Death As Metaphor In Yvonne Owuor’S Dust

Abstract

This is a study of death as metaphor in Yvonne Owuor‘s debut novel Dust. The novel is predominantly set in Northern Kenya in the heady 2007/2008, a short time after the general elections, an event which was followed by the historic post-election violence. The narrated events span Kenya‘s 1960s to the beginning of 2008. Death dominates the text, and the study identifies the forms and portraits of death and then establishing them as significant carriers of meaning. A close reading of the novel reveals the intricate linkages between individual stories and experiences and national narratives and histories. In particular, narrating dead bodies from the 1960s and in 2008 not only generates other forms of death, but also explains events surrounding Kenya‘s British colonialism in the 1960s and how they proliferate into Kenya‘s present. Deploying psychoanalysis, this study demonstrates how characters come to terms with the haunted memories that the people of Kenya have lived with for decades. By contrast, postcolonial theories help establish the novel‘s response to latter day struggles in Africa, and more so in a Kenyan context.