragic reading. Moreover,

this violence is read as also evident in the untranslated language and invectives that are

markedly visible in Petals of Blood, and leads Mwangi to argue that “the very structure

of the narrative seems to echo the unfulfilled expectations that the novel thematizes”

and the failure “that the struggles for independence have not been translated into human

freedoms” (73). From Mwangi’s observations, it is arguable that Petals of Blood

captures the attempt to interrogate reasons that may account for the lack of freedoms,

but in this case from the perspective and allegory of the normative tragic heroine.

From the foregoing, it is evident that the two novels focus on characters and

suffering as frameworks that constitute the Aristotelian thinking on the plotting of the

tragic. Moreover, it has been opined that tragic motifs are invocations of socio-historical

and economic injustices that function as determinants of a character’s actions, and that

“the main content of tragedy consists in the phenomena of the inner world of a human

being, that action takes place primarily on a psychological basis, that the hero of the

tragedy interests us most of all as a moral being, subject to various peculiar

transformations” (Kliger 660). This observation sheds more light on the perspective

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taken by this study that the two heroines, Wanja and Wariinga, are primarily driven by

their violent psychological memories and as such, their tragic circumstances are a

consequence of their psychological torment.

As a matter of fact, the two novels blame the prevailing social and historical

injustices for the psychological scars that Wanja and Wariinga bear. In this way, the

novels ask for an evaluation of the society’s perspective as far as gendered social and

economic injustices are concerned. In addition, the narratives engage gender as a factor

in the society’s quest for social and economic restitution. This may be taken as a

suggestion that all forms of exploitation need to be considered and addressed before any

meaningful assault on social inequalities may be achieved.

As Kliger further observes, narrative motifs “are a product of the imagination’s

immediate response to the specific conditions of social life” (664). To the tragic, the use

of motifs then offers the critic a means of evaluating the patterns that consolidate the

narrative’s plot, and how this universalises not only the genre but also the experiences

of the tragic hero or heroine. Wanja’s loss of innocence and her subsequent loss of her

conscience is explained by the narrative as the cause of her transformation where she

chose to take her “final burial in property and degradation” (328). However, her

anagnorisis, the moment of discovery, leads her to seek vengeance against the forces

that have lured her to her degradation, and in her contemplation, “the manner of ending

it was more important than the act” (328). But in her quest to redeem both her dignity

and her vision for social and economic justice, she is blinded by brute rage and metes

out her version of justice by killing Kimeria and in the process denouncing her

corruption through the purifying fire.

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 Indeed, this act also serves as her redemption in the narrative’s denouement. Her

discovery is aided by reflections of her past and freedom from the prison of her pain and

suffering. She acknowledges that “maybe life was a series of false starts, which, once

discovered, called for more renewed efforts at yet another beginning” (337-338). Her

transformation rewards her with Abdulla’s child, and this knowledge brings her “a kind

of inner assurance of possibilities of a new kind of power” (338). The novel thus

rewards Wanja for her choices and seeks to atone for her suffering. The peripeteia or

the reversal of fortunes in this way sets apart the “goodness” of character from the evil

characters, and thus projects Wanja as the normative heroine of the novel.

Likewise, Devil on the Cross projects Wariinga as an undeserving victim of the

oppressive socio-economic forces, and like Wanja, one that seeks to avenge her

exploitation. In her childhood, the narrative explains that Wariinga “grew up in Nakuru

– upright, always seeking the path of virtue and experience” (141). Nevertheless, upon

maturity, her uncle’s voracious desire for wealth causes her “to stray from the paths

trodden by peasants into the paths of the petty bourgeoisie” (142), when he uses her as a

negotiating chip in his pursuit of the wealthy for his material gains. From her interaction

with the exploitative rich who seek to exploit her sexually and materially, she engages

in a quest for self reliance and social justice. However, with the reemergence of the

Rich Old Man who begs at the feet of the new independent Wariinga, she shoots and

kills him.

This act that forms the denouement of the narrative appears to be a deliberate

literary superimposition of virtue over vice, and it attempts to offer Wariinga an

opportunity to negotiate for justice and atonement against an oppressive socio-economic

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order. By doing this, the narrative provokes the emotions of pity and fear. These

emotions should, in Aristotle’s opinion, produce “tragic pleasure” (49), in consideration

of the incidences that form the plot and the moment of discovery. Regarding the

different discoveries that are appropriate to tragic mimesis, Aristotle provides a

distinction of five possible types of tragic discoveries. These include “discovery by

means of visible signs,” “those which are manufactured by the poet,” discovery “due to

memory,” that which is “a result of reasoning,” and the last form is “the fictitious form

of discovery arising from the fallacious reasoning of the parties concerned” (53-54).

Aristotle’s distinctions are however collapsed into his own argument that the

most appropriate discovery is one that is “brought about by the incidents themselves,

when the startling disclosure results from events that are probable” (54). In Devil on the

Cross, the reasons that account for Wariinga’s decision to kill the Rich Old Man are as

varied as the various levels of interpretation that are precipitated by the narrative itself.

On the one hand, Wariinga’s action could be said to have been provoked by the Rich

Old Man’s ridiculous proposal to revive their old romance despite her now being the

fiancée of the former’s son. On the other hand, Wariinga may have discovered the

futility of her hopes for happiness given that Gatuiria is the son of the Rich Old Man.

Most probable is the remembrance of her pain and suffering in the hands of the Rich

Old Man, who according to the narrative is diabolically selfish and denude of dignity.

As such, he is deserving of the punishment that is meted out on him while Wariinga

deserves the tragic pleasure resulting from her conquest over the hitherto oppressive

order.

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 In Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, the ironies that characterise the

ending of the narratives function as a redeeming moment for the victims of gendered

social, historical and economic injustices. In the two novels, it is evident that the

narratives build on irony to reverse the commodified female heroines that are, to the

male comprador acolytes, fruits that are their preserve to ravish and devour. The

reversal of fortunes happens in two ways; there is the annihilation of the greedy

consumers of the fruits of independence on one hand, and the triumph of the masses

over the exploitative socio-economic order.

Moreover, since these normative tragic heroines are allegorical representations

of the exploitation and abuse in the Kenyan postcolony, the narratives conform to the

motif of “an idealized hero with special attributes like [. . .] near invulnerability”

(Kliger 665), particularly at the end of the narratives when they have abnegated their

abuse. As a way of celebrating the new conscientised heroines, the novels do not

speculate on the punishment that such tragic characters may face as a consequence of

their vengeance results in the murder of their oppressors. If anything, the heroines are as

having succeeded in achieving some level of personal and collective gratificationas they

symbolically annihilate structures that have hitherto facilitated social and economic

injustices.

For instance, after killing the Rich Old Man, “Wariinga calmly walked away, as

the people watched from a safe distance” although “she knew with all her heart that the

hardest struggles of her life’s journey lay ahead . . .” (Devil 254). With this ending, the

narrative deliberately avoids discussing the specific struggles and instead gives

Wariinga an acute awareness of the circumstances that predicate her future challenges,

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triumphs and possible failures. Likewise, Wanja’s artistic and spiritual awareness is

revealed through her sketching of Abdulla bearing the semblance to Kimathi and

relating this to her unborn child, allegorically pronouncing the hope of future triumph.

And this made her feel “a tremendous calm, a kind of inner assurance of the

possibilities of a new kind of power” (Petals 338).

These endings affirm what Jarret-Kerr refers to as the tragic form’s primary

demonstration of two basic principles of the human condition; the fact that an individual

is not entirely responsible for his or her fate and thus his or her suffering is largely

undeserved, and secondly that individuals can attempt their redemption if they “repent,

sacrifice, accept” (371). This observation admits that literary employment of tragic

narration can be used as a redeeming tool that affirms the centrality of human desire for

a reaffirmation of humanity particularly when faced with degrading socio-historical

conditions.

Wariinga’s final decision is constructed around the narrative’s desire to ennoble

not only the tragic heroine’s actions, but also the structured discourse that informs the

text. This is achieved through what has been referred to as “ideologically constructed

logic of binarism” and which demonstrates that tragic heroines are “the bearers of

history’s significance” (Nicholls 174). Although the creation of binaries is central to the

construction of a tragic heroine and with it the contention to historical importance, it is

necessary to hastily add that indeed, the construction of the tragic character be it male or

female, just like the construction of an epic hero, functions to historicise the narrated

events.

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 In Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, the tragic heroine is constructed as a

means by whichthe novels engage in a paradigmatic decentring of neocolonialism, and

largely from an allegorical prism. The metaphor of sexual exploitation and abuse has

been used in the two novels as literary signification of the post-independence socio-

economic exploitation of the peasants by the minority that controls the forces of

economic production. Sexual exploitation is symbolic of the desire to conquer and

exploit the weak and vulnerable for the sake of self gratification. Equally important in

the narratives is the heroines’ desire for vengeance and retribution, which also signifies

the neocolonial subjects’ quest for social and historical justice and freedom from the

manacles of colonial and neocolonial social and economic order.

Wariinga and Wanja, the tragic heroines, engage in the quest for what Callaghan

terms “a degree of sexual autonomy” (65) and act as the normative heroines that both

expose and destroy the tyranny of economic dominance. The use of the tragic form,

which is enhanced through the two novels’ use of metafiction, dialogism and

polyphony, facilitates what Korang views as “representation [of] men and women in

concrete socio-historical setting” (8). Tragic realism, in this way, enhances the

reciprocal relationship between the narrative and the discourse, making it easier for the

narrative to elicit ideological alienation against the exploitative neocolonial order that

has been imposed on the disinherited masses, and to use the tragic effect as a means of

punctuating the themes of dispossession and retribution.The tragic effect is thus

appropriated as an important ideological and literary tool that demonises neocolonial

exploitation of the masses by the elite. In essence, readers are emotionally dissuaded

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from sympathising with the evil socio-economic system that is rightly being punished

for its transgressions.

The intense emotions that characterise the novels’ denouement function to

negate the material determinism that is the root cause of social and economic

inequalities inherent in the postcolonial state. This negation is on one hand aided by the

element of psychological restoration that the heroines experience as they confront their

tormentors. In this way, the tragic heroines become symbols of a free society: one that

has overcome social and economic inegalitarianism and entrenched a sense of social

and historical justice for those that have endured colonial and neocolonial injustices.

The tragic form, in this way, demonstrates the conflicts that must be resolved before the

postcolonial society can start rebuilding its identity.

Furthermore, the two novels adhere to the stipulations of the tragic form since

much of the response that we find coming through the heroines is occasioned by the

aspect of external evil, and the guilt that we may associate with the consequences of

their actions ambiguous and therefore unavailable for our moral sense of judgment. And

the narratives therefore can only provoke in us a condemnation of the acolytes who

perpetuate the existing oppressive social, historical and economic order. Our pity is

directed at the heroines who endure humiliation and abuse as they grow and attempt to

overturn the structures that make such abuse tenable.

2.7 Conclusion

The chapter has interrogated the various elements of tragedy that are identifiable

through the novels’ presentation of characters, the conflicts that they attempt to resolve,

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and the literary significance of these conflicts. The characters demonstrate a broad

awareness of the various factors that influence human destiny, and are largely seen as

forging both an ideological and a philosophical interrogation of their conditions in

particular and the conditions of their communities in general. In so doing, the novels

have used the tragic form to present literary interrogation of socio-economic, historical,

cultural and political conflicts that Kenya has experienced during and after colonialism.

The study has found out that the novels have used tragic protagonists to

represent changing social realities, and to draw our attention to the significance of these

socio-cultural, political and historical changes. Tragic heroes and heroines are thus used

as narrative agents that provide oppositional or alternative discourse which effectively

guides our interrogation of tragic conflicts that are at the core of the novels’ thematic

focus. For instance, tragic characterisation has been used to demonstrate the growth of

the heroes and heroines from naivety to knowledge, from weakness to strength, and

from dependence to autonomy in thought and action. These characters, in their capacity

as hero-leaders in their specific communities, represent social, historical and political

conflicts inherent in their communities, and demonstrate the intricacies that surround

human quest for solutions to the conflicts and problems that communities may

encounter.

The study has further observed that the tragic form has been used in the novels

to demonstrate the negative effects of ideological polarisation, which is an express

result of the postcolonial society’s failure to resolve conflicts that arise out of such

polarisation. On their part, tragic heroes’ and heroines’ideological convictions become

their tragic flaws, which expose them to tragic endings and subsequent reversal of

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fortunes. Social and ideological alienation, as experienced by tragic protagonists, draws

our attention to the contradictory nature of socio-cultural, political and historical

changes. The tragic form appropriates heroic alienation as a means by which the

narratives demonstrate the consequences of inadequate engagement between the

different polarities.

For instance, in The River Between, tragic realism depicts social and cultural

disharmony that is a consequence of colonial incursion and the introduction of

Christianity and Western education. The tragic nature of this conflict is reinforced by

the narrative’s use of motifs such as wisdom and folly, betrayaland jealousy to

anticipate the conflicts and the disengagement that will characterise the postcolonial

state. Ideological disengagement is further explored through the use of tragic mimesis in

A Grain of Wheat, Matigari,Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross where the narratives

decry the rise of the bourgeois imperialism. It is in the next chapter that the study

interrogates specific thematic concerns as addressed through the novels’ use of tragic

realism.

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 3.0 Chapter Three

3.1 Themes and the Tragic Form in wa Thiong’o’s Novels

3.2 Introduction

This chapter interrogates thematic concerns addressed in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s

The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood, and Devil on the

Cross, and interrogates interconnectedness between these themes and the tragic form.

As observed in the previous chapter, the tragic form has been used to foreground the

text’s discourse on socio-political polarisation that is a direct consequence of the

introduction of colonial social and pedagogical values and practices. The chapter is

guided by the understanding that a critical analysis of a literary narrative benefits

immensely from the interrogation of such elements as narrative form, style, and

narrative representation all which conglomerate to constitute the text. This observation

is further supported by the fact that an accurate analysis of these constituent elements of

a narrative specifies the conditions for intelligibility of the narrative, and thus assists our

interpretation of the narrative’s discourse. In this way, the reader can evaluate the

interplay between the signifying structures and the implicit realities that are textually

represented.

3. 3 Cultural Nationalism, Christian Revivalism and Western Education in The

RiverBetween.

The use of the tragic perspective in the analysis of novelistic discourse directs

our attention to a multiplicity of narrative aspects and, consequently, facilitates our

approach to a novel’s thematic analysis. Such formative aspects that constitute the texts,

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including narrative devices and techniques, modes of portrayal and in totality the

rhetorical context that surrounds narrative composition are cascaded into the act of

reading and analysing wa Thiong’o’s five novels. Gerald Prince and Arlene Noble are

of the view that this approach to novelistic inquiry has the ability “to isolate and

describe the fundamental elements of the narrated” (543), which in this case are the

thematic concerns fundamentally engrained in wa Thiong’o’s novels and presented

through the tragic form. With this import, the study will be guided in examining the

importance of tragedy as a mode of narrative composition, and its enhancement of

meaning production in wa Thiong’o’s novels.

Furthermore, at the heart of postcolonial discourse upon which wa Thiong’o’s

novels are premised, is the contestation of colonial structuration of the African social,

historical and cultural identities. Such contestation is, in essence, a means of contesting

colonialism and colonial structures, and which focuses on the expression of colonial

subjects’ desire to form new decolonised social and historical identities. To Phyllis

Taoua, wa Thiong’o’s novelistic discourse “contemplate[s] all the ambiguities inherent

in the process of decolonization” (215-16), and as such interrogates the social and

historical conditions of the postcolonial society. This argument opens up a vista that

enables an evaluation of how the tragic form facilitates the thematic foci of wa

Thiong’o’s novels.

Joanna Sullivan, in an exploration of the different categories of heroic forms

often used in African literature, identifies “the tale hero, the epic hero, the tragic hero,

and the comic antihero,” and argues that “the tragic hero represents a modified epic

hero, more human, more recognizably one of us, someone who wants to assert an

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individual viewpoint, yet fears the consequential stigma of social outcast” (182). The

choice and use of the tragic hero is a structural and narrative choice that can be used to

demonstrate “the complicated social dynamics arising from the clash of modernity with

traditional values” (Sullivan 182). This argument dovetails with the postcolonial

discourse that demands signification of the multifarious rhetoric emanating from the

contradictory perspectives on the place of new cultural and historical encounters

resulting from colonial incursion into Africa.

Postcolonial conflicts, as addressed in The River Between, are represented

through what Kwaku Labri Korang refers to as “suprasocial” and “infrasocial” levels

(13). While the “suprasocial” refers to conflicts that result from external influences, the

“infrasocial” refers to those conflicts that result from interpersonal conflicts between

individuals whose lives are essentially organised within the same social or communal

sphere. In The River Between, the “infrasocial” conflicts function as the foundation

blocks for a tragic narration, and the conflicts therein addressed as the basis for the

allegorical representation of colonial and postcolonial concerns, conflicts and

contradictions, which are illuminated through the themes ofcultural nationalism,

Christian revivalism and western education.

According to Peter Hitchcock, postcoloniality, in its “logic of conventions”

centres on the exploration of social ontology and practices fermented by the binaries of

colonizer/colonized and questions two important facets of the postcolonial: expression

of difference and the process of becoming (299). From Hitchcock’s observation,

postcolonial discourse should then address themes that facilitate our investigation of

contradictions and conflicts existent in a society that is in the process of (re)discovery.

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 The River Between can be said to evaluate the conflicts and contradictions of

cultural and social change that are necessitated by the introduction of Western

education, Christianity, and western culture. Through Waiyaki’s tragic presentation, the

narrative enhances the rendition of the difficulty of choices offered by the binaries of

new/old, conservative/dynamic, and traditional/modern. These social and historical

realities necessitate the presentation of the inevitable upheavals resulting from the

collision of differing perspectives, and offers aesthetic and literary signification of the

contradictions that these upheavals merit. In The River Between, this upheaval is aptly

presented through both the individual circumstances that characters in the novel face

and the communal reaction to these circumstances.

Indeed, The River Between is a narrative of conflicts as militated by the

introduction of new epistemological, religious and cultural values and norms. The major

forces in the narrative emanate from the conflicts between traditional African cultural

nationalism, Christian revivalism and catechism, and western education. Waiyaki,

Nyambura and Muthoni are used in the narrative as expressions of hybridity and as

literary manifestations of the conflict between the three polarities of Kikuyu cultural

nationalism, Christianity and western education.

The expression of difference and the rigours of awareness and discovery that, in

Hitchcock’s argument, determine the postcolonial topos in The River Between are

directly related to the consciousness of the community and the characters that the

narrative uses to render its discourse. Although the historical conflicts between Kameno

and Makuyu form the basis for new conflicts that are merited by the introduction of

Christianity, the narrative’s main focus is on the effects of the ridges’ disjointed

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approach to this intrusion and their inevitable conquest. And this incongruence of

perspectives is best illustrated through the tragic predisposition that Waiyaki is thrust

into right from the beginning of the novel. In this way, the novel allegorises his fate to

symbolically represent the contradictions manifest in the consciousness of the

community at large.

In the novel, there are several levels at which the clouding of the community’s

conscience can be read. The primordial inorganic existence between the ridges

symbolises and anticipates the everlasting disunity between the ridges:

When you stood in the valley, the two ridges ceased to be sleeping lions
united by their common source of life. They became antagonists. You
could tell this, not by anything tangible but by the way they faced each
other, like two rivals ready to come to blows in a life and death struggle
for the leadership of this isolated region. (1)

This excerpt both acknowledges the ontological and ideological differences between

Kameno and Makuyu and invites the reader to anticipate the continuation of antagonism

and conflicting worldviews as will be precipitated by the events in the narrative. In this

way, the community’s inability to forge a cohesive social and ideological force against

cultural and social domination by the new Christian and Western values forms the main

discourse underlying The River Between. The narrative evaluates the contradictions that

are manifest in different forms at different parts of the narrative, and which elucidate

the explanations for this failure.

The quest for identity and the contradictions manifest in the colonial counter-

discourse is given a teleological drive in The River Between by the casting of Waiyaki

as the tragic hero of the narrative, and whose failure to reconcile not only the leadership

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of the ridges but also the social and cultural debate demonstrates the magnitude of the

conflicting worldviews. These polarising worldviews are played out in the cultural

argument that is used as the arena for the continuation of the rivalries between Kameno

and Makuyu. However, Waiyaki is caught up in the argument as he strives to live up to

the prophecy of unifying the ridges as they confront the changing social and cultural

realities.

With respect to the narrative structure, form and characterisation, The River

Between can be read as Bildungsroman, the narration of a young and naïve hero’s

exposure to worldly matters such as life and love. Julie Mullaney expounds on the

relationship between the Bildungsroman and colonial locations and rhetoric by noting

that such a narrative:

Charts the initiation of the child or young adult into the society and the
challenges this process generates, often thematized in the protagonists
estrangement from family, community and nation, leading to fraught
attempts to renegotiate relationships with place. (30)

Waiyaki’s demeanour is symptomatic of a tragic hero-leader who oversimplifies both

the prophecy and the urgency of the prevailing social, historical and cultural

circumstances, and falls within what Ato Sekyi-Otu refers to as “divinations of unwilled

truths to be accepted, commemorated, and awaited” (162). Sekyi-Otu attributes

Waiyaki’s failure to the character’s misreading of both his role and his prophecy “as

scene, event, and word” (162), and thus neglects his prophesied role as “a black messiah

from the hills” (38). However, Waiyaki’s failure cannot be entirely blamed on his

personal failures, and his indecisiveness may be attributed to narrative and social

conditions prevalent at the time.

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 David Cook and Michael Okenimpke have observed that Waiyaki’s actions are

informed by the naivety of a young man “asked to solve the problems of society long

before he can solve the problems of his own identity” (31). As a Bildungsroman,

Waiyaki is thrust into an unfamiliar world of the prophecy and the unharmonious

coexistence between Makuyu and Kameno, and as Cook and Okenimpke have

observed, he is ideologically unprepared for the responsibility that is thrust on his

shoulders. This lack of grounding predisposes Waiyaki to tragic failure.

However, the narrative thematises the difficulty of self-formation in a

postcolonial location. Waiyaki, Muthoni and Nyambura are presented as characters

groping for an acceptable resolution of the question embodied in the socio-cultural

conflict between Kikuyu cultural nationalism, Christianity and western education. This

observation is concomitant with Mullaney’s assertion that “postcolonial writers explore

the canon as a vehicle of culture” (34) to investigate the cross-cultural debate between

the divergent perspectives surrounding colonialism and the conquest of indigenous

people to redefine both their cultures and their history.

The ambiguity of the issues that precipitate the cultural rift between the ridges is

perhaps best illustrated through Chege’s lament on the value of female circumcision:

“Were the Christians now preaching against all that which was good and beautiful in the

tribe? Circumcision was the central rite in the Gikuyu way of life. Who had ever heard

of a girl that was not circumcised? Who would ever pay cows and goats for such a

girl?” (37-38). On the one hand, defenders of the purity of Kikuyu cultural ontology

perceive their culture as “good and beautiful” and as such it is to be defended against

the rising wave of Christian influence. Ironically, Waiyaki, at least in Chege’s view,

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embodies the hope of retention and defense of the community’s cultural purity and the

carrier of the ancient prophecy. But these responsibilities and expectations become

formative elements in the unfolding of the tragic process.

As Peter R. Connolly argues, this process is characterised by “an extreme

instance of difficult decision or choice” where the hero’s actions “go progressively out

of his own control” (552). In its rendition of the polarisation merited by contradictory

perspectives that surround the debate on the place of Gikuyu cultural practices, Western

education and Chritianity, Waiyaki finds himself in a situation where social and

ideological divisions make it impossible for the society to resolve emergent conflicts.

Waiyaki aggravates the situation by displaying some character flaws such as his

attraction to both Muthoni and Nyambura – characters that alsorepresent divergent

views on the relevance of Christian values in the context of Gikuyu cultural beliefs and

customs.

However, the narrative admits Wayaki’s ambiguity and opens up the

contradictory representation that hints at his failure as a hero-leader in the community’s

defense of its cultural heritage. As the narrative explains, “Waiyaki’s absence from the

hills had kept him out of touch with those things that most mattered to the tribe” (39).

This part of the narrative takes away from Waiyaki the hegemonic dominance that the

prophecy had bequeathed to him. He becomes a symbol of ambiguity and hybridity,

teetering from one end of the cultural debate to the other, and in essence he becomes

grossly indecisive as far as reconciling the divergent opinions is concerned.

This indecisiveness is well demonstrated in Waiyaki’s inability to join his peers

in the initiation dance since “that thing inside him kept him aloof, preventing him from

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fully joining the stream,” although later on he is submerged into the dance after insistent

prodding from his agemates and he finds himself only wanting “this thing . . . this mad

intoxication of ecstasy and pleasure” (42) but which only leads him to “a hollowness

inside his stomach” and thereby “la[ys] himself naked, exposes himself for all to see”

(43).

Waiyaki’s indecisiveness is a result of the diametrically opposed demands that

are being made on him. He is on the one hand sent by his father to Siriana to “learn all

the wisdom of the white man” so as to come back and “save the people in their hour of

need” (21), and on the other hand he wants to avoid betraying Gikuyu cultural values.

His exposure to Western Christian education further complicates his position and

prevents him from giving himself “to the dream in the rhythm” (43) of the ways of the

tribe. His lack of personal commitment is symptomatic of the absence of personal

conviction as far as African culture, Western education, and Christianity are concerned.

The complexity of the conflicts that characters in The River Between have to

contend with breeds confusion, alienation and ambivalence. This is aptly demonstrated

through the two hybrid characters: Muthoni and Nyambura. Although they represent

different perspectives on the cultural debate, each is engrossed in difficulty of choice

just like Waiyaki. Muthoni on the one hand yearns for a preservation of the notions of

beauty and womanhood as contemplated by the Kikuyu traditional culture. Her yearning

for cultural preservation is aptly symbolised by her self-exile from Makuyu (the social

location for Christian revivalism) to Kameno (the site for cultural nationalism).

Muthoni’s ambivalence is consolidated in her pursuit of mediation between the new

Christian faith and retention of cultural ideals that guide conceptualisation of

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womanhood and motherhood. As she admits to Waiyaki, “I say I am a Christian . . . I

have not run away from that. But I also want to be initiated into the ways of the tribe”

(43). This acknowledgement makes explicit the ambivalence that marks the colonial

condition and the inner conflicts and contradictions that the tempestuous change metes

out on individual characters as well as the entire community.

Nyambura’s perspective, on the other hand, is more critical of the rhetoric of the

new faith. In her thinking, Joshua’s version of Christianity “came to stand between a

father and his daughter so that her death did not move him, then it was inhuman” (134).

She, consequently, yearns for an alternative religion, “the faith that would give life and

peace to all” (135). The conjoined circumstances experienced by Waiyaki, Muthoni and

Nyambura highlight the difficulty that Mullaney refers to as “the processes and forms of

change, adaptation and reconfiguration” (24). The failure of these characters to achieve

their desires cements the view that despite their best efforts, they could not reconcile the

polarisation that the demands for change on the one hand and the desire for

conservatism on the other have created.

Furthermore, the three characters represent the genesis of Waiyaki’s

indecisiveness. It is evident that although Waiyaki is well aware of Christianity’s desire

for cultural pacification of African traditions, he finds himself unable to condemn those

that have abandoned African culture and crossed over to Christianity. Indeed, Waiyaki

perceives it as his duty to protect this breakaway society as evident in his attempt to

warn Joshua of the impending attack by Kabonyi and the Kiama. Although Waiyaki’s

ambivalence appears to be detrimental to the puritan stance that the Kiama has adopted,

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that ambivalence is a pointer to the narrative’s acceptance of a sense of shared historical

past and an undeniable recognition of a shared identity and destiny.

In line with Stephen Slemon’s observation on the interplay between the history

of colonised societies and the literary presentation of the history of postcolonial

societies, The River Between uses its characters as “genuinely historical subjects, [and]

as subjects of their own histories” (192). As subjects of the history of colonisation, these

characters function as indicators of the tragic conflicts that colonial infiltration

introduced to a hitherto organic African culture. The African communities’ search for

an appropriate response brought about divisiveness as the African communities

grappled to understand this unprecedented historical experience. For instance, in The

River Between, the tragedy that befalls Waiyaki as a person and as the hero leader of the

community accords the social and historical contradictions and conflicts their

appropriate historical significance.

In accordance with the elements of the tragic form, The River Between,

according to Langbaum, presents the tragic circumstances of a character as existentially

hierarchically ordered to attract “our sympathy by externalizing through action his

internal being” (83). As readers, we perceive the events that affect Waiyaki’s tragic

circumstances as a result of social and historical conditions that are out of his control.

He is tossed into a disputed historical ancestry, he is confronted with the demands of the

prophecy at an early age, and he finally finds himself in the midst of conflicting forces

involved in the three pronged argument on culture, Christianity and Western education.

These forces, more than the character himself, are to blame for the tragic circumstances

that lead to Waiyaki’s failure as the prophesied messiah. Our sympathy for the hero is

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mostly evoked by our perception of him as an embodiment “of a heroic affirmation of

an uncompromising human will to freedom” (Korang 14), and as an expression of

concrete human possibilities.

Through the narrative’s subscription to three important periods: past cultural

autonomy, the disputed present, and the distant elusive future, The River Between’s

postcolonial discourse interrogates the existent social and cultural contexts and

locations as a means of seeking a transformative and inclusive cultural, educational and

religious practice that reconciles divergent cultural polarities and heals the rifts that

divide the postcolonial African community. Inherent in the narrative’s ideological and

epistemological discourse is the quest for syncretism, sacrifice and reconciliation which

are advanced as the most plausible exit out of the chaos and conflicts that characterise

the contestations between the different actors and their hard held perspectives. In its

discourse, the novel explicitly advances the view that social conflicts ought to be

resolved in such a manner that all views on divisive issues are considered before an

amicable solution can be reached.

3.4 Disenchantment, Betrayal and Retribution in A Grain of Wheat

In terms of its cultural, historical and ideological settings, A Grain of Wheat

occupies a unique position in wa Thiong’o’s oeuvre since it is set at the threshold of

political and social reorganisation necessitated by the end of colonialism and the

coming of independence. The novel attempts a reconciliation of the different individual

and social conflicts that characterised the colonial period and the subsequent struggle

for independence. Ideologically, the novel engages in a discourse that not only attempts

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to account for the various individual and social conflicts that characterised the struggle

for independence but also engages in a philosophical exploration of the influence of

these conflicts in the postcolonial state. Through the tragic elements evident in the

narrative, A Grain of Wheat explores the implications of competing human interests that

breed betrayal, jealousy, struggle for power and domination. The novel further

interrogates how these competing interests may explicitly impact on the new political

and social order that independence heralds.

A Grain of Wheat is primarily an attempt to narrate the past and use it as a

means of questioning the future. The past is recollected through the individual

interactions of the characters, their reactions to events and relationships, and the social

formations that are a consequence of these characters interpretation of the value of their

experiences. In this way, the narrative appropriates the resulting ironic twists as a means

of narrating and interrogating the nuances of colonisation and decolonisation.

An outstanding aspect of the narrative in this evaluation is its projection of

historical and social heroism. Through the novel’s appropriation of the tragic form, the

narrative delves into the history of the main characters and interrogates the different

social and historical factors that define their response to the changing social, historical

and political realities. Specifically, the novel examines the quest for power and the

resultant betrayals at personal and communal levels. Through Mugo, the tragic

antagonist in the narrative, the novel anticipates the rise of a capitalistic motif as

symbolised by his contestation of heroism that masks his quest for personal

aggrandisement. In essence, Mugo’s anti-heroic presentation in the novel functions not

only as one of the illustrations of the narrative’s interrogation of the past but also as its

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most powerful rendition of the ironies that characterise the formation of a new socio-

political and economic dispensation.

Indeed, as Simon Gikandi aptly observes, the novel explores “competing

versions and visions of history” which structurally aid in the narrative’s exposition of

“disillusionment and betrayal” (v). Stylistically, the novel incisively juxtaposes

characters and the events that define their interactions to bring out these thematic issues.

As the narrative opens, we are introduced to Mugo’s uneasiness with people and events.

Apart from his personal nervousness that seems to paralyse his being, his encounter

with Warui, Githua, and the old woman leaves him incapacitated to even work on his

land, and in his contemplation, “the country appeared sick and dull” (6). The novel’s

preoccupation with Mugo’s past and present intimates a close relationship between his

past and the formative events that will constitute the narrative, and most importantly

portrays Mugo’s disenchantment with history as well as with his past.

In Julie Mullaney’s opinion, “postcolonial literatures often delineate the forms

of interruption that colonialism represents in the lives, histories and experiences of the

colonized” (39). This observation urges a reading of postcolonial literature from the

narrated summative experiences of the characters that postcolonial writers may use to

present the colonial experience, the anti-colonial struggles and the act of decolonisation.

Postcolonial narratives achieve this representation by useof characters that serve as a

literary means of attempting a comprehensive rendition of the history of postcolonial

societies.

In this regard, A Grain of Wheat attempts to use characters as microcosmic

representations of the contradictory interests that characterise the processes of

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colonialism, the struggle for independence, and finally the acquisition of independence.

The novel, by setting out to narrate individual characters’ encounter with colonialism,

invites a cautious interpretation of the colonial experience not as a homogenous

experience but as an encounter that has its own socio-historical conflicts and

contradictions. Indeed, as Leela Gadhi cautions, “in its therapeutic retrieval of the

colonial past, postcolonialism needs to define itself as an area of study which is willing

not only to make, but also to gain, theoretical sense out of that past” (5). Part of this

sense is the portrayal of the inner desires, hopes and inadequacies that characterise

Mugo as a colonial subject and the society’s hero, as this part of the narrative explains:

He turned to the soil. He would labour, sweat, and through success and
wealth, force society to recognize him. There was, for him, then, solace
in the very act of breaking the soil: to bury seeds and watch the green
leaves heave and thrust themselves out of the ground, to tend the plants
to ripeness and then harvest, these were all part of the world he had
created for himself and which formed the background against which his
dreams soared to the sky. But then Kihika had come into his life. (9)

It is in this excerpt that the narrative explains Kihika’s historical relevance not only with

reference to the history of decolonization, but also in reference to Mugo’s eccentric

ambitions. Kihika’s coming into Mugo’s life is a disruption of Mugo’s alienation from

himself, the community and most importantly latter’s attempt to alienate himself from

the historical events affecting his community.

The narrative, having already alienated the reader from Mugo’s interpretation of

the importance of social, political and historical events that have shaped the community,

prepares the reader for the ironic twists that are the foundations of disenchantment. The

narrator uses expressive statements that invite the reader to question Mugo’s station in

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the community. He is a man incapable of appreciating the changing circumstances, for

in his opinion, “time drags, everything repeats itself . . . the day ahead would be just like

the yesterday and the day before” (2), and he is a man who “[feels] hollow” (6)

regardless of the enthusiasm that the rest of Thabai has with the changing social and

political events, and who walks “like a man who knows he is followed or watched” (9).

It is the novel’s use of such depictions that concretises its presentation of Mugo as

tragically flawed, and a symbol of colonial and postcolonial uncertainties.

A Grain of Wheat further uses its key characters as social units to interrogate the

theme of betrayal both at personal and communal levels. This is availed to the reader

through deliberate application of tragic irony that the narrative uses to punctuate the

betrayal and tragic reversal. After its initial depiction of Mugo’s inadequacy as a hero,

the narrative engages in a systematic enunciation of the historical encounter between the

characters and others that form significant units in the narrative, and their reaction to the

fact of colonisation. The narrative explains the complex relationship between people

and events, and consequently attempts to explain how these relationships influence the

destiny of the individuals and the society at large. In this way, the narrative

demonstrates the interconnectedness between personal and communal failures.

Jealousy as a motif in the narrative is interwoven with the theme of betrayal.

The most interesting is Mugo’s jealousy towards Kihika, who, to Mugo’s surprise,

“ha[s] such power and knowledge” as demonstrated when he “unroll[s] the history of

Kenya” (16) and moves the emotions of the masses at Rungei during the meeting of the

Movement. Furthermore, when they dramatically lock eyes, Mugo experiences “an

intense vibration of terror and hatred” (17). Having depicted Mugo as an alienated and

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inadequate social and communal unit, the narrative draws on this presentation to explain

Mugo’s dislike for Kihika.

Mugo’s dislike for Kihika functions as a fundamental ingredient in the

presentation of narrative oppositions, where a narrative may expound on its discourse

by presenting characters that have contrasting worldviews. In this way, A Grain of

Wheat presents Kihika as a character that has social and political significance as

contrasted to Mugo, who is groping for ways of earning at least some appreciation from

the community. Mugo believes that he will earn this recognition “through success and

wealth” (9), and he is jealous that the recognition that he so fervently desires can be

easily earned by the likes of Kihika who was to him “a boy, probably younger than

him” (16). Psychologically and socially, Mugo generates a motive for his betrayal of

Kihika in particular, and the betrayal of the postcolonial society in general. However, as

the narrative demonstrates, the multiplicity of moral dilemmas that almost all the

characters in the narrative display compounds their inability to unmask Mugo for what

he is. Indeed, as Kenneth Harrow observes, the tragic narrative thrives on “the principal

characters experience more of doubt than certainty in their lives” (170). This

uncertainty clouds the characters’ psychology and provides more avenues for the

complications necessary in the development of the tragic plot.

For instance, the moral uncertainties that the main characters are faced with

emanate from the intricacies of the social and political demands in the freedom struggle.

Consequently, the irony that characterises the narrative emanates from the social and

psychological boundaries that characterise the interactions and relationships between

the principal characters. In A Grain of Wheat, personal suffering and ever-present guilt

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hinder the characters’ ability to evaluate the social and historical circumstances that

affect their lives. To this extent, they even misconstrue Mugo to be the hero of the

freedom struggle, and even “wove new legends around his name and imagined deeds”

(221). Ironically, the people avoid scrutinising Mugo’s reactions to their perception, and

they quickly attribute his discomfort around people to the mystery of greatness.

It is apparent that the other characters’ inability to perceive Mugo’s guilt is not

only explained by the psychological boundaries that inhibit characters’ perception of the

truth but which the narrator in complicity with the audience know all too well, but also

by the existence of an easy scapegoat; Karanja. Adrian Poole explains that we are

“connected, even interconnected, by complex systems of cause and consequence, in

which questions of innocence and guilt are all caught up and embroiled” (55). There

lacks effective communication between the primary characters, and like Githua, each

seems to have an expressive narrative that is purely an attempt to reorganise his or her

life in tandem with the imperatives of the changing social and historical dispensation.

Through this characterisation, the novel intimates the competing interests that will

manifest in the anticipated social order that independence will herald.

Ironically, many of these narratives are woven around Mugo and Kihika’s

memory. By doing this, the narrative, as Gikandi puts it, uses Mugo as “the subject of

allegorical coherence and epistemological certainty” (114). However, the narrative

announces to the reader the inner turmoil and the unspoken desires and motives that

govern Mugo’s actions and reactions to people and events. Nevertheless, his centrality

in rendering the irony that aesthetically founds the historical significance of the intricate

personal and social contradictions is indisputable.

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 Besides interrogating the historical significance of the betrayals and resulting

ironies, A Grain of Wheat can also be argued to be a quest for historical restitution

mainly sought through retribution. It is apparent that the narrative admits the

impossibility of a meaningful celebration of independence before Kihika’s betrayer is

unmasked and punished. Symbolically, General R. engages in an enumeration of the

demands that the people have and the hope that the new dispensation will pay attention

to the fact that the new nation state should be built in accordance with “the heroic

tradition of resistance” and “must revere [the] heroes and punish traitors” (240). The

collocation of these requisites in General R’s demands is a thematic expressiveness

stipulated from the epistemological conceptualisation of independence.

Moreover, beneath this quest for retribution lies a desire for social and historical

purification that should pave way for the reconstruction of the hitherto disrupted social

and historical structures. In this way, the narrative adopts the tragic dictum that

specifies, as John Gassner stipulates, the use of the tragic to “connect life with

suffering, crime with expiation, disequilibrium . . . with painfully arrived at

restorations” (16). And it is exactly this restoration that the newly independent society

seeks as it moves towards the new dawn. The first act is a quest for public communal

restitution that is sought through public ritualistic punishment of Kihika’s betrayer.

The characters’ preoccupation with the search and punishment of the betrayer is

also read by Cook and Okenimkpe as informed by the understanding that “individual

betrayals are representative of the vast betrayal of a whole society by its power elite”

(68). The novel acknowledges the possibility of a new socio-economic and political

order that may contradict the values that guided the freedom struggle. In its attempt to

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forestall the influence of these emergent forces, the narrative engages in a form of

ideological posturing meant to symbolically establish standards for punishment and

retribution.

K. M. Newton is of the view that the tragic as used in literary works to

interrogate the human condition offers such texts a means for “social confrontation

between the human realm and order” and ideologically guards against “social

ossification” (19) of pretensions to social values and norms. In A Grain of Wheat,

Mugo’s execution is symbolically used for a cathartic purpose intended to heal the

community’s psyche as it emerges from the turmoil of the freedom struggle, and also as

a means of deterring reemergence of such traitors in the new dispensation.

Critically read, Mugo is the nemesis of nationalist desire embodied by freedom

fighters like Kihika and the entire Movement. He represents an aggressive materialistic

quest for self aggrandizement that is parallel to the objectives of the struggle. In his

resolution to betray Kihika, he relates his actions to a future where he would meet his

“duty to [himself], to men and women of tomorrow” and he would use his reward to

“buy more land. He would build a big house. He would then find a woman for a wife

and get children” (214). This eccentric contemplation of a postcolonial future is

antagonistic to the desires of the community at the specific social and historical context,

and it is not surprising that the coming of independence must denigrate such antagonism

to promote communal objectives of the freedom struggle.

The cautious optimism displayed in the transitioning Thabai community can be

viewed as an attempt to solidify the relief of the community as it emerged from colonial

definition in pursuit of its self-redefinition in historical, cultural and political spheres.

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This is akin to what Elleke Boehmer refers to as “an intense need to create new worlds

out of old stories” and in this attempt give the emerging diversity “conceptual shape” by

use of “rhetorical figures to translate the inarticulate” (14). However, this effort may not

found actual translation in the post-independence period since as Wole Ogundele

argues, “contrary to the rhetoric of cultural nationalism which promised to reconnect the

severed arteries of Africa’s organic history, the independent nation-states saw

themselves as new nations” that had “little interest in the long and mysterious

precolonial period” (131). A Grain of Wheat interrogates this history through its

employment of the tragic form, and successfully questions the genesis of postcolonial

materialism responsible for many of the evils that plague the post-independence nation-

state.

The break with the expected grand narrative that would encompass all the

accumulated historical, cultural and social knowledge that should have been used in the

formation of the new states is decried in wa Thiong’o’s later novels. The failure to

reconcile the past and the present historical experiences as a means of forging a future

forms another phase of the postcolonial canon which Mullaney describes as a

preoccupation “with the continuing impact of histories of colonialism and with

documenting the varied effects of relations of power in the formation of identities”

(105). It is evident that many post-independence societies struggle to delineate their

present from the grip of the colonial heritage that continues to erode the capacity of

these societies as they seek to recapture the rhythm of the organic precolonial societies.

Admittedly, this engagement of the postcolonial literary text with the nature of

social and historical realities in independent states forms the thematic corpus for many

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of postcolonial African narratives. Thematically and ideologically, postcolonial African

literature “interrogates the poisoned gift of independence” (Ndigirigi 85), so as to

evaluate how the history of colonialism and neocolonialism continues to impede social

and economic development in postcolonial states.

Indeed, The River Between makes an attempt to account for the post-

independence power relations that will characterise the post-independence state. On the

one hand, there is the Kiama that has started to stamp its dominance on social and

political affairs of the community. The Kiama “is the voice of the people” (141) and it

represents, in the hierarchy of power relations, the highest authority in the politics of the

colonial and postcolonial state. On the other hand, there is the educated elite who,

unlike the Kiama, are politically and culturally liberal. In the novel’s denouement, these

forces pull in different directions as symbolised by the Kiama’s banishment of the

alternative voice in the name of the elite. This standoff lays ground for the continued

conflicts that plague the post-independence Kenyan society.

3.5Allegory of Deprivation and Resistance in Matigari

The ideological and aesthetic rendering of Matigari presents a new literary

means by which postcolonial discourse can interrogate power relations in the context of

inequality and deprivation. The novel decries the relentless practice of denying

historical responsibilities in sharing the benefits of the freedom struggle. This denial of

the historical past as a key ingredient in the formation of new political and economic

structures is interrogated, in the novel, from the perspective of an epic hero whose

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engagement with the structures of power and economic control reverses his

circumstances from an epic to a tragic hero.

In its stylistic orientation, the novel satirises the abuse of power and the misuse

of governance structures by the powerful elite that have appropriated social and

economic benefits of the freedom struggle. Matigari, which translates to “the remains,”

is a discourse that revives the spirit of the freedom fighters who now have been

relegated to historically dispossessed peasants to be hunted when they question

neocolonial oppression. Matigari is used in the narrative as an exploratory agent

exposing himself to tragic circumstances, and through his quest, aids the readers’

discovery of how the elite have been dehumanised by their insatiable thirst for power

and wealth, and the means needed to safeguard these privileges.

In this regard, Newton avers that the tragic form “operates according to absolute

principles . . . conceptualised as truth” and whose literary application is based on “the

unsatisfied curiosity about the nature of power allied to the belief that some valid

discoveries about it are possible” (124). It is this discovery of truth and illumination of

dispossession that forms the ideological drive in Matigari. Conceptually, the novel is an

interrogation of history as rendered by the comprador bourgeoisie that has appropriated

colonial structures of thought and economy to exploit the masses.

According to Mullaney, such interrogation “returns to colonial history to enact

and exact certain forms of settlement with the unsettled past in the present” with a

primary aim of “excavating the dangers and values of recurrent disturbances and

displacement” (69). As the narrative opens, we are given an exposition into colonial

history which metaphorically is described through the imagery of settlers hunting “of

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foxes accompanied by packs of well-fed dogs” (3), and the symbolic mutilation of their

quarry in celebration of victory.

The narrator in the novel sets himself apart as a historical witness and renders an

account of the historical imperatives that surround Matigari’s return to evaluate the

historical circumstances surrounding the attainment of independence. In its address to

the reader or listener, the narrative declares its fictiveness by urging readers to “allocate

the duration of any of the actions according to [their] choice,” and thus attempts to deny

any historical specificity. However, despite this invitation to perceive the narrative as

fictional does not preempt the narrator’s proposition of himself as a historical witness,

and his narrative as a simulation of historical and social reality: the reality that Matigari

seeks out as he emerges from an epic to a tragic milieu.

The narrator fosters the novel’s attempt to provide a historical account that

evades the pitfall of the intentional fallacy. The novel’s use of this narrative strategy

helps it to achieve some credible level of authenticity in its rendition of subjective

history of oppression, even when the writer may be perceived as part of the intellectual

class that historically may be ambivalent to the predicament of the peasant workers, and

the workers’ resistance against such oppression. Indeed, as Gareth Griffiths argues, “in

inscribing such acts of resistance the deep fear for the liberal critic is contained in the

worry that in the representation [. . .] what is inscribed is not the subaltern’s voice but

the voice of your own other” (167). To overcome such dangersthat Griffiths speaks of,

Matigari creates a narrative persona who directs our understanding of the narrative so

as to render unto us a truthful account of social and historical conditions prevalent in the

neocolonial state.

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 This “return to colonial history,” to borrow Mullaney’s phrase, is significant as

it is the foundation that informs Matigari’s interaction with postcolonial displacement

that he will encounter in the rest of the narrative. Furthermore, his hope that he had seen

“the last of colonial problems” (3) is shrouded in uncertainty going by the limitation

well represented by his perception of the landscape where “the land was cloaked in fog”

and hence he “could not see far and wide” (3). This part of the narrative represents

Matigari’s apprehension of the historical uncertainty between the past and the present,

and it is this uncertainty that informs his caution as he preserves the arms; the remains

of the freedom struggle. This he performs in preparation for the symbolic crossing of

the river, and his emergence out of the forest.

Matigari’s emergence from the forest embodies the return motif that historically

is a return of either the detainees from detention camps that is aptly narrated in A Grain

of Wheat, and the return of freedom fighters from the forests after the attainment of

independence. In both cases, the return is a form of expressive discourse that deliberates

on the discrepancy between the expectations of the returnees and the emerging socio-

political order that disregards the needs and desires of the postcolonial state. In this

way, the return motif is aesthetically used to concretise the conflicts that characterise

the post-independent nation-state. As Elleke Boehmer stipulates, the black bourgeoisie

became “aggressively chauvinistic, culturally impoverished, and kleptocratic”

(“Postcolonialism” 348), and enhanced a disequilibrium that became the new frontier

for a social, historical and ideological contestation.

By using the hero’s return as a motif, Matigari offers itself as a narrative of

discoveries where the hero interrogates social and historical facts from an ideal

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perspective and collocates this to the discoveries and experiences that are recounted by

the narrator. Although the narrative ostensibly prescribes unto itself qualities such as

fictiveness, timelessness, lack of spatial and contextual specificity, readers can locate

the narrative within the postcolonial canon in respect of the text’s historical, textual and

contextual locations.

Postcolonial writing may superimpose textual qualities that attempt to influence

both the discourse and our interpretation of this discourse. According to Boehmer, “the

space-time framework and patterns of causality in a narrative work not only impart

coherence to a fragmented history, but also help organize and clarify foundational

moments in the anti-imperial movement” (Colonial and Postcolonial 189). This implies

that interrogating the postcolonial text may reveal the historical and contextual

underpinnings even when the text attempts to suggest otherwise. The state of the nation-

state is from this argument intertwined with, and subjected to, specific experiences that

can be disambiguated by a precise reading of the structures of collective or even

individual encounters.

As a historically situated narrative, Matigariinterrogates the systematic

deprivation whose form and structure is availed through the epic-tragic transition that

Matigari undergoes. In his presentation, Matigari is not only an embodiment of the

quest for historical justice, but he also functions as a legitimising force in the struggle

for justice and equity. This is achieved through the depiction of the tragic hero as a

normative hero: the voice that condemns disequilibrium and deprivation of the workers

by those who have appropriated state resources for personal gain.

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 Indeed, Matigari’s first quest is the interrogation of the social conditions that

now face the postcolony, and as he contemplates in his mission, he intends to “rise up [.

. .] and go to all the public places, blowing the horn of patriotic service and the trumpet

of patriotic victory” (6). Matigari uses the symbol of a house in which he and his

children “would build their lives anew in the unity of their common sweat” (16) to

represent the ideal social order in which the gains of the freedom struggle would benefit

the patriots and not the reincarnated oppressive forces that have appropriated the vision

of the freedom struggle.

Matigari, both as a character and symbol in the narrative, represents the

reclamation of the spirit of freedom struggle and correction of historical and social

truths that should guide the destiny of the postcolony. Predictably, the ideological

orientation of the narrative centres on two important pillars; truth and justice. Although

this pursuit agrees with Aristotle’s stipulation that the basis for a tragic hero’s “moral

goodness” that should “impress our imagination and arouse the sense of grandeur”

(233), the ideological stance espoused by the narrative, in James Ogude’s view,

“presupposes the existence of a collective consciousness among the peasantry and the

working class” (33). The assumption of a homogenous aspiration forms part of

Matigari’s hubris, and contributes to the failure of his noble quest for the ideals of truth

and justice.

Furthermore, Matigari’s failure results from his inability to deduce the

contradictions that complicate the constitution of the postcolonial state and its history.

Emanating from a history replete with opposed desires and expectations, the masses,

that to Matigari are the children of freedom fighters, have divergent views on history

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and its relevance to their present circumstances. This fact is misread by Matigari whose

rhetoric of redemption is vilified by even those, on whose behalf he negotiates social

and historical justice.

The tragic hero’s failure to a large extent also contributes to the irony that

characterises the narrative, and consequently questions historical convergence between

colonial and postcolonial history. The demonstration of new postcolonial reality where

heroism and triumphs of the freedom struggle form only a part of the history of the

post-independence nation-state is best illuminated by Matigari’s failure to rebuild his

metaphorical home and gather his metaphorical children to live in it. There is, on part of

Matigari’s version of nationhood, a failure to recognise “new metaphors of nationhood”

and “to frame defining symbols for the purposes of imagining the nation” (Boehmer

189). Matigari is stuck on the idealised nation-state that was to be the product of the

freedom struggle which should have culminated in the banishment of colonialists and

oppressive neocolonial structures.

The social and historical contradictions that characterise the post-independence

state are, as the novel demonstrates, a continuation of the colonial grip on the

precolonial social and cultural structures that Matigari seeks to resuscitate. However,

the existent postcolonial imperatives denigrate this effort, consequently demonstrating

the impossibility of using “patriotic victory” (6) as the means by which the neocolonial

nation-state embeds resistance to inherited colonial structures and value systems. The

incompatibility between the triumphs of the freedom struggle and the contradictions in

the postcolony lead to the tragic texture of the novel, and aesthetically functions to

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exacerbate not only Matigari’s predicament but also the oppression of the subjects of

neocolonial deprivation.

The novel further exposes the inexistence of a homogenous social and historical

background that should have informed the formation of a nationalist entity. According

to Bruce King, the postcolonial period should be perceived as “a time when the unity of

the state is being challenged by other kinds of identifications” (7), and a period when

reflections on “the paradoxical nature of colonialism and post-colonialism” (11) should

be intensified. This on the one hand illustrated through the narratives demonstration of

the competing interests that characterise the post-independence social order, and on the

other hand by the exploration of social and economic stratification best demonstrated by

the allegory of the house that is first appropriated by Settler Williams who, upon the

achievement of independence, hands it down to Robert Williams and John Boy.

Ideologically, Matigari’s tragic circumstances are illustrative of the replacement

of the African perception of social order with a capitalistic social and economic

stratification that resists what Masizi Kunene terms as “a dispassionate examination of

reality” (36). As the narrative demonstrates, truth and justice are elusive virtues in the

post-independence state. There is passivity on the part of postcolonial subjects, who fall

into two distinctive categories; “those who accept things as they are” and “those who

want to change things” (91). The novel, through Matigari’s rhetoric, advances the

discourse of resistance by inviting victims of neocolonialism to reject neocolonial

hegemony that breeds social and historical passivity.

However, this undertaking cannot be an easy one because there are those who

are persuaded that “there is a lot of wisdom in learning to keep one’s lips sealed” and in

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“singing the approved tune,” and those who have “been ordained into the order of

cowardice” (92). Confronted with such disengagement, Matigari’s futile quest for an

ideal solution to neocolonial vagaries can only be achieved through a “concerted

struggle of peasant workers through mass mobilisation, trade union movements and

armed resistance” (Ogude 32). The narrative, in its interrogation of the postcolonial

relations between the imperialists and the workers, suggests a failure of the systems of

governance to create avenues for social and historical justice. As such, the narrative

explores the possibilities of reviving the patriotic struggle that had culminated in the

attainment of independence, and encourages subjects of neocolonialism to use the

period as a point of historical reference.

Such a confrontation of the existent structures of governance that are considered

legitimate and their opposition illegitimate would culminate into “a collision between

ethical principles which can both be justified in their own terms” and whose claim to

“objective necessity” (Newton 2) results in creation of tragic conflicts. In the

philosophy of the tragic, the production of the cathartic effect that, in Aristotelian view,

is hinged on pity and fear can aesthetically be perceived as a literary means of guarding

against hopelessness that would result out of Matigari’s failure to resolve the

deprivation of the peasant workers. However, the suffering of the tragic protagonist

establishes an ideological attachment with the readers, and alienates the readers from

the ideological rationalisation offered as the alternative discourse by the oppressive

bourgeois elite.

However, the inability of Matigari’s rhetoric of peace to resolve the oppression

of the peasants calls for a new strategy, for “the failure of one crop does not deter one

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from sowing seeds again” and as such, Matigari contemplates “how he would take up

arms to fight for his house once again” (150). Undoubtedly, the heirs of the structures of

deprivation emboldened by their success in suppressing “the sound of the horn of

justice” (21) retaliate with brutality that leads to Matigari’s attempt to cross back and

retrieve his weaponry. However, the narrative symbolically allows Muriuki, the

resurrected generation of freedom fighters, to retrieve the symbols of an armed struggle

which would constitute the new phase of struggle in the name of an armed revolution

aimed at restoring a more acceptable social order.

Indeed, such framing of the struggles against material and social deprivation is

at the heart of tragic realist novels, which according to Daniel O’Connell, functions “to

challenge the assumptions of bourgeois ideology” (224) which uses social and

economic progress to deodorise their exploitation of human and other resources to

secure gains for themselves and others of their rank. As a literary and ideological tool,

tragic realism uses the tragic hero to question the social order and expand the horizons

of awareness, by inviting a condemnation of historical and material deprivation of the

powerless. In addition, the novel’s depiction of the tragic situation in which Matigari

finds himself castigates the neocolonial disorder that is akin to what Raymond Williams

terms as “the fault in the soul” (62), which in the tragic form is demonstrated through

“violence, dislocation and extended suffering” (64). Indeed, at the core of the novel’s

discourse is the desire of the deprived postcolonial subjects to overturn their

deprivation, fully aware of the limitations they face in this undertaking.

Nevertheless, Matigari’s legendary status and the historical vantage point that he

derives from the Mau Mau conquest, avails to the victims of neocolonial subjugation

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renewed hope for restitution. He becomes to them the bearer of a vision for restoration

of truth and justice. However, the obstinate post-independence socio-economic and

political structure denies him the opportunity to fulfill his vision and turns his quest

from an epic return to a tragic annihilation. Matigari’s tenacity bequeaths the masses

unmeasured awareness and an awakening that equips them with the knowledge that they

can resist and fight against their exploitation, although they anticipate great

disadvantage in their struggle against a more powerful enemy.

Consequently, the use of the tragic form anticipates inevitable disadvantage on

the part of the tragic hero and other dissenting ideologues as they face their nemesis that

is in the form of neocolonial oppression. However, the disadvantages that the tragic

hero endures are part of the formative units in such a narrative, and are deliberately

employed as a means of enhancing the evocation of essential emotions on the part of the

audience. This notion is in agreement with Korang’s views on the tragic, where he

argues that such narratives demonstrate:

the resilience of the human spirit as a matter of its capacity to rise up to

the occasion when the stakes in the existential gamble appear to be
irretrievably and irrevocably lost. This is emblematized in the tragic
protagonist who struggles, even as fate and capricious forces conspire to
send him/her crashing in defeat and/or death. (13-14)

For reasons ingrained in Korang’s assertion, it is evident that the tragic form, in its

evaluation of the discourse of resistance in Matigari, avoids condemning an armed

revolution as a means of ending the exploitation of the peasants. The novel proposes a

reinvention of the heroism of the colonial struggle and resistance against oppression, by

resurrecting this spirit of resistance in Muriuki – whose name translates into the

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resurrected one. By depicting the tragic ending of Matigari both as a hero and a victim,

the narrative celebrates sacrifice and by its evocation of pity and fear, encourages the

expression of nationalism as a concerted effort to safeguard the victory of the

oppressed.

Furthermore, Matigari successfully uses the conflict between the two

implacably opposed socio-economic classes to draw attention to the need for continued

resistance against neocolonialism. The standoff can only be resolved if the post-

independence governance restores the virtues of truth and justice, and allows the

patriots to reap the fruits of their historical struggle for freedom and self definition.

Unless this desirable social and economic order is allowed to become a reality, then the

armed conflict that Muriuki symbolises is bound to continue until neocolonial

totalitarianism is vanquished.

3.6 Conquest, Resistance and Restitution in Petals of Blood

The rendition of the postcolonial social and historical imbalances through the

prism of tragic heroines in Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross is a significant

literary and ideological choice. The novels highlight the evils of an aggressively

exploitative patriarchal socio-economic ordering and interrogate the ideological avenues

that may be used to remedy the inequalities. The use of tragic irony in the narratives

concretises the portrayal of the discourse of gendered inequalities, and demonstrates the

viciousness of the exploitative capitalism. The narrative focuses on commoditisation of

human values, and encourages the destruction of those structures that breed social and

economic inequalities in postcolonial society. Furthermore, by utilising the tragic form,

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the narratives demonstrate the ideological underpinnings that must inform the quest for

social, historical and economic justice in the postcolonial context.

In Petals of Blood, the interrogation of the social order is hinged on Wanja, the

pivotal point of the narrative. She allegorises the conscience of the community in the

changing phases of conquest, exploitation and rediscovery. The novel builds on the

imagery of gendered variances to expound on the discourse of exploitation, and to

contrast male and female perspectives on the existent inequalities in the postcolonial

nation-state. Wanja symbolises nature or the natural order of things that capitalistic

instincts seek to possess, conquer and subjugate. She is the embodiment of social and

historical conflicts and contradictions that structure the expressive discourse at the heart

of the narrative.

Quite early in the narrative, we are confronted with the metaphor of exploitation

when Munira, having taken his students out in the field, encounters a worm eaten

flower. In his explanation to the curious children, he states that such a flower “cannot

bear fruit” and consequently urges the students to “always kill worms” (22). The

expressive discourse intimated through this encounter between Munira and what he

fearfully explains as “a law of nature” (22) concatenate many of the relationships that

function as social units in the exposition of the thematic concerns in the novel. These

relationships revolve around the exploitative elite, and the peasants, who, like “the

worm-eaten flower” (22), are socially and materially deprived.

Consequently, Petals of Blood is the narration of a community’s effort aimed at

creating a philosophy that may avail to it a means of repudiating neocolonialism.

Ilmorog, a microcosm of the neocolonial society, is a community struggling to cascade

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individual experiences to form a collective social history and a sense of identity. The

fact that all the key characters, as they come to Ilmorog, arrive from a point of

displacement or dispossession, is significant in reading the novel’s perception of history

and its influence on the conscience of the neocolonial society. For instance, all the key

characters do not have functional family units or even fruitful relationships, and the

only meaningful social entity they can identify with is the Ilmorog community. Wanja

brings to Ilmorog the burden of neocolonial dispossession of the peasant by the heirs of

oppressive colonial structures; Abdulla is crippled in the struggle for independence;

Munira has his dreams of academic excellence truncated at Siriana; while Karega is

dismissed from school and has his hopes similarly thwarted by an intolerant colonial

educational system.

At Ilmorog, the villagers seek a new order and a revival of their inner hopes, and

in a way a redefinition of their social history with the wisdom of their personal and

collective experiences. In this way, Petals of Blood adheres to the tenets of postcolonial

literature in what Mullaney refers to as the interrogation of “the relationship between

history, memory and place” (41). The experiences that have brought the inhabitants of

Ilmorog to the village are formative units in the novel’s attempt to relay important

social and historical experiences relevant to the interpretation of the discourse of power

relations and postcolonial dispossession. Although the narrative articulates its

evaluation of social philosophy through the intricate relationship between the

characters, it is Wanja who functions as the pillar of the discourse due to the novel’s

depiction of her as the bearer of the motifs of dispossession, resistance and restoration.

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 Wanja’s contribution in the articulation of the collective desires of the Ilmorog

community is hinged on the community’s sojourn to the city in pursuit of a remedy for

their collective problems. Historically, her participation in the trek to the city is

founded on the conquests of Ndemi, the “best magician in words,” and the founder of

Ilmorog, who was “tired of merely adapting to nature and its changing fortune” (120).

This linkage to the past historical exploits of the community serves as an ideological

invitation to the villagers to perceive their tribulations as “a community crisis needing a

communal response” (123). The journey, as a narrative metaphor, integrates the

personal experiences of the characters and their collective understanding of their

history. It is through the events that characterise the villagers’ journey that the intrusive

narrator relates the confrontation between the past and the present, and most

importantly, the community’s encounter with the inhumane neocolonial social order.

The journey functions as an ideological turning point that alters Wanja’s

perspective on social and economic relationships when she returns to Ilmorog. The

despair and the loss of trust in institutions breed transformative thinking in Wanja’s

approach to the tribulations of the community, and she urges them “not to kneel down

to sorrow and to despair” (257). Through her determination, she identifies an

ideological and social response to the struggles of her community, by turning to

capitalistic tendencies that seem to resolve the despair of the community. She

establishes herself as a “famed proprietor [. . .] aloof, distant, condescending, willing,

and commanding things to happen” (270). This transformation is indicative of the

possible reactions that an inhumane and exploitative social order may precipitate, and

within the context of her role as the normative hero for social resistance against

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neocolonial social and historical injustice, an indication of the tragic consequences of

neocolonial dispossession.

Furthermore, the community’s awareness of the “rainbow memories of gain and

loss, triumph and failure [. . .] suffering and knowledge” (123) necessitates a new mode

of resistance. The parodying of neocolonial hegemony and the subversion of genuine

precolonial sense of communalism serves as a demonstration of Wanja’s acute

awareness of the limitation of choice, and offers her “an instrument of retribution”

(Cook and Okenimkpe 92). The changing social and historical landscape is best

demonstrated through Wanja’s transformation from an individual searching for self

regeneration and “a new flowering of self” (107), which is to be achieved through

purposive redirection of her energies to honest and productive labour at Ilmorog.

However, the arrival of the Trans-Africa highway portends changes in the social

thinking of the Ilmorog community, and disrupts social and individual hopes and

desires. The town’s transformation “from a deserted village into a sprawling town of

stone, iron, concrete and glass” (263), depicts the disintegration of the cohesive social

values that have hitherto informed social and economic interactions in the community,

where “nothing was for free” (280). Wanja attributes the changes to the fact that “this

world . . . this Kenya . . . this Africa knows only one law. You eat somebody or you are

eaten. You sit on somebody or somebody sits on you” (291).

The novel uses social transformation as a means of interrogating the tragic

effects of modern capitalism. This approach agrees with Newton’s attribution of the

tragic with “the Dionysian or the darkness that has to be embraced even if the result

may be destructive at both the individual and cultural level” (124). The tragic in this

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way decries the destruction of individuality and awareness as a means of condemning

the social forces that bring about this destruction. These are the forces that impede

Wanja’s dreams of self regeneration and instead of her expected “new flowering of

self” (107), she is, like Munira’s flower, she turns into “a worm-eaten flower . . .

[which] cannot bear fruit” (22).

Tragic discourse, as employed in Petals of Blood, deconstructs the emergent

capitalistic aggressiveness, and illustrates the fact that the best of human intentions have

failed to reconcile social and economic conflicts. This has resulted in the tragic

disintegration of desirable social structures and values precipitating what can be best

referred to as a tragic moral impasse. This is partly demonstrated in the way Wanja

rationalises her “irrevocable and final entry into whoredom” (311), which to her is

merely a response to the demands of changing social and historical circumstances.

Stuart Hall attributes transformations in postcolonial identities to the fact that

these identities “have histories [. . . and] like everything which is historical, they

undergo constant transformation [. . .] subject to the continuous play of history, culture

and power” (98). The impossibility of holding on to the essentialised past of Ilmorog

where there were solid social bonds and interconnected perception of destiny is the

basis for the tragic endings that most of the cultural and historical values of this

community have to endure. This is best expressed in Munira’s pain as he contemplates

“the growth of Ilmorog from its beginnings in rain and drought to the present flowering

in petals of blood” (45), which translate to a condemnation of the external neocolonial

forces and a purgation of the community’s spirit. Modernisation of Ilmorog results in

“murder of the spirit” (45) and demonstrates the tragic “irony of progress” (Gikandi

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137), which dispossesses the community its valued social structures and a common

understanding of their history, identity and destiny.

The artistic castigation of materialistic modernisation and the insatiable desire

for capitalistic conquest concretises the novel’s ideological thrust. In this way, the novel

functions to demonstrate what Evan Mwangi views as the use of art “as not only a

means by which we understand our circumstances and narrate ourselves into existence

but [also as] a reflection of the concrete conditions around us” (67). Literary discourse,

as in Mwangi’s observation on the social value of artistic expression, offers readers an

opportunity to evaluate the actions and desires of characters in concrete social and

historical circumstances. In Petals of Blood, the narration of the misfortunes of the

community as it collides with the unsolicited interruption of their social structure by

imperialistic desires, elicits our “humanistic solidarity with either the

individual/aggregate elements in a society, or the entire society, that suffer the tragic

misfortune” (Korang 13). The novel further demonstrates, according to Patrick

Williams, that “human relations are there to be fought for and [to be] constructed” (81).

It is only through such an effort that the neocolonial society may be able to confront

colonial legacies in the name of capitalism, neocolonialism, individualism and

inhumane industrialisation.

Furthermore, Petals of Bloodmakes explicit attempts to entice the reader to

accept the historical perspective offered by the narrative. This is on the one hand makes

readers empathise with misfortunes of the tragic characters, their community or even

their social class, and on the other hand to provide a solid background for accurate

reading of the narrative’s thematic concerns. The enunciation of historical imperatives

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underlying the narrative is mainly achieved by the naming of characters, both fictional

and historical figures. According to Carol Sicherman, such utilisation is intended “to

make Kenyan readers reflect on their own place in the continuum of history” (303).

Additionally, such reflection as Sicherman refers to is significant in enhancing the

acceptance of the novel’s discourse on social and historical truths.

The importance of history, past and present, is accentuated by Wanja’s sketch

that blurs the historical distance between Abdulla and Kimathi, and the difference

between the emotions of suffering and happiness. In this way, the narrative celebrates

hope as enshrined in the community’s awareness of its historical context, and

underscores the need for sacrifice in the struggle for freedom and social justice.

Furthermore, Wanja’s conception of Abdulla’s child signifies a continuation of hope

and struggle for a more just society. In this way, the novel uses the tragic rendition of

the community’s encounter with imperialism as a means of asserting the need and

desire for social and historical justice in the postcolonial context.

However, as the narrative demonstrates, such justice can only be achieved if the

masses become conscientised on the fact of social and economic class inequalities, and

become therefore aware of the factors that have abetted this form of stratification. It is

for this reason that the novel engages in a revisionist collocation of colonial and

postcolonial history. By using characters such as Nyakinyua and Abdulla, the narrative

uses the Mau Mau freedom struggle as a point for historical and ideological reference.

This fact is punctuated by Wanja’s sketch that artistically emphasizes that the past and

the present must merge as a single force while confronting neocolonial capitalism.

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3.7 Resisting Imperialism and NeocolonialDispossession in Devil on the Cross

The elements of space, place and history as formative units in the interrogation

of the postcolonial condition merge well with character, time and point of narration to

interrogate the emergent social conditions brought about by the conflicting cultural and

historical encounters between the coloniser and the colonised. The unwilled encounter

is, in the context of Devil on the Cross, made more vivid not only by the novel’s use of

the tragic form but also by its use of a female tragic protagonist in Wariinga. Through

Wariinga, the novel demonstrates the negative effects of commoditisation of human

values and the tragedy that may result from efforts that may aim at restoring a more

desirable social order.

Devil on the Cross, using the omniscience of the Gicaandi Player, recounts the

“too disgraceful, too shameful” (7) story of Wariinga, admittedly with permission from

Wariinga’s mother. These preliminary declarations by the narrator lay the grounds for

an emotional recounting of “all that is hidden” (7) and also what “lies hidden by

darkness” (8). With these preliminary confessions, the narrative not only lays claim to

objectivity and historical accuracy, but also prepares its audience for an emotive

interrogation of historical imperatives that produce the kind of misfortunes thatbefalls

Wariinga.The novel exploits the philosophy of narration and narrative making as a

reservoir of history and as a means for evaluating the social and historical experiences

of the society.

By adopting the narrative mode as means of articulating Wariinga’s misfortunes,

Devil on the Cross engages in the exploration of what Abiola Irele calls “the symbolic

and cognitive spheres of awareness” (161). This stylistic choice in the focalisation of

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the novel accords the narrator, as well as the narrative, unmeasured authority and

credibility in the enunciation of the neocolonial social conditions. In addition, the

narrator assigns himself a unique historical autonomy, which ultimately fortifies the

rendition of the novel’s thematic concerns.

The novel builds on “formalized realism and extreme ironic satire” (Cook and

Okenimkpe 117) to explore the exploitation of the peasants by the powerful elite, that

have turned their advantage over the masses into means of extortion and exploitation.

More accurately, the novel explores gendered structures of exploitation, and examines

the structures of social and economic exploitation from a feminine perspective. The

novel is thus able to utilise gender and social class stratification as a means of mounting

what Helen Tiffin refers to as “counter-discursive strategies to the dominant discourse”

(17). The journey to the Devil’s Feast is an artistic, ideological and historical

interrogation of the national and international forces that have facilitated the

continuation of material and social exploitation in the neocolony.

The journey, as a motif in the novel, provides a means of focalisation through

which the characters share their experiences and views on how the exploitation of the

masses has been abetted by the structures of post-independence governance.

Christianity, the political elite, the judiciary and the police are depicted as social

formations that have safeguarded the oppressors of the people, and extended the

dehumanisation of the victims of historical dispossession. By making reference to the

freedom struggle, and the fact that “they redeemed [their land] from the hands of [their]

enemies with [their] own blood” (44), the masses legitimise their claim to national

resources that the elite have appropriated.

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 In this way, the people’s negotiation for the ownership of their national and

historical space adheres to the “dynamics of indigenous claims to place and apprehends

some of the ways that indigenous histories and identities are embodied” (Mullaney 28).

This negotiation does not only scuttle the hegemony of the ruling class, but

demonstrates the elites’ lack of moral right to lay claim to national history and

resources. Particularly through the freedom struggle that the peasant workers use as a

point of historical reference, they create a sense of historical awareness and a need to

resituate and reorder the social and historical reality of the neocolonial state. Moreover,

the novel underscores the significance of the organic precolonial social structures as

benchmarks in generating a social and economic philosophy that can aid the post-

independence state as it grapples with the challenges of nationhood and nation building.

The influence of Marxist realism in the expression of the novel’s ideological

intention is unmistakable in Devil on the Cross. The novel portrays predetermined

ideological and normative propositions that depict bourgeois exploitation of the

workers, and the workers’ active engagement in revolutionary thinking aimed at

overturning their oppression. According to Tony Davies, Marxist aesthetics, in its

depiction of “fundamental truths of human thought, feeling and experience” (146),

cannot escape the use typology of character. Consequently, it is inescapable that the

narrative will represent the tragic consequences of the workers’ collision with the

oppressive socio-political and economic order. Wariinga is thus a product of these

literary and ideological choices used in the narrative’s expressive discourse.

It is through Wariinga that the novel demonstrates the moral corruption of the

beneficiaries of post-independence scramble for national resources in pursuit of

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individual enrichment. Through her misfortunes with the Rich Old Man, the narrative

concretises her victimhood, and invites us to side with her predicament. It is for this

reason, the invitation to condemn injustice and violation of inherently human values,

that Adrian Poole argues that modern tragedy, “asks us to observe the ways in which

people reach judgements about who is to blame: the pressures they are under, the

motives that impel them, the satisfactions they seek” (54). The tragic form in this sense

consolidates the narrative’s rendition of the complex circumstances that surround

postcolonial subjects’ exploration of social, political and economicforces that have

abetted their exploitation by colonial and neo-colonial structures.

The novel castigates individualism and materialism that has broken the African

perception of shared history and destiny, and depicts the misconception of what M.

Keith Booker terms as capitalism’s attempt to portray itself “as a natural, common-

sense way of ordering a society” (67). Devil on the Cross exploits imagery that

discredits this notion of social order by alienating the reader from the misfortunes that

befall those that dehumanise the historically and materially dispossessed peasants. In

this way, wa Thiong’o makes effective use of grotesque realism to portray perpetrators

of neocolonial exploitation as inhuman and subsequently morally legitimise any form of

punishment that is meted out on their kind.

To further concretise the novel’s employment of grotesque realism, the narrative

provides an opportunity for the readers to peep into the Devil’s Feast, a display of the

arrogance of dispossession, to enable the reader weigh the moral grounds on which to

evaluate the necessity of Wariinga’s limited choices. Wariinga is accorded the role of

the normative heroine, whose analysis of the forms of oppression of the peasant workers

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resonates with the novel’s discourse: labour, intellectual exploitation, the erosion of

social values and ultimately sexual exploitation (206). Muturi’s rhetoric solidifies the

discourse of exploitation, in words reminiscent of Matigari’s own discourse, as he

speaks of “the clan of the workers [. . . who] build houses [only for] others to occupy

them [. . . who] make clothes [yet] others take them” (208).

Such rhetoric delegitimises the bourgeoisies’ social and historical claim to

power and national resources. Consequently, the moral impasse that makes restoration

of a just social order impossible demonstrates the tragic choices that unabated

exploitation may limit victims to. To this end, Ralph A. Austen posits that “the

legitimacy of the normative hero derives [. . .] from the reliance upon him of the

ordinary population to deal with threats” (389), and as such his or her actions are

exempted from moral evaluation or condemnation. The novel offers Wariinga her

redemption by rationalising her actions as necessary response to miseries of the peasant

workers under the yoke of neocolonial capitalism, and she undoubtedly becomes what

Daniel O’Connell terms as “the alienated hero of bourgeois society” (223). Acutely

aware that “the hardest struggles of her life’s journey lay ahead” (254), Wariinga

seemingly accepts her fugitive status, proud that she has had her retribution against her

tormentor.

The indeterminate ending of the narrative is, at another level, a demonstration of

the continuous struggle against the vulgarity of neocolonial exploitation of the post-

independence society. Through Wariinga, the symbol of anti-imperialist spirit, the novel

demonstrates the desire of the marginalised socio-economic class for a day when this

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class will achieve socio-economic and historical justice from the manacles of

capitalistic exploitation and social domination by the powerful elite.

Wariingaaggressively pursues justice for the sake of the deprived. Such acts

ennoble her social and historical standing, and most importantly allow her to

demonstrate the need to rekindle the heroic spirit thatguided the freedom struggle. Her

bravery and determination to correct historical injustices is celebrated by the narrative

as a means of altering the mindset of the exploitative post-independence elite and

directing them to the possibility of a forceful assertion of the peasants’ undying quest

for a just social order that distributes the benefits of independence to all the subjects of

colonialism.

3.8 Conclusion

The chapter has interrogated the use of the tragic form as a means of

representing wa Thiong’o’s exploration of conflicts stemming from the colonial and

postcolonial historical moments. The study has found out that the novels employ tragic

realism to enhance their representation of factors responsible for escalation of

postcolonial socio-economic, political and historical contestations. On the one hand,

elements of tragedy such as characterisation, narrative plot, the use of narrative motifs,

social and historical settings and narrative technique concatenate to expose causal

factors that account for social and ideological conflicts prevalent in the nascent

postcolonial society. On the other hand, these elements highlight the narratives’

discourse on socio-historical and economic inequalities largely responsible for the kind

of disengagement that characterise postcolonial society.

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 In The River Between, the study has interrogated the tripartite clash involving

Gikuyu traditional nationalism, Christian revivalism and Western education, and has

discussed how these forces bring about polarisation that ultimately leads to tragic

consequences. As anticipated towards the end of the novel, social and ideological re-

alignments that coalesce into social classes that continue to disengage in the

postcolonial era. Tragic mimesis in this case is used as a literary compass that points to

us the genesis and development of socio-ceconomic, political and historical conflicts

between emergent social classes.

In A Grain of Wheat, the study has found out that the narrative uses tragic

realism to represent the themes of disenchantment, betrayal and retribution emanating

from the freedom struggle. Through tragic rendition, these themes further demonstrate

the implicationsof failed or inadequate engagement in the new formation that is the

post-independence nation-state. Tragic conflicts arise out of contesting social and

individual desires, and uses Mugo’s anti-heroic stature to explain the extension of

capitalistic instincts that lead to the betrayal of collective aspirations.

Historical deprivation and the accompanying resistance are further interrogated

in Matigari, a novel whose discourse encourages the reinvention of the heroism of the

freedom struggle in tackling neocolonial imperialism. It is clear that Matigari’s tragedy

is used in the novel as an aesthetic tool to punctuate the effects of social and ideological

disengagement between the emergent bourgeois class and the masses who have been

deprived of their rightful share of benefits of the freedom struggle.

Petals of Blood and Devil on the Crossfurther represent escalation of this social

and ideological rift between dispossessed masses and the imperialist elite by

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representing the themes of neocolonial imperialism and social and historical

deprivation. The tragic heroines used in the two novels allegorise the collective tragedy

of the neocolonial state. The study concludes that tragic realism is employed in the

novels to enhance readers’ appreciation of socio-economic and historical displacement

experienced by the masses in the neocolonial state, and to rationalise retributive acts

that lead to the heroines’ tragic endings. Tragic realism in this sense punctuates not only

the dehumanisation meted out on subjects of neocolonial injustices but also the violence

that such dehumanisation can nurture.

Having explored thematic concerns that are illuminated in these novels through

their employment of tragic realism, the next chapter discusses how tragic realism

illuminateswa Thiong’o’s vision for the Kenyan postcolonial society.

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 4.0 Chapter Four

4.1 Tragic Realism and Postcolonial Vision in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Novels

4.2 Introduction

As an expressive and philosophical art form, literature is used to record, recount

and interrogate social and historical conditions and experiences that societies have

encountered. In their rendition of these experiences, writers use literary texts as a means

of engineering social thought, and as a way of articulating their visions relative to their

interpretation of the prevailing social and historical conditions. To articulate their

visions, writers make aesthetic choices that may range from the structural to stylistic

considerations. Specifically, the tragic form affords the writer the means by which to

represent the social, historical or cultural attitudes and experiences that shape human

relationships, and eventually helps the writer to interrogate the implication of the past to

the present and the future. The tragic form, in this regard, sharpens the writer’s use of

imaginative criticism to interrogate ideological perspectives that a community adopts in

the context of social, political and cultural conflicts. With this in mind, the chapter

interrogates how wa Thiong’o uses the tragic form as a means by which he enunciates

his interpretation of the nature of human relations and their impact on the postcolonial

society.

4.3 Envisioning the Nation in The River Between.

The use of the tragic form to represent the polarities of Gikuyu cultural

nationalism, Western education and Christian evangelisation in The River Between is

meant to enunciate wa Thiong’o’s vision on these themes. By addressing these thematic

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concerns, the narrative traces the genesis and the evolution of cultural imperialism, the

primary tenet informing the novel’s postcolonial concerns. In its reconstruction of the

intrusion of precolonial Africa’s social and cultural structures by Western influences,

the novel projects its vision of precolonial Africa’s history and culture, and evaluates

how the African social and cultural milieu was affected by the fact of colonial

incursion. In essence, the novel’s presentation of Waiyaki as a Bildungsroman, a naïve

young man attempting to understand both himself and his society, endorses wa

Thiong’o’s perspective on the challenges faced by a colonised society that struggles to

find its way after its epistemological awareness is overturned by the emergence of

colonialism and imposition of colonial institutions and ideologies.

The River Between opens with the acknowledgement of the contested yet

undisturbed history of the ridges, “which just slept, the big deep sleep of their Creator,”

yet they continued to “struggle for the leadership of this isolated region” (1). By

opening this window into the history of the ridges, the novel lays ground for the

magnitude of the ideological difference that the arrival of colonial education and

Christian revivalism will bring, and how this will in turn alter the epistemological

awareness of the ridges. From the novel’s point of view, the only valid reason for the

antagonism that exists between Makuyu and Kameno is grounded on the quest for

historical supremacy, rather than on any social or cultural disagreement.

However, the introduction of Christianity and Western education provide a new

ground for contestation, which unfortunately disturbs the community’s established

cultural identity, and questions social and historical structures that the community has

hitherto depended on for the expression and sustenance of its cultural identity. In

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waThiong’o’s depiction of this unprecedented disruption of the Kenyan culture, he uses

the tragic form as an ideological means by which the colonised African communities

“transcend the vicissitudes of a problematic experience, in an effort towards an

expressive grasp of the world in which that experience unfolds” (45). It is in an effort to

“grasp the world” that the novel first interrogates the historical background that

facilitates the advent of the cultural crisis that is born out of colonialism.

The novel explores the failure of the precolonial African communities to critique

the incursion of Western value systems, some of which were detrimental to the cohesive

coexistence of these communities. By using the tragic form, the novel interrogates the

historical process that leads to the onset of colonialism, and the cultural debate that is

sparked by Christianity and Western education, and indeed, according to James Ogude,

an interrogation of “the problematics of the nationalist discourse” (5). Indeed, as the

founding narrative concedes, the ridges have had an extremely inorganic existence

before and during the colonial encounter, further explaining the impossibility of forging

a concrete cultural, political and ideological front in response to colonial domination.

Wa Thiong’o critisises the ridges’ inability or unwillingness to interrogate

changing social and historical imperatives by questioning the antagonism with which

the community treats “those who had the courage to look beyond their present content

to a life and land beyond [and who] were the select few sent by Murungu to save the

people in their hour of need” [yet who] “became strangers to the hills” (3). In its

counter-discourse, the community argues that “‘the white man cannot speak the

language of the hills. And knows not the ways of the land’” (7). By revisiting this

foundational discourse in the history of colonial conquest, The River Between evaluates

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historical failures that facilitate colonisation and the subsequent denigration of African

history and culture.

In this way, wa Thiong’o demonstrates the importance of history as a defining

component in nation formation, since it fosters, in the community’s conscience, a sense

of shared social, historical and political destiny. The ridges do not have a solid political

understanding, and in essence do not have a sense of nationalism. Indeed, the ridges are

more concerned with the contestation for dominance over each other and not on

immediate common threats. This past, which is recounted through the alienation of the

community’s rejected heroes, has largely been misinterpreted by the ridges as yet

another front for historical contest. As Mary Ebun Modupe Kolawole observes, it is

such “political ineptitude [that] impairs the messianic vision of the heroes [. . .] leading

to solitude, madness and destruction” (129). Essentially, the effects that Kolawole refers

to are best explored by the narrative’s depiction of the resultant tragic vision as

embodied by Waiyaki, the tragic protagonist in the narrative.

Through its disjointed approach to a common history, the community alienates

itself from important past experiences that would have guided its reaction to the

emerging social and cultural concerns. Partly, as wa Thiong’o’s vision on the usefulness

of past history illustrates, the transition from a familiar past to an unfamiliar present and

future lays ground for an ambivalent approach to the changing social and cultural

realities. According to Ato Quayson, such ambivalence “with respect to the past is that

it either renders the underlying cultural codes no longer entirely relevant or makes them

seem subservient to inherently narrow or unrepresentative principles” (35). It is the

emergence of individualistic as opposed to collective interpretation of cultural practices

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and beliefs that leads to the cultural and socio-political positioning, which ultimately

leads to the devaluation of Gikuyu social and cultural epistemology.

Wa Thiong’o singles out the absence of sound political organisation and

understanding as being responsible for the tragic circumstances that alienated

community’s heroes find themselves. As literary tropes, these heroes symbolise the

historical contradictions that blur the community’s understanding of both itself and the

dynamics of evolving social and historical events. The tragedy of the heroes discounts

“ethnic polities as an earlier form of social organisation” (Ogude 15). The ideological

rift between African communities and their failure to utilise their shared history as a

means of forging a sense of nationalism may not, on their own, precipitate the

devastation that colonialism brings upon African socio-cultural institutions. This

devastation is mainly brought about by the imposition of colonial values that were, as

Edward Said puts it, aimed at “disregarding, essentializing, [and] denuding” (379) the

African cultural, political, and social history.

In The River Between, this devastation is abetted by Christian revivalism and

western education that disregard the African social, cultural and historical identity, and

exploit the contradictions and weaknesses in the amorphous African self-definition. The

consequence of the African cultural and historical ambivalence is made vivid through

the polarisation that accompanies the ideological contest between Gikuyu cultural

conservatism, Christianity and western education. Waiyaki’s tragic alienation and his

failure to reconcile the community demonstrates wa Thiong’o’s vision on the value of

commitment to past history as a means of understanding the present and forecasting on

the future. The tragic irony emanating from Waiyaki’s failure concretises waThiong’o’s

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vision of history as a means of conceptualising nationalism and resolving inherent

contradictions.

In the novel, Waiyaki’s tragedy is an express result of his commitment to a

visionary cultural position that in his view would resolve some of the contradictions

arising out of the divergent cultures. As Robert K. M. Newton argues, “if [the hero’s]

commitment is threatened by the world beyond the self, the hero refuses to compromise

as his commitment is identified with a core of self that must remain intact. If one allows

that core to be breached then one’s human identity becomes vulnerable” (40).The tragic

hero is in this way used to represent the most rational but unpopular way of resolving

emerging conflicts.

Precolonial Africa, from the discourse depicted in The River Between, is not

devoid of its own set of contradictions and cultural anomalies. However, the onset of

colonialism thrust the community into an unprecedented cultural debate that helped the

community to evaluate these contradictions and cultural anomalies. The failure of the

different perspectives to engage in some form of dialectic evaluation on selective

preservation of the best precolonial African practices and the abandonment of those that

are inappropriate presents a volatile cultural and historical situation. On the one hand,

this produces cultural absolutism as envisaged by the Kiama, and on the other hand

indiscriminate demonisation of precolonial cultural values. As wa Thiong’o

demonstrates, these hardened views can only lead to tragic consequences for those, like

Waiyaki, who try to establish a middle ground.

According to Evan Mwangi, “colonialism exacerbated tensions within a society

already in motion toward an indigenous modernity” (Africa Writes Back 31-32). In

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essence, wa Thiong’o interrogates the role of the colonial and Christian influences in

abetting the polarisation that disrupts the historical progression of the precolonial

African community’s cultural revolution. Through this depiction, The River Between

interrogates colonial hegemony that attempted to denigrate African culture in its

entirety and, by using the perspective of the tragic form, invites a reading that

empathises with Waiyaki’s conviction on the importance of cultural syncretism as the

most prudent means of embracing a future where the influence of Christian and western

cultural and religious values is undeniable.

Waiyaki’s pronouncements, when he is summoned by the Kiama, are indicative

of wa Thiong’o’s vision on possible means by which the postcolonial society can

address its dilemma on the politics of precolonial African culture, Christianity and

Western education. In response to Kabonyi’s accusation that Waiyaki’s association with

Christians would contaminate the purity of the tribe, he responds thus: “I too am

concerned with the purity of the tribe. I am also concerned with the growth and

development of the ridges. We cannot do this through hatred. We must be united,

Christians and non-Christians, Makuyu or Kameno. For salvation of the hills is in our

hands” (127-128).Although Kabonyi’s subterfuge seems to have elicited the support of

the elders who have sabotaged Waiyaki’s vision for the hills, the admission by the

intrusive narrator that the villagers “did not want to read the guilt in one another’s

faces.Neither did they want to speak to one another, for they knew full well what they

had done” (152). This part of the narrative discounts the presumed failure of Waiyaki’s

vision and admits the infallibility of his synergetic approach to the inevitable change

that colonialism occasions.

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 Furthermore, in affirming wa Thiong’o’s vision as corroborated by the above

excerpt, The River Between uses Waiyaki’s tragedy to enact its discourse on history and

to assert what Richard Braford terms as the use of rhetoric to enunciate “that speculative

element of human existence that underpins all our beliefs about the nature of truth,

justice, politics and behavior” (5), and which are interpreted in conformity with the

writer’s vision on how these elements influence individual and communal existence and

destiny. As Elleke Boehmer observes, the postcolonial writer should engage “in the

search for alternative meanings” within the context of undeniable “cultural cross-

fertilization and eventual hybriditization” (124). It is this acknowledgement that

influences wa Thiong’o’s revisionist yet progressive vision of African history, which

rejects even the most vile cultural Machiavellianism that denies the dynamics of cultural

and historical change.

Indeed, David Cook and Michael Okenimkpe stipulate that the novel “centres on

the struggle to free men’s minds from the constraints of colonialism in preparation for

the assertion of national integrity and individual human identity” (68). This implies a

psychological healing and a resolution of the contestations and the conflicts that

colonialism had inadvertently given rise to. The use of the tragic form makes it possible

for the novel’s discourse to achieve this purging, and sharpens wa Thiong’o’s vision on

new national history and identity.

The tragic form is an essential artistic component in the enhancement of wa

Thiong’o’s vision on the means of achieving social order that culminates in the

formation of a national philosophy in The River Between. As Peter R. Connolly

contends, the “tragic vision [. . .] focuses on a human situation [that] mimes an

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experiential process that draws an audience to recognise possibilities and dilemmas in

life” (550). In addition, Simon Gikandi observes that Waiyaki’s alienation and failure

“has brought the two sides to confront the fact that they are not two distinct cultural

entities, but are actually conjoined by similar spatial and temporal interests” (68-69). In

this way, the tragic is used an expression of wa Thiong’o’s vision of the ideal values

that can coalesce to facilitate development of the emergent nation-state where cultural

and historical identities are affirmed and not used as a basis for social and political

exclusion.

This vision is in tandem with Wole Soyinka’s observation that a writer should

embrace “a creative concern which conceptualises or extends actuality beyond the

purely narrative, making it reveal realities beyond the immediately attainable” (66). In

line with Soyinka’s observation, it is apparent that The River Between creates a

visionary proposition that interrogates the contextual and historical realities that African

states and cultures have to deal with as a prerequisite for social and political order in the

new hybrid structures formed from the cultural and historical background of African

and colonial value systems. The novel achieves this by contrasting cultural and

historical values, which, in the context of tragic realism, is actualised through what

Robert Langbaum terms as “the illusion of historical actuality [which] escapes

philosophical rationalization [and moves] towards historical empiricism” (81).

The achievement of what Langbaum calls “historical empiricism” demands on

the one hand a recovery of the precolonial socio-cultural epistemology and on the other

hand hybriditisation of this with the cultural and historical influences of the colonial

interaction. It is from this vision of history that social and cultural nationalism would

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emerge, and as Ogude points out, this would also entail “dialogue with other adjacent

zones of knowledge” (1) and possibly facilitate, as Nicholas Kamau-Goro stipulates, a

“discursive space of engagement where the clash between the contesting cultures can be

negotiated” (11). The River Between dialectically interrogates selective values that can

spawn a reconstituted history that does not denigrate either the indigenous or the

inherited cultural values emanating out of Africa’s cultural and epistemological

interaction with colonial Europe.

Through the discourse enunciated in The River Between, the tragic form

underpins the novel’s vision of the nuances of religion, Western education and African

culture. It is apparent that the three social units are important conduits in the

imagination, formation and transformation of cultural values, which if properly applied,

will constitute a national culture necessary for the formation of a postcolonial nation

that is aware of its historical and political context. The novel uses Waiyaki’s tragedy as

an allegorical representation of the various contradictory forces and influences whose

miscomprehension may lead to the destruction of the emergent nation-state.

4.4 Collective Experiences as Formation of National Values

A Grain of Wheat is predicated upon the history of collective suffering, sacrifice

and the betrayals that characterised the freedom struggle. The novel interrogates the

individual contradictions that colonisation and the struggle for freedom precipitated.

Through the evocation of the social and individual conflicts, the novel exposes the

intricate social and individual responses to colonialism, and pronounces the significance

of these conflicts in nurturing a future that upholds social and historical justice. The

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significance of these conflicts is highlighted through contested heroism that is the

bedrock of the narrative, and the tragic irony that relays wa Thiong’o’s vision for a

post-independence nation-state. The discourse espoused by the narrative questions the

historical relevance of the betrayals that colonial occupation and the resultant freedom

struggle give rise to. In essence, the novel engages in the assessment of social and

historical values that should be useful in the formation of a national culture, and how

past experiences may function as ideological benchmarks in the reconstitution and

management of the affairs of the new state.

As the tragic antihero in the novel, Mugo, metaphorically encodes the

ambivalence of history as a resource for social and cultural progress, and exposes the

dangers of a linear reading of history as demonstrated by the villagers’ belief in Mugo’s

heroic stature. According to James Decker, Mugo’s silence, as well as the inability of

other characters to express themselves, is a representation of “a fragmented community”

that is suffering from “a hesitancy to hope” (51). Decker’s observation acknowledges

the centrality of history as well as wa Thiong’o’s vision on the influence of historical

experiences in the consolidation of a national conscience.

The fragmentation of the colonised society is well articulated through the

inability of the characters to articulate their thoughts and feelings, as well as

understanding each other’s feelings, thoughts and desires. This speech affliction is

contrasted to the precolonial social fabric that is depicted as cohesive and productive,

before the communalism with which the precolonial society transacted its social affairs

is overturned by the introduction of colonialism. The novel thus demonstrates the social

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effects of colonisation, while at the same time envisioning a confrontation of these

changes that are detrimental to the desired cohesion in the new national culture.

Wa Thiong’o’s vision of new national cultures espouses the interrogation of

what Jana Gohrisch refers to as “the experience of [cultural] dislocation and migration [.

. . in a bid to] appreciate hybrid constructions better by paying attention to their

functions as local answers to global problems” (231-232). A Grain of Wheatcollocates

precolonial social, historical and cultural values with those that are imbibed by the

colonial and postcolonial subjects, and interrogates the appropriateness of hybrid values

emanating from both socio-cultural contexts. In this way, the novel constructs its vision

on history and socio-cultural value systems that can be relied upon to build new national

values that can herald social justice in the new dispensation.

The novel’s vision is further enhanced by the narrative’s creation of a tragic

anti-hero, who, as Gikandi argues, is “the archetypal subject defined by moral crisis”

and through whom “individual and collective desires are measured” (108). The tragic

contributes to the exposition of wa Thing’o’s vision on the relevance of history as a

defining component in the formation of moral values in the reconstitution of national

values emerging from a fragmented past and history. The novel, through its rendition of

this moral crisis, advocates for its resolution throughthe projection of a renewed

commitment to progressive social and national values.

In addition, A Grain of Wheat interrogates the meaning of independence, and

attempts to depict a rationalisation of both individual and communal expectations on the

newly independent state. By depicting Mugo as the tragic anti-hero in the narrative, wa

Thiong’o questions the community’s perception of colonial and anticolonial history.

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This history, as understood by the community is inadequate, inaccurate and therefore

unreliable. In this way, the novel critiques the community’s interpretation of the

meaning and significance of individual sacrifice, in the context of changing social and

political ideals. Therefore, the narrative acts as a historical mediator, who interrogates

the patterns, the forms and the contexts of events and indiduals whose actions function

as units that constitute the colonial and postcolonial history. For instance, the narrative

offers an objective evaluation of Mugo’s perceived heroism, while the community,

unaware of the historical contexts, creates its own version of heroism. The community’s

sense of history is presented as subjectively flawed and grossly imperceptive.

The tragic irony embedded in the narrative anticipates problems in the

ideological and social formation that shall characterise the postcolonial state. It is

apparent that the narrative deconstructs what Elleke Boehmer refers to as “the exclusive

preoccupation with the homogenous or monolithic national identities” (“Colonialism”

349), to enunciate wa Thiong’o’s historical vision which cautions this perception of

nationalism, achievable only through a critical evaluation of the dictums of nationalism

and heroism.

A Grain of Wheat is an exploration of colonial history as focalised through the

experiences of individual characters, and their interpretation of these experiences

relative to the problematics of decolonisation and nationalism. As Gikonyo confesses:

We talked of loyalty to the movement and love for our country. You
know a time came when I did not care about Uhuru for the country any
more. I just wanted to come home. And I would have sold Kenya to the
whiteman to buy my own freedom. (75)

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This confession exposes the contradictory nature of the history of decolonisation, and

valorises the community’s perception of the past as the means of projecting the future.

As Ogude observes, this “serves to undermine the false rhetorics of post-liberation

politics by calling for a thorough examination of the motives and actions of our

nationalist leaders” (75). In this way, the novel suggests that it is only through the

attainment of objective historical discourse that new national values can be reinvented,

and only after competing renditions of decolonisation as professed by individuals have

been discredited.

David Scott, in his exploration of tragedy of enlightenment, argues that this

mode of literary creativity, “obliges us to rethink some of our cherished assumptions

about political order, about justice, and about community as well as some of our

conventional conceptions about agency, responsibility, and freedom” (206). In A Grain

of Wheat, such questioning is arrived at through the narrative’s use of irony, betrayal

and the inherent reversals that repudiate the limitations of heroism and nationalism as

espoused by the characters. Social and historical justice is then to be achieved through a

decentring of the dominant narrative that disregards subjective and materialistic

contextualisation of history.

Moreover, according to Kenneth Harrow, A Grain of Wheat concerns itself with

the elusive “ideological middle ground [. . .] in which to be human is to meet the

demands of both private and public commitments and in which the sense of coherence

and of meaning which the actions of the past confer on the present belongs to our

individual lives and to history alike” (186). In essence, this depiction of the lacunae that

exists between individual characters’ ability to correlate their circumstances and

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experiences to the destiny of the nation or community, enables the novel to consolidate

its vision on the effects of individual (in)actions, desires and betrayals on the nation.

The novel also demonstrates the paradoxical relationship between the individual

and the nation. For instance, the nation is retributive in its annihilation of Mugo, the

allegorical representation of the betrayal of hopes and desires of the nation, pointing to

the emergence of a dysfunctional relationship between the nation and the individual, a

conflict that is expected to filter into the nascent nation-state.Through the reconciliation

that happens between Gikonyo and Mumbi,A Grain of Wheat envisions a postcolonial

future that is characterised by renewal, and the forging of new values that herald hope

for the post-independence nation. In this way, Mugo’s execution is an act of purging the

community of the evil that has been orchestrated by social and individual inadequacies.

Symbolically, this vision is expounded in the carving that Gikonyo imagines:

He would carve the stool now, after the hospital, before he resumed his
business, or in-between the business hours. He worked the motif in
detail. He changed the figures. He would now carve a thin man, with
hard lines on the face, shoulders and head bent, supporting the weight.
His right would stretch to link with that of a woman, also with hard lines
on the face. The third figure would be that of a child on whose head or
shoulders the other two hands of the man and woman would meet. (265-
266)

In essence, this reconciliation is afforded by the novel’s use of the tragic form to

achieve what Paul E. Kirkland refers to as “the remedy for pessimism” (72), and which

helps humanity to “abandon messy reality in favor of the image of some more

permanent realm” (73). As in Gikonyo’s imagination of his carving, the post-

independence state is aided in extricating itself from a pessimistic past and to be able to

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imagine the formation of a promising future and to regenerate its values to ones that can

nurture national identity.

Forging national identity is, as the novel demonstrates, dependent on the

community’s ability to attempt to find a way of resolving past evils and betrayals.To

this end, Julie Mullaney posits that “the postcolonial gothic returns to colonial history to

enact and exact certain forms of settlement with the unsettled past in the present” (69).

By revisiting its past failures, the community is therefore able to interrogate the dangers

and the ideological failures that may have abetted social and individual dislocations,

and which if not remedied could plague the community both in its present and its future.

In this way, tragic realism highlights both individual and communal errors that have

given rise to individual and communal betrayals. By exposing these causal factors, A

Grain of Wheatdemonstrates the need for the postcolonial society to engender more

nationalistic values that can foster a nationalistic identity.

4.5 Tragic Realism and the Vision for Social Justice in Matigari

Matigari contextualises the failed regeneration of post-independence social and

political values anticipated in A Grain of Wheat. The novel interrogates the failure of

the post-independence state to ensure social and economic justice, and the entrenchment

of neocolonial social and economic dispossession of the peasant workers. The narrative

decries the betrayal of the freedom struggle, as focalised through Matigari’s probing of

the social, economic and moral morass that have become defining features of the

postcolonial state. The discourse of dispossession is enhanced by the narrative’s

juxtaposition of the hopes and desires of the freedom struggle as envisioned by

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Matigari, against the fact of neocolonial oppression where social, political and

economic freedoms have become a preserve of the inheritors of the structures of

colonial oppression.

The use of tragic realism to interrogate neocolonial imperialism sharpens the

narrative’s rendition of its vision for truth and justice, and concretises its critique of

post-independence essentialism. In its discourse, the novel delves into the history of the

freedom struggle that culminates in the attainment of independence as a means of

arousing the consciousness of the deprived workers and peasants.The novel uses history

as a platform from which nationalist values of the freedom struggle are contrastedwith

neocolonial imperialism, where these values are abnegated, and replaced by neocolonial

imperialism and dispossession.

Indeed, Matigari is an inquiry into the nature of social, political and economic

interactions prevalent in a post-independence society, and depicts wa Thiong’o’s

criticism of disorder and injustice resulting from the skewed power relations between

the imperialists and the exploited masses. As Robert Anchor argues, visionary works of

literature foster “a sense of possibility, unrealized but realizable” (116), and which helps

us comprehend the “full and unsparing rendition of the tragedy of the human condition”

(118). In this spirit, Matigari interrogates neocolonial social conditions and expresses

the writer’s vision for social justice, rendered through Matigari’s quest for truth and

justice, and in his conscientisation of the public on the need for resistance against

imperialism, as the following part of the narrative demonstrates:

The God who is prophesied is in you, in me and in other humans. He has

always been there inside us since the beginning of time. Imperialism has
tried to kill that God within us. But one day that God will return from the

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 dead. Yes, one day that God within us will come alive and liberate us
who believe in Him. (156)

It is apparent that the narrative uses the elevated moral standing of the tragic hero as a

means of asserting its vision of resistance against imperialism. The narrative’s

philosophy of resistance is codified by the humanism that results out of Matigari’s

ability to attract our sympathy through his altruistic confrontation of potentially

dangerous circumstances for the good of the community. In this way, the tragic form

functions as a discursive tool that enunciates the text’s vision of the means of

entrenching the ideals of truth and justice, but which can only be achieved through

conscientisation of the masses on the need to overturn their exploitation.

As a trope in the narrative, Matigari embodies the revisionist history of the

struggle for freedom and the disillusionment resulting out of neocolonial imperialism

that negates the ideals and desires of the emergent post-independence state. Matigari’s

circumstances are illustrative of the novel’s evaluation of the social and political

conditions that are a consequence of neocolonial materialism and aggressive

individualism that betray the ideals of nationalism, truth and justice. In expressing his

vision for the neocolonial state, wa Thiong’o uses tragic realism to depict, according to

Charles D. Blend, how humans “inflict suffering on their fellows and so forces upon

them an awareness of their fate” (99), and also as a potent tool for interrogating

plausible ways of entrenching the ideals of nationalism and social justice.

Furthermore, the novel’s use of Christian allegory and its mimicking of Christ-

like rhetoric engenders its evocation of the writer’s vision. As Matigari declares, true

liberation will return “the day when His followers will be able to stand up without

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worrying about tribe, race or colour” (156). Apparently, Matigari’s rhetoric is an

explicit attempt, by the narrative, to stipulate conditions necessary for the enactment of

a successful negotiation of social and economic justice. From the foregoing, it is

apparent that the novel, in its vision of a successful liberation of the exploited subjects,

isolates ideological commitment and unconditional unity as necessary preconditions.

However, Ogude views this envisioning of the peasant struggle against

imperialism as limiting since it attempts to “forge a coherent vision for change in the

face of fragmentation [and] displacement” (146). Despite the fact that Ogude’s critique

of the novel’s vision in particular and wa Thiong’o’s writing in general is well thought

out, there is evidence in the novel to suggest that the narrative is aware of this

shortcoming, and essentially mitigates against this limitation. For instance, the narrative

offers two distinctive levels of reading Matigari. On the one hand, Matigari exists as a

myth, and on the hand he exists as a human being. Although Matigari the man is

tragically destroyed by agents of the neocolonial state, Matigari the myth continues to

inspire peasant workers in their resistance. This Matigari is the embodiment of the

novel’s vision, transcending the limitations of human frailties, for as the narrative

intimates, the novel is wound around the unvanquished tale of the tragic yet heroic

adventures that are ontologically meaningful in reimagining the ideals of the

postcolonial nation.

Indeed, Cook and Okenimkpe argue that the novel achieves its rendition of its

vision in its denouement by casting Matigari as having the “element of mystic

apotheosis” that enables him to symbolise “the task of creating a socio-political fable of

great force and immediate relevance” (151). The novel’s vision on the condition of the

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postcolonial state is further bolstered by its interrogation of the influence of colonial

structures on the social and political conditions existent in the post-independence state.

The narrative invites the reader to question these influences and examine how they

contribute to the horror that has become the post-independence state.

In the context of postcolonial criticism, Mullaney affirms that the canon

“describes a range of critical practices or approaches employed to understand the

various dimensions and ramifications of colonization and its aftermath” (5). It is

apparent that in his envisioning of the means of resolving problem of neocolonial

imperialism, wa Thiong’o advocates for an examination of colonial hegemony and its

role in collapsing the independent state’s perception of truth and justice. The disregard

for these values and ideals is projected in the novel as the genesis of the dispossession

that has been entrenched in governance and socio-economic relations between the elite

and the peasants. As Matigari laments:

The seeker of truth and justice ends up in prisons and detention camps.
Yes, those who sow good seeds are accused of sowing weeds. As for the
sell-outs, they are too busy locking up our patriots in gaols, or sending
them into exile to let outsiders come and bask in the comfort wrought by
others. (150)

The link between the history of colonial incursion and neocolonialism is expressly

identified, through this excerpt, as partly responsible for the betrayal of the hopes and

desires of the postcolonial state. The narrative then builds its vision of social and

historical justice founded on the need to challenge “the imperialist enemy and its local

watchdogs” (156) as the only means of keeping alive the desire for liberation.

As a fable for postcolonial interrogation of neocolonial social conditions and a

narrative of the desire for neocolonial resistance, Matigari is encoded with

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waThiong’o’s ideological insinuations and overt calls for visionary revolution of the

political and economic structures. The contrast between good and evil, and the moral

indignation that emanates from the tragic sense in which Matigari ends provides a

moral ground for the revolutionary overtone that characterises the narrative’s thematic

focus. In its envisioning of armed resistance, the novel draws, according to Kathleen

Greenfield, from its “carefully constructed analysis of the place of the peasants and

workers in the economic, political and social framework of neocolonial relations in an

elaborate web of personal acts of oppression, exploitation, and domination” (41).

In its evocation of resistance, the novel builds on systematic alienation from the

neocolonial social order. The oppressive social and economic structures denigrate any

sympathy or condemnation of an armed struggle. This is achieved through the

narrative’s presentation of the regime’s extravagant use of violence to quell agitation for

truth and justice, and through the compassionate presentation of the failed workers’

quest for social and economic justice. Thus, the novel’s careful appropriation of tragic

pathos and the moral high ground from which the struggle is launched justify the

disruption that would be occasioned by the armed uprising against injustice and

oppression.

The narrative uses the literary flavour of riddling “to metaphorize across time,

space and event” (Gĩtĩtĩ 121), enhancing its presentation of the effects of

neocolonialism while at the same time invoking the discourse of resistance. In addition,

the riddles are expected to resonate with the community and as such enhance the

peasants’ and workers’ identification with both the narrative and its represented

discourse. In this way, the narrative invites its readership to share in the vision that is

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enunciated in the novel, as focalised through Matigari, a character that metaphorically

embodies patriotism and resistance against social and historical injustices.

In its depiction of deprivation and dispossession, Matigari acknowledges the

complexity of the circumstances that surround attempts to purge the evils committed by

the neocolonial state. However, the novel emboldens its narrative by stylistically

building on tragic irony to offer “a pointed satire of those who have turned the

postcolony into a theatre stage upon which they enact the absurd dance of death and

slavery” (Ogude 160). Through this stylistic choice, the novel solidifies its vision of a

society that derives its institutions not from the practice of raw power and violence, but

from the collective aspirations and desires of the entire society.

In Matigari, tragic realism affirms the superiority of humanistic ideals over

seemingly insurmountable forces that seek to dislodge these ideals. Through the

cathartic evocation of pity and fear, Matigari’s tragic circumstances negate despair and

uphold optimism that is heralded by his envisioning of a plausible means of striving for

an acceptable social order. In this sense, the tragic form functions to demonstrate that

“human value remains and is not negated even if particular human beings are defeated

by a world incommensurable with their hopes or ideals” (Newton 72). Tragic realism

thus upholds the stoicism of indigenous African values and ideals, and offers the

narrative a platform from which it envisions their dissemination and affirms their

significance in the postcolonial nation. It is this stoicism that punctuates wa Thiong’o’s

articulation of the pitfalls that need to be overcome before the postcolonial state can

engender truth and justice in its value system.

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4.6 Post-Neocolonial Vision in Petals of Blood

Petals of Blood is uniquely situated in the context of wa Thiong’o’s novelistic

oeuvre, as it is the first of his novels that focalises its thematic and ideological thrust

from the vantage point of a female protagonist. The narrative foregrounds the questions

of gender, form and ideology that are central to the novel’s presentation of neocolonial

politics in Kenya, and the effects of imperialism and modernity on postcolonial subjects

still reeling from the effects of colonialism. The discourse of neocolonial dispossession

is rendered through the novel’s demonstration of the inversion of social and economic

landscape of the Ilmorog community in particular, and the postcolonial state in general.

The narrative decries the destruction of cohesive social values and the collective sense

of identity, and their replacement with imperialism that is largely antagonistic to

national social and historical aspirations. Imperialism is depicted as detrimental to the

psycho-social development of the community, as evident in the psychological scars and

social disintegration that results from the collision of the two worldviews.

The novel builds its vision for postcolonial society through the narration of

Wanja’s tragedy, which illustrates personal histories and circumstances that concatenate

to form a communal philosophy that may aid the society in its confrontation of

neocolonial imperialism. Although the narrative is derived from the recollection of

individual characters’ experiences, these experiences provide a panoramic assessment

of neocolonial social and historical conditions. To articulate its vision, the narrative uses

the pedestal of the characters past histories to dramatise its political and philosophical

concerns, and ultimately to conscientise its readership on the ideals for postcolonial

nationalism.

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 For instance, it is through Wanja’s tragic circumstances, the allegory of the

neocolonial state, that the novel illuminates the degradation of the post-independence

state, as well as the struggles for regeneration and rediscovery. However, the narrative

uses her tragedy to concretise its depiction of both the dehumanisation of neocolonial

subjects, and the desire for renewal and regeneration.

Indeed, Petals of Blood narrates the experiences of those that “carry maimed

souls and [. . . who] are looking for a cure” (73), and whose accumulated experiences

afford the novel insights into the social and historical conditions existent in the

neocolonial state. These characters perceive Ilmorog as a sanctuary, and a place where

they engage in the evaluation of their personal and collective encounters with

neocolonialism, as they explore what wa Thiong’o refers to as “the possibilities of a

new social order from the womb of the old” (Writers in Politics 76).

In the narrative, the tragic form becomes a useful literary tool that contextualises

presentation of the community’s struggles against neocolonial abnegation of the

community’s sense of history and identity. The arrival of neocolonial capitalism alters

the community’s perception of its collective destiny that had hitherto sustained the

community through the different seasons of victory, defeat, abundance and even

scarcity. As evident from this part of the narrative, “history and legend showed that

Ilmorog had always been threatened by the twin cruelties of unprepared-for vagaries of

nature and the uncontrolled actions of men” (111).

It is through Wanja, the tragic heroine of the narrative, that the novel articulates

its evaluation of the social and historical conditions prevalent in the postcolonial state,

and expresses its vision for postcolonial nationalism. Her torment in the hands of an

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exploitative social and economic system transforms her into an aggressive prostitute.

She views this moral degeneration as “a game . . . of money . . . [where] you eat or you

are eaten” (293). It is evident that the narrative views her twisted perspective as a

consequence of her tribulations, and her sense of despair against a seemingly invincible

system.

Wanja’s transformation from a young girl who “had sworn that she would really

make something of herself in Ilmorog” (126) to one who internalises capitalistic values

and attitudes is the narrative’s way of demonstrating the adverse effects of untamed

exploitation of the powerless. She is a product of a system that she seeks to revolt

against, and such she becomes a moral and ideological contradiction. Consequently, she

seeks retribution by murdering the agents of her social degeneration. In this pursuit,

Wanja undergoes purification and punishment before she can engage meaningfully in

the struggle for social justice since she has been complicit in the victimisation of her lot.

She purges herself through the same fire that annihilates Chui, Kimeria and Mzigo.

The novel uses Wanja’s quest for redemption as a means of concretising its

vision on the need for re-evaluation of the values that bolster the struggle against

neocolonialism. Her tragic transformation and her desire for retribution culminate in the

adoption of an optimistic sense of history and identity. She has realised that:

Everything was simply a matter of love and hate [. . .] Siamese twins –

back to back in a human heart. Because you loved you also hated: and
because you hated you also loved. What you love decided what you
would have to hate in relation to what you loved [. . .] You knew what
you loved and what you hated by what you did, what actions, what side
you had chosen [. . .] You could not stand on the fence in a struggle and
still say you were on the side of those fighting the evil. (335)

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This stream of consciousness is indicative of Wanja’s anagnoris, her awareness of the

need for social and ideological commitment in the struggle against neocolonialism. It is

through this awareness that the novel underscores its vision for social justice. The

accomplishment of this vision had been hindered by the failure, on the part of victims of

neocolonial exploitation, to forge a philosophical front while interrogating their

exploitation.

In this way, the narrative decries the failure of the neocolonial community to

develop a social and ideological framework, which is a useful instrument in protecting

the community against undesired incursions of imperialism. In preparation for the epic

trek to the city, the community reflects on its social and historical fortunes and

misfortunes as it prepares to formally engage the state in the quest for solutions to its

economic predicament. Nyakinyua, the maternal custodian of the community’s history

and wisdom, reminds the community of the immense power of its collective authority.

In her words, “there was a time when things happened the way […] Ilmorog wanted

them to happen” (115).

Petals of Blood engages in the celebration of African history and identity, and

depicts the tragic devaluation of African history, culture and dignity by the incursion of

colonialism and colonial institutions. This transition is best illustrated through

Nyakinyua’s lament:

We had power over the movement of our limbs. We made up our own
words and sang them and we danced to them. But there came a time
when this power was taken from us. We danced yes, but somebody else
called out the words and the song. (115)

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This lament expresses the desire of the postcolonial society to generate a discourse that

can afford the nurturing of a social and ideological vision that can bolster the

community’s efforts as it seeks to “confront that which had been the cause of [its]

empty granaries, that which sapped [its] energies, and caused [its] weakness” (116).

Similarly, George A. Panichas, is of the view that the tragic form advances “a

humanistic orientation [. . . and] a fervent and consummate preoccupation with the

nature of man, his predicament and his fate” (3). Tragic realism, in this

way,enhancesthe retrospective evaluation a community’s circumstances, and by so

doing underscores need for an ideological framework that can effectively resolve the

underlying conflicts.

It is in this spirit that the novel evaluates the conflicts that plague the

postcolonial nation-state, particularly resulting from the importation of values and

norms that are foreign to the worldview of precolonial African communities.

Furthermore, the narrative articulates the community’s refutation of imperialist

hegemony by situating the narrative in Ilmorog village, “the home of myth and tradition

[. . .] idealized [and] destabilized [yet] central to the construction of a common vision

for Africa” (Mullaney 16). It is through its juxtaposition of the African values and

neocolonial imperialism, particularly as depicted through the community’s journey to

the city, that the novel demonstrates “that man’s estate is rotten at heart” (118).

The novel engenders its vision of the values that can nurture a social ideology

necessary for the adoption of a social philosophy that can stem rottenness in the

postcolonial nation-state. In this way, the postcolonial state will be able to progress

“beyond the pillorying of human wickedness and the tragedy of human debasement”

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(Cook and Okenimkpe 108). To build its vision, the novel uses character tropes that

enhance the readers’ alienation from dehumanising neocolonial value systems.

According to Craig V. Smith, Petals of Blood represents the complexities of

“change, hope, failure, and new, pessimistically yet critically enabling visions of

postcolonial places” (94). Symbolically, the changing social and historical fortunes of

the postcolonial society are illustrated through the different seasons of rain and drought

that influence shifts in ideological positioning of the Ilmorog community. These shifts

teeter between hope and despair and consequently demand new thinking and the

adoption of new ideological perspectives to resolve the resultant problems. Indeed, the

narrative’s ideological thrust is embodied in the struggles of the main characters to

resolve issues emanating from their personal histories. Wanja, Karega, Munira and

Abdulla are all emblematic symbols of a quest for personal and communal renewal that

is geared towards what Patrick Williams terms as the interrogation of “human relations

[that] are there to be fought for and constructed” (81).

The narrative creates characters that identify with the needs and the desires of

the victims of capitalistic exploitation, and “asserts a great hope that the mass of

humanity will in time prevail over the malignity of the privileged few” (Cook and

Okenimkpe 108). The moral struggle that bolsters the novel’s vision for postcolonial

social and economic justice is woven around the quest for a renewal of nationalistic

values and the denigration of foreign social and economic ideas that are bequeathed to

the African worldview by colonialism and neocolonialism.

To present its vision for postcolonial society, the novel uses tragic realism as a

means of demonstrating the inhumane nature of capitalism which formalises

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neocolonial subjects’ exploitation of each other. Indeed, according to Andrew Bennett

and Nicholas Royle, the tragic as an art form “makes the unconscious public [. . . and]

leaves us uncertain about our very identities, uncertain about how we feel, about what

has happened to us” (102). The novel’s utilisation of tragic realism thus provides the

narrative with a discursive platform through which the effects of neocolonialism on

national values are revivified, and an avenue through whichwa Thiong’o’s vision for

ideal nationalistic values is engendered.

This vision is encapsulated in Karega’s thoughts on the desire for heroes who

are “born every day among the people” and who would fight the “system that bred

hordes of round-bellied jiggers and bedbugs with parasitism and cannibalism” (344). In

this way, Petals of Blood confirms wa Thiong’o’s textualisation of his vision for the

postcolonial state as that which can only be achieved through conscientisation of the

peasant workers on their exploitation, and the entrenchment of the spirit of personal

sacrifice as a means of overturning their exploitation. The novel’s then envisions a

future in which the oppressed will end their subjugation and engrain, in the

community’s conscience, a culture of proactive engagement with their governance. It is

the attainment of this vision, according to Mullaney, that will facilitate the postcolonial

communities articulation “of their distinct values of their law, knowledges and histories,

indigenous expressions of sovereignty [. . . although] often denied in formal regimes of

power” (129).

This vision is embodied by Karega’s thoughts and his interpretation of the future

hope for workers and peasants. The workers, in agreeing to join him in the struggle

open up a new world of possibilities, and in Karega’s vision, “tomorrow it would be the

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workers and the peasants leading the struggle and seizing power to overturn the system

of all its preying bloodthirsty gods and gnomic angels” (344). The novel’s vision is

affirmed by the tenets of tragic narration, where the tragic vision “shows man’s

extremities of suffering, pain and calamity [. . . and] insists that certain conflicts are so

irreconcilable that they can be resolved only at the price of the total convulsion and

transformation of man’s familiar self and world” (Connolly 551). Apparently, the use of

tragic narrative aids postcolonial discourse in demonstrating the intensity of the

conflicts that must be resolved before a satisfactory relationship between the oppressive

elite and the masses can be achieved. However, Petals of Blood illustrates the pitfalls

that polarisation may present both at a communal and individual level. At the communal

level, there is the rise in interpersonal conflicts that emanate from ideological

differences, while at an individual level there is social and psychological alienation that

predisposes individuals to violent reaction against perpetrators of injustice.

Social alienation of the individual, which is a component of tragic narration, and

the preparedness of such an individual to endure disadvantage for the sake of the

struggle is well demonstrated through Munira. Although he is depicted as an ambivalent

character that lacks the concise expression of thoughts that Karega has, his actions are

evident of the narrative’s desire to applaud his contribution to the struggle. He disowns

his bourgeois background and exiles himself to Ilmorog, where he participates in the

establishment and development of the school, one that he hopes will not entrench

capitalistic hegemony that is evident in missionary education.

When Munira sets the fire that burns Wanja’s brothel, he feels that “he was no

longer an outsider, for he had finally affirmed his oneness with the Law” (333). This

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marks his transformation from an inactive agent to an aggressive crusader for moral

purity, a belief that sways the perspective of other characters, and demonstrates that

“there are no easy solutions to social ills” (Cook and Okenimkpe 105). Undeniably,

Cook and Okenimkpe attribute Munira’s violence to ideological frustration that forces

him to make tragic choices in his quest for means by which to resolve the moral and

social dilemmas that confront the postcolonial state. This demonstrates that the tragic

form ennobles the narrative’s discourse, thereby forcing other significant characters to

reflect on the discourse thus represented.

For instance, Munira’s views on moral purity and social justice influence

Inspector Godfrey’s views on justice and social order, further entrenching the

narrative’s vision on social and political justice. As Godfrey reflects, “the system of

capitalism and capitalistic democracy needed moral purity if it was going to survive”

(334). This is a confirmation of the narrative’s anticipation, in its vision, of a situation

where resistance against the evils of neocolonialism involves not just the masses, but

also those others that can identify with the logic of social justice and nationalistic

values. However, this can only be achieved after a comprehensive conscientisation of

the society to the fact of social and economic inequality. In this endeavour, crusaders of

this ideal social and economic order must endure suffering as a means by which the

society starts to pay attention to relations between the different social and economic

classes.

In its rendition of wa Thiong’o’s postcolonial vision, Petals of Blood draws

from Marxist and tragic realism as a means of concretising the narrative’s vision for

social justice. The novel utilises the historical background of the postcolonial

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community to enunciate on the influences of imperialism and the inhumane social and

political order that independence inadvertently brings unto the formerly colonised

society. This inhumane social order is contrasted with the indigenous African

perception of collective destiny and equitable justice, which are, in the narrative’s

perspective, necessary for a renewal of national values in the post-independence

context. However, as the novel demonstrates, the re-entrenchment of such values can

only be achieved through a concerted struggle that redefines the social and political

structures attainable if the masses engage in a popular resistance.

4.7 The Normative Heroine as Allegory of Postcolonial Nationalism

Devil on the Cross is the narration of gendered neocolonial exploitation and the

demonstration of the discourse of resistance against material and social subjugation in

the postcolonial state. The narrative interrogates social and economic factors that have

condoned the continued exploitation of the peasants and the workers by the privileged

few who have appropriated the structures of economic production to serve their

individual needs. In its discourse, the novel presents an ironic rendition of the

vulgarities that characterise the perception of neocolonial agents as concerns their

exploitation of national resources and structures of governance to serve their insatiable

gluttony. The novel focalises its discourse through Wariinga, the normative tragic

heroine of the narrative, whose interactions with neocolonial imperialism provide a

vista through which the novel articulates its vision for the postcolonial state.

The novel avers that its discourse intends to uncover “pits in our courtyard” so

that the postcolonial state may “discern the pitfalls in [. . . its] path” and resist being led

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“into blindness of the heart and deafness of the mind” (7). These objectives that are

central to wa Thiong’o’s vision for his postcolonial society are best articulated through

the exposition of “what now lies concealed by darkness” (8). The narrative promises to

use Wariinga’s tragic circumstances resulting from her encounter with the devil as an

avenue for exposing the evils of neocolonial imperialism, and in the process deconstruct

neocolonial hegemony that subjugates nationalistic desires. In Devil on the Cross, this

exposure is achieved through the creation of a counter-discourse that denudes the

historical truth about social and historical realities that nurture neocolonial subjugation.

According to Ogude, this revelation is intended “to give form to this state of

‘chaos’ by attempting to reconstitute history out of fragmentation” (151). Rendering a

true historical account offers neocolonial subjects an opportunity to assess the genesis

of their marginalisation and consolidate their variegated historical interpretations so as

to enhance a nationalistic vision that can remedy the ills plaguing the post-independence

state. This is akin to what Tony Davies refers to as creating “a way of understanding the

world, and thus of living and acting in it” (150). Devil on the Cross is a condemnation

of failed nationalism occasioned by imperialism. The narrative’s discourse further

interrogates the evils that have been bequeathed the post-independence nation by the

colonial regime. By so doing, the novel condemns the institutionalised exploitation of

peasant workers by forces that appropriate national resources so as to benefit an

oppressive minority.

Wariinga, the tragic heroine of the narrative, symbolises the resultant

commoditisation of national resources to serve the voracious appetite for riches and

fame that characterises social relations in the postcolonial state. The novel satirises this

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insatiable quest for wealth through the testimonials of capitalists such as Gitutu wa

Gataanguru who believes that “the question of whether one had formerly been cold or

hot or lukewarm was irrelevant when it came to the grabbing of land [and instead] what

[is] important [is] the handsome physique of money” (103). The narrative rebukes such

sentiments and the deliberate devaluation of the liberation struggle, in which nationalist

desires and values are desecrated in pursuit of personal gratification.

Likewise, Kihaahu wa Gatheeca’s testimony on “modern theft and robbery”

(108) demonstrates neocolonial disregard for social justice. Indeed, he admits that he

has “often stayed awake figuring out ways and means of increasing the whole country’s

hunger and thirst” (118). The narrative decries the inhuman attitude of the imperialists

who seek to profit from the misfortunes of the nation. In contrast, the novel’s expressive

discourse appears to suggest that most of the misfortunes that bedevil the postcolonial

society emanate from the failure of the state to entrench a nationalistic culture that

would curtail neocolonialism and untamed imperialism.

However, the narrative, in its vision, contemplates a future in which neocolonial

subjects can overturn their own exploitation by cultivating a culture of resistance, social

and economic independence, and a deliberate effort aimed at scuttling the structures that

facilitate their exploitation. In its vision, Devil on the Cross thus seeks what Boehmer

calls “self-determination” which is only possible if postcolonial subjects “develop ways

of dealing with the negation, self-alienation, and internal hatred produced by colonialist

rule” (Colonial and Postcolonial 162) and culture. The novel use of satire and tragic

irony facilitates its deconstruction of neocolonial culture, which is depicted as

ideologically misplaced in the context of nationalism and national values.

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 Furthermore, the savagery of imperialism is juxtaposed against the nation’s

desire for freedom and justice as elaborated through Muturi’s clarification that “the Mau

Mau’s Harambee was an organization designed to spread humanitarianism, for its

members used to offer their own lives in defence of children and disabled” (39). In

contrast, the incursion of imperialism in the postcolonial state has inverted nationalist

values resulting in social stratification, exploitation and subversion of national

institutions. Consequently, in rendering its vision, the narrative calls for

conscientisation of the peasants and the workers to “rescue the soul of the nation from

imperialism and slavery” (230), regardless of personal loss or suffering.

The novel uses tragic realism to emphasise the importance of personal sacrifice

as a means of liberating nationalistic values and desires. According to Bennett and

Royle, tragic realism as a literary mode is useful in representing circumstances that are

“humanly engineered and happening in a world in which something could and should

be done” (107). Devil on the Cross uses Wariinga as a normative tragic heroine to enact

its evaluation of the neocolonial society in which “power, in its own violent quest for

grandeur, [has made] vulgarity and wrongdoing its main mode of existence” (Mbembe

133). In essence, the narrative questions the legitimacy of neocolonial imperialism and

uses Wariinga’s tragic narrative to conscientise the masses so that they are not led “into

the blindness of the heart and into deafness of the mind” and to equip them with the

means through which they may destroy neocolonialism so that it does not “pursue the

task of building Hell for the people on Earth” (7).

Fundamentally, the tragic form enhances a writer’s vision “by throwing in the

highest stakes [that include] human happiness and human lives” (Brereton 72). Devil on

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the Cross, using the perspective of the Gicaandi Player extrapolates the social and

historical circumstances that abet the rise of imperialism and provides an ideological

exemplification of how imperialism can be repudiated. To achieve this, the novel builds

on the artistic and ideological thrust gained by its use of the Gicaandi Player who

provides, according to Gitahi Gititi, “an extended divination of the ills of the nation” by

taking up the multifunctional role of “diviner/priest, investigator, philosopher,

counselor, comforter, [and] the voice of conscience” (118). These roles that are

assigned to the Gicaandi Player concatenate to enunciate the novel’s discourse as well

as to advance its assessment of the prevailing social and historical challenges that

hinder formation of a social vision that may militate against neocolonial imperialism.

Furthermore, according to Rita Abrahamsen, the postcolonial canon must

perceive “power as productive of identities and subjectivities” which must be engaged

so as to enhance “the production of truth and rationality” (198). Devil on the Cross

engages in the examination of marginalisation of the peasants and the workers, and at

the same time contests this marginalisation by equipping victims of neocolonial

exploitation with knowledge on possible ways of overturning their oppression.

Knowledge and truth are key factors in the narrative’s rendition of wa Thiong’o’s vision

for his postcolonial society, where subjects of neocolonial deprivation reject their

subjugation.

The novel further envisions a post-neocolonial future where postcolonial society

will remedy its subjugation by first regaining its cultural and epistemological identity.

As the narrative laments,

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 Cultural imperialism is the mother to slavery of the mind and the body. It
is cultural imperialism that gives birth to mental blindness and deafness
that persuades people to allow foreigners to tell them what to do in their
own country, to make foreigners the ears and mouths of their national
affairs. (58)

It is apparent that the novel perceives the attainment of true independence and the

achievement of social and economic freedoms on cultural and political emancipation of

the postcolonial society, and attributes the evils of neocolonialism to the erosion of

authentic African values. This recovery would “guard the entrance to our national

homestead” and animate “the fire of wisdom” (58). This endeavour is central in

unearthing “the roots of Kenyan national culture” that are embedded “in the traditions

of all the nationalities of Kenya” (59).

Devil on the Crosspresents postcolonial nationalism as possible if different

ethnic histories and cultures are merged to provide an ideological framework that

repudiates negative colonial and postcolonial subjectivities. In Gikandi’s view, the

narrative uses Wariinga to symbolise the desire “to break out of the prison-house of

self-hate and victimization and to assert [. . .] identity outside the culture and economy

of arrested decolonization” (220). In its discourse, the narrative articulates its vision on

the relevance of precolonial and colonial histories in locating the genesis of

neocolonialism, and a means by which the postcolonial state may discover where “the

eaters of men and the killers of men [came] from” (67).

The novel’s vision for the postcolonial state is thus engendered in the characters’

awareness of their exploitation and the impossible circumstances that they face as they

question and attempt to end their subjugation. However, hope for the oppressed masses

is engendered in the possibility that “one day the oppressed sections will act in concert”

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(Cook and Okenimpke 130) to decimate neocolonial structures that have engrained

servitude and hindered achievement of social and economic justice in the postcolonial

state. As a normative tragic heroine in the narrative, Wariinga embodies the voice of

resistance and a metaphoric deconstruction of neocolonial entrapment. Her struggle

against neocolonial imperialism is advanced on two fronts; she uses her limitations to

develop a sense of socio-economic independence, and uses her knowledge of the evils

of neocolonialism to critique post-independence socio-economic injustices.

The novelsdepicts the violence of imperialism and its disregard for social and

economic justice so as to justify “the revolutionary wrath” (Cook and Okenimkpe 130)

that Wariinga, the normative heroine of the narrative, responds with as a consequence

of her despair resulting from her contact with the evils of neocolonial capitalism. It is

from the background of the novel’s articulation of the unacceptability of post-

independence capitalism that Wariinga, “by virtue of her innocence and her purity of

purpose” (Cook and Okenimkpe 131). In this way, the novel uses Wariinga to engender

its call on the subjects of neocolonial dispossession to challenge the “irrationality” and

the “immorality” of a social system that entrenches deprivation and servitude, and

consequently negating nationalistic values of freedom, equity and justice.

The novel’s use of tragic form aids its presentation of the patterns of tragic

failures that have occasioned the use of aggressive violence in asserting the desired

nationalistic vision amidst the immutability of neocolonial oppression. According to

Connolly, the tragic vision may be applied “to draw an audience [. . .] to confront

whatever is conceived as the ultimate power in any given world whether it be embodied

in the gods, nature, the political establishment, the social system or psychological

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compulsion” (551). In this way, the novel’s discourse questions neocolonial socio-

economic order with the aim of entrenching a revolutionary ideology that overturns

exploitative structures and institutions. As the narrative demonstrates, this can only

happen if the masses embrace personal and communal sacrifice. For instance, Wariinga

embraces her alienation as a necessary ingredient in the postcolonial society’s

interrogation of the limits of their collective achievement and she thus functions not

only as the normative heroine in the narrative, but also as an expression of renewed

nobility that bears the ideals of the postcolonial nation.

As an aesthetic catalyst in the narrative’s expression of the ideals of nationalism,

Wariinga, according to Gikandi, represents both “the author’s desire for radical

transformation and utopian resolution” and “the arrested nature of such desires and

longings” (221). This paradoxical construction in the nature of her character greatly

contributes to the tragic circumstances that compound her choices and her desires.

However, this tragic flavour concretises the narrative’s discourse on the need to

overcome personal limitations and contradictions in pursuit of postcolonial national

vision. This vision is only attainable if the subjects of neocolonial exploitation use their

personal circumstances as a fable for demonstrating the possibility of defeating

neocolonial structures and institutions that inhibit the realisation of much desired

nationalistic vision where national resources are utilised to nurture the dream of a

national culture.

This dream is enunciated through Gatuiria’s composition that seeks:

to reconstruct the whole process of mixing the various voices and the
various sounds in harmony: how and where all the voices meet; how and
where they part, each voice taking its own separate path; and finally how

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 and where they come together again, the various voices floating in
harmony like the Thiririka River flowing through flat plains towards the
sea, all the voices blending into each other like the colours of the
rainbow. (226)

This dream, as the narrative intimates, can only be a consequence of concerted efforts

that concatenate to form a national symphony that embraces difference and tolerance

provided they are geared towards the attainment of nationalistic objectives. Moreover,

the narrative views history as a key component in envisioning the future of the post-

neocolonial state. It is the remembrance of the nation’s experiences that will facilitate

its knowledge of the “how and where” as it flows “towards the sea” that symbolically

represents the achievement of national desires and progress. In this way, the

postcolonial state would achieve some form of post-neocolonial egalitarianism by,

according to Kirkland, attempting “to denature man” and engender an “ideological spirit

of revolution attached to the doctrines of inequality” (63), a culmination of all the

efforts aimed at conscientising the society on the need for social, historical and

economic justice.

Furthermore, historical conscientisation in this regard would extend to include

negotiation for “indigenous sovereignty” which in turn fosters the expression of both

individual and collective self definitions (Mullaney 129). As part of the novel’s

discourse, the attainment of self definition accelerates the achievement of the post-

neocolonial society’s vision for a national culture that is free from ideologies that are

foreign to the postcolonial state. In this way, the postcolonial nation would, in

accordance with Gatuiria’s imagination, condemn “those who sold the soul of the nation

to foreigners” and celebrate “the deeds of those who rescued the soul of the nation from

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foreign slavery” (227). Gatuiria’s sentiments resonate with Boehmer’s argument that

postcolonial literatures seek “to establish new metaphors of nationhood” and to

interrogate “defining symbols for the purposes of imagining the nation” (Colonial and

Postcolonial 189). Such an endeavour is directed at conscientising postcolonial subjects

to attempt a redefinition of social, cultural and historical realities in recognition of the

past and present challenges facing these societies.

The postcolonial society, as Wariinga’s personal experiences demonstrate, needs

to draw from its past as a means by which a consolidated challenge against debilitating

socio-economic structures can be re-orderedso as to enhance postcolonial society’s

actualisation of its vision for social and economic justice. The struggle that the tragic

narrative represents through its discourse is in other words an attempt to redefine the

ideals of nationhood as stipulated in the hopes and desires of the freedom struggle,

bolstered by ideals such as equity, justice and self reliance.

From the foregoing, it is apparent that Devil on the Cross envisions the survival

of the postcolonial nation as hinged on peasants’ and workers’ awareness of their role in

nation building. This will in turn facilitate the cascading of their collective experiences

to constitute the much needed symphony that is the bedrock of the postcolonial

society’s ideological framework, and equip them with knowledge that will aid them in

rejecting foreign social and cultural influences. To accumulate this knowledge, the

postcolonial society needs to revisit indigenous African history for its moral and

political philosophy. As the narrative suggests, this philosophy will facilitate nation

building and entrenchment of national desires and visions for social, political and

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economic prosperity, and solidify a sense of collective identity and destiny for the

postcolonial subjects.

4.8 Conclusion

The chapter has discussed how wa Thiong’o usesnovelistic discourse to

articulate his vision for the postcolonial society. This vision, as the study has found out,

is directly influenced by collective historical experiences of the Kenyan society. In The

River Between, wa Thiong’o interrogates the onset of colonialism and uses Waiyaki’s

tragedy to demonstrate the need for social and cultural syncretism as a means of

building an effective response towards colonial incursion, and as the most potent means

of nurturing a national culture. Furthermore, the study has concluded that tragic realism

is used in the novel to expose the genesis of social and political disengagement that

extends to the postcolonial society. Such disengagement can only be resolved if the

postcolonial state confronts its inherent contradictions and finds a way of embracing

cultural and ideological pluralism.

In A Grain of Wheat, wa Thiong’o’s vision for the post-independence state

focuses more on social and historical conscientisation of the emergent nation-state as it

engages in the quest for national values and a national identity. It is clear that the novel,

as it envisions the formation of a new nation, advocates for redefinition of national

values, an act that should be preceded by an objectiveevaluation of historical betrayals

and social dislocations.Such evaluation should seek to entrench an objective discourse

on colonial history, providing the postcolonial nation with an uncontested historical

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reference needed as the nation struggles to rebuild its institutions and its socio-political

identity.

In Matigari, wa Thiong’o’s vision is hinged on the desire to overturn

neocolonial imperialism, a consequence postcolonial historical dispossession and which

can only be overturned if the masses engage in the struggle against foreign and local

imperialist forces. Tragic realism is used in the novel to foreground disillusionment and

dispossession that characterises the post-independence state, and to deconstruct

neocolonial hegemony. Matigari’s tragedy underscores the novel’s vision that is

founded on the need to conscientise the masses on the fact of their exploitation

culminating in a sustained negotiation for socio-historical justice. Humanistic ideals, as

espoused by Matigari, the tragic hero, would provide insurmountable force as the

postcolonial state reinstitutes inclusivity, justice and truth.

A similar vision is extended in Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, where

wa Thiong’o demonstrates the importance of history as a means of refuting

neocolonialism and engendering nationalistic values and desires. Tragic realism is used

to depict the effects of neocolonial imperialism through the psycho-social scars that

tragic heroines are forced to live with. The tragedy that befalls the two heroines, the

allegorical representation of post-independence Kenya, punctuates the need for the

Kenyan postcolonial state to utilise its collective memories of subjugation, oppression

and exploitation as grounds for building a new socio-economic philosophy that

annihilates neocolonial hegemony.

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 5.0 Chapter Five

5.1Summary of Findings, Conclusions and Recommendations

5.2Summary of Findings

This study set out to investigate the various elements of tragedy used in selected

novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the use of tragedy in the emplotment and representation

of thematic concerns in the selected novels, and the use of tragedy to express wa

Thiong’o’s postcolonial vision. The study delimited itself to The River Between, A

Grain of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood, and Devil on the Cross. To achieve its

objectives, the study utilised an eclectic theoretical approach by using tenets from

postcolonial criticism and theoretical principles derived from tragic realism. On the one

hand, postcolonial criticism provided the study with literary tools useful in analysing

how the novels’ discourse addresses social and cultural issues resulting from both

colonial and postcolonial contexts. On the other hand, tragic realism provided the study

with theoretical tenets that were used to identify and interrogate elements of tragedy

evident in the selected novels, and also to interrogate how the use of the tragic form

enhances the novels’ postcolonial discourse.

This approach has guided the study in identifying and interpreting narrative

aspects such as plot, representation, characterisation, motifs, and point of narration, and

to interrogate these elements as deliberate narrative choices used by wa Thiong’o to

enunciate the tragic conflicts addressed in the selected novels. By exploring these

narrative choices, the study has been able to evaluate how elements of tragedy manifest

in the novels, and interrogate the connectedness between the tragic form and

postcolonial discourse.

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 The study has discussed wa Thiong’o’s use of the tragic form to address colonial

and postcolonial social, cultural, political and economic conflicts in The River Between,

A Grain of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood, and Devil on the Cross. The study started

by exploring elements of tragic realism, and interrogated how these literary principles

assist in the enunciation of postcolonial concerns inherent in the selected novels.

Furthermore, the study has analysed how elements of tragedy are appropriated by the

narratives to best represent the conflicts that the novels’ discourse addresses.

However, as the study has found out, the divisiveness on the issues of culture,

religion and education, creates social and ideological divisions that ultimately

predispose Waiyaki to tragic failure. Partly, his failure is a consequence of polarisation

that is brought about by these divisions, and also a consequence of his choices and

commitment to these choices. As stipulated by the principles of tragic mimesis, Waiyaki

is deposed from his noble status, a reversal that is evident of tragic irony, since as the

hero-leader of the community, he fails not necessary as a result of any weakness in

character, but as a result of inevitable destiny or as a consequence of forces that are

beyond his control. The motif of jealousy also contributes to Waiyaki’s tragedy, where

he gets exposed to conniving evil designs of Kabonyi, who incites the Kiama to isolate

Waiyaki and ultimately banish him from the tribe, punctuating Waiyaki’s tragic failure

in his role as the hero-leader of the community.

Likewise, A Grain of Wheat utilises tragic mimesis to represent colonial social

and individual conflicts, and to interrogate their effects on the post-independence

nation-state. In its characterisation, the narrative makes effective use of the tragic anti-

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hero to depict how boundaries of awareness affects the development of collective

national consciousness and how this in turn affects the evolution of social, political and

economic values of the newly independent postcolonial societies. As the tragic anti-

hero, Mugo embodies the social contradictions that are a product of the colonial

experience, and transposes these contradictions into the new socio-economic entity.

By using the betrayal motif, concretely depicts competing human interests and

show how they lay ground for tragic conflicts. This motif becomes the foundation for

the novel’s depiction of the themes of post-independence disenchantment and social

political retribution. On the one hand, disenchantment results from the community’s

realisation that their vision for a new social, political and economic order has been

betrayed by the emergence of capitalism which is a continuation of the domination that

comes with colonialism. On the other hand, retribution symbolises colonial subjects’

desire to truncate the history of colonialism from their progressive vision of nationalism

and freedom from the colonial heritage.

Tragic irony in A Grain of Wheat is intertwined with the betrayal of the

communal optimism that is heralded by the coming of independence, and functions as a

literary tool that philosophically questions the true nature of independence in the

context of social and individual conflicts. Moreover, it is the betrayal motif that

underscores the difficulties that the new nation must face as it grapples to establish its

identity as a cohesive unit. The sense of discovery that results after Mugo’s anti-heroic

character is unmasked aligns the narrative’s denouement to the tragic anagnorisis, the

sense of discovery, where the community becomes aware of the emergent individualism

that is bent on capital accumulation as symbolised by Mugo and as well as by other

169
characters such as Karanja, Gikonyo and the member of parliament. In this way, A

Grain of Wheat uses the tenets of tragic mimesis to underscore the importance of

aligning the postcolonial society’s accumulated social and historical knowledge as

braces itself for the challenges of nationhood.

In Matigari, the study has explored the use of a hero that transitions from an

epic hero to a tragic hero to foreground the effects of neocolonial oppression. Matigari,

the tragic hero of the narrative engages his interrogation of the post-independence

society from the vantage point of colonial history, and laments the deterioration of

social, economic and political values of the post-independence state, that has been

ravaged by inherited colonial structures. Specifically, the unchecked appropriation of

national resources by the elite for the benefit of their class and their foreign compatriots

is interrogated as a primary cause of the tragic conflict that generates the plot in the

narrative.

The tragic hero is used in the novel to ennoble the perspective of the subjects of

neo-colonial oppression, and rationalises his quest for truth and justice. Matigari uses

the history of the freedom struggle to negotiate for socio-economic and political justice

for the subjects of colonial and postcolonial dispossession. The hero thus serves an

apocalyptic role by raising the consciousness of the masses to confront their oppression

by engaging the neocolonial regime. However, assumption on the power of history as a

liberating tool leads to his tragic error, where he fails to anticipate brutality and violence

as tools that are at the disposal of the neocolonial state to safeguard its denial of the

desire that informed the freedom struggle. It is this error that leads to Matigari’s failure

and subsequent annihilation by the structures of the unjust post-independence state.

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 The tragic form, as used in Matigari, deconstructs neocolonial dispossession and

demonstrates the urgency with which issues of economic oppression and the denial of

the values of nationhood should be addressed as a means by which the postcolonial

society can live to the aspirations of the freedom struggle. This urgency is foregrounded

by both Matigari’s tragic circumstances and his tragic vision for the post-independence

state. As a narrative strategy, heroic failure punctuates the novel’s condemnation of

postcolonial injustice where the elite negate the ideological aspirations of the patriotic

struggle that preceded the attainment of independence. At the same time, such failure

and tragic destruction of the hero satirises the fear that the undeserving beneficiaries of

the patriotic struggle live with, as a consequence of the guilt of having betrayed the

desire for nationhood and national prosperity.

The study has further concluded that Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross use

tragic heroines as allegorical representations of class and gender oppression. Through

Wanja in Petals of Blood and Wariinga in Devil on the Cross, the tragic form is used

torepresent the extremities of neocolonial exploitation. Tragic characterisation is, in this

sense, used to allegorise the exploitation of the neocolonial state through the symbolic

role assigned the tragic heroines. The tragic form, as used in the two narratives,

functions as a pedagogical tool that sharpens the narratives’ rendition of the vagaries of

colonial and neocolonial socio-cultural and economic injustices.

Furthermore, the two novels entrench a social and ideological vision that is

hinged on the metaphor of regenerative resistance. The tragic heroines, Wanja in Petals

of Blood and Wariinga in Devil on the Cross, represent the postcolonial spirit that seeks

to avenge the ills of social and economic exploitation that stems from colonialism and

171
extends to post-independence neocolonialism. In this way, the tragic heroine serves as a

normative heroine that conscientises the rest of the society on the fact of its

exploitation, and encourages the adoption of resistance and destruction of the structures

that have abetted such exploitation.

The two novels represent their anti-neocolonial discourse through the tragedies

that the two heroines experience. The social and economic exploitation that the

characters experience microcosmically symbolise the difficulties being experienced by

the newly formed post-independence state. On the one hand, the state experiences

deflowerment occasioned by its encounter with the conniving colonial regime. On the

other hand, the post-independence state finds itself at the centre of a more exploitative

neocolonial order that continues the dehumanisation of the colonial ideology albeit with

the assistance of comprador bourgeoisie that seeksmaterial and social gratification. The

intensity of the conflicts that result from attempted contestations by the subjects of these

forms of exploitation is illustrated through the novels’ appropriation of the tragic form.

5.3 Conclusions

The study has interrogated the use of elements of tragedy in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s The

River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross,

and has used the theoretical tenets of tragic realism and postcolonial criticism to

explorewa Thiong’o’s use of narrative aspects such as plot, representation,

characterisation, motifs, and point of narration to interrogate postcolonial social,

172
political, and economic inequalities and injustices, and to further depict wa Thiong’o’s

vision for the postcolonial society.

In the study, it emerges that wa Thiong’o’s use of the tragic form in the selected

novels enhances his own evaluation of the issues that affect the Kenyan post-

independence state. The conflicts, as represented in the novels, lead to social

polarisation and thus become more difficult to resolve. However, by using the tragic

heroes’ and heroines’ determination to direct their efforts towards the development of

social, political and historical awareness, wa Thiong’o demonstrates the possibility of

struggling for and achieving both social and historical justice. Furthermore, the novels

have used the tragedy of the heroes and heroines to underscore the importance of not

only the issues highlighted in the novels’ discourse but also to emphasise the need for

the postcolonial state to resolve the issues raised through the discourse.

Through the discourse inherent in the novels, wa Thiong’o advocates for the

adoption of a social ideology that fosters a sense of nationalism and commitment to

national values and desires. In this way, the post-independence state would be able to

achieve desirable social and economic progress that distributes the benefits of

independence to all in a democratic manner.

The tragic form has been used in the selected novels to interrogate the divergent

social, political and economic systems that guide acquisition of power and dominance.

The conflicts addressed in the novels are used as a means by which wa Thiong’o

engages in a discursive evaluation of how power is used for hegemonic purposes and

more often to dominate, unfairly, over the victims of social and economic deprivation.

173
The ensuing contest results in conflicts that wa Thiong’o represents through tragic

mimesis as a means by which the narratives condemn the ensuing injustices.

In The River Between, the study has concluded that wa Thiong’o uses tragic

elements such as nobility of tragic hero’s character and thought, tragic irony, tragic

motifs, character flaws, and tragic plot to represent social conflicts, contradictions and

failures that African communities are confronted with after colonial incursion into the

African socio-cultural, historical and political spheres. The colonial experience is

presented, in the novel, as having given rise to diametrically opposed ideological

divides into which Waiyaki is born. As a consequence of his lineage, Waiyaki is

bequeathed nobility of character, which is solidified by the primordial prophecy that

identifies him as the last in the line of the great seers, and one that will save the

community in its time of need.

The use of tragedy in A Grain of Wheat functions to aesthetically question both

colonial and postcolonial histories, and to ideologically attempt to explain the

ideological connection between colonial history and socio-economic disengagement

that characterises the postcolonial state. The tragic form is thus used to interrogate the

consequences of failed reconciliation of divergent interests that coalesce to form the

postcolonial state, and to render an aesthetic demonstration of the ideological divide

that is expected to characterise the new nation state.

This divide is further interrogated in Matigari, where tragic realism is used to

highlight neocolonial dispossession that characterises the newly independent state.

Matigari’s tragedy punctuates the need for the masses to question neocolonial social,

political and economic systems that have been institutionalised by the ruling

174
bourgeoisie. This should culminate into a sustained redefinition of national values and

reinstituteinclusivity, justice and truth. Tragic realism, as used in Matigari, contrasts the

absence of humanistic values in the neocolonial state, and demonstrates the tragedy that

will result unless social, political and economic disengagements are not resolved.

In Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, the novels’ utilisation of tragic

heroines enhances wa Thiong’o’s demonstration of the kind of dehumanisation that

results from post-independence social, economic and ideological polarisation. The study

concludes that the use of tragic mimesis encourages our appreciation of social,

ideological, economic and political displacement that is experienced by the subjects of

neocolonial exploitation, and whose tragic circumstances are allegorically represented

in the tragedy of Wanja in Petals of Blood and Warringa in Devil on the Cross. Tragic

mimesis in this case facilitates postcolonial criticism’s interrogation of colonial and

neocolonial structures that have inhibited the attainment of the nationalist desire that

guided the struggle for freedom and self-definition. The heroines are in this case

metaphorical representations of socio-political and economic dislocation that is a direct

consequence of neocolonial dispossession.

The study further concludes that tragic realism is employed in the novels to

concretise condemnation of the socio-economic and historical displacement experienced

by the masses in the neocolonial state, and to rationalise retributive acts that are

undertaken by the tragic heroines. Tragic realism in this sense punctuates not only the

dehumanisation meted out on subjects of neocolonial dispossession but also justifies the

violence as a means by which the dispossessed masses can overturn their

dehumanisation.

175
 The tragic form is further used to enunciate wa Thiong’o’s vision for the

postcolonial state. This is achieved through the novels’ use of normative tragic heroines

who embody the voice of resistance and a metaphoric deconstruction of neocolonial

exploitation. The heroines’ struggle against neocolonial imperialism develops a sense of

socio-economic independence, and affords subjects of neocolonial oppression a means

by which they can question and overturn socio-economic and political subjectivities.

The heroines’ rejection of servitude and dependence entrenches the desire for the

postcolonial state to attain its nationalistic vision through collective self-definition. The

study concludes that tragedy is thus used to enhance postcolonial conscientisation, and

avails to subjects of neocolonial exploitation an avenue that they can use to interrogate

past socio-historical experiences as a means animating the present. In this way, the

neocolonial state can regain its value systems that are needed in redefining values and

ideologies that can foster a national vision and culture.

5.4 Recommendations

The study has interrogated the use of elements of tragedy in Ngugi wa

Thiong’o’s novels, and has purposively delimited itself to The River Between, A Grain

of Wheat, Matigari, Petals of Blood, and Devil on the Cross. The researcher is of the

view that future studies can interrogate other narrativeand structural choices employed

in these novels, and further explore how these choices enhance wa Thiong’o’s rendition

of his vision for postcolonial societies. Furthermore, other studies can evaluate how

writers use the tragic form to facilitate a literary representation of socio-economic,

political and historical conflicts that are unique to the contexts that inform their

176
writings. This is in line with the observation that tragic mimesis is a useful tool in the

representation of conflicting ideals that predispose heroes and heroines to tragic

circumstances. As such, literary research can interrogate how writers represent social,

cultural and political conflicts, and explore the role of tragedy in interrogating these

conflicts.

177
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Appendix

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