| dc.description.abstract | Ngugi's fiction confronts us openly with the
issue of the meaning and value of our modern historical
and socio-political experience. Like Soyinka,
he is preoccupied with the question of "self apprehension."
To carry his interpretive role he
moulds his fiction into an instrument of understanding
on the individual and socio-cultural levels.
This study attempts a reading of his artistic
vision, as it emerges •from his first four novels, seen
mostly from a stylistic angle. The aim is to carry
a meaningful and effective analysis of these novels
by bringing content and form into playas elements of
fiction which are equally significant. By utilizing
the resources of fictionalization as integrative parts
of the critical process we hope to advance the search
for a literary method that is expediential to the
representation of the African experience in fiction.
Ngugi moves with dexterity from initial issues of
cultural and religious conflict and colonial domination,
to key issues which concern his modern society, ranging
from the question of qualified leadership and the
( status of women to power-politics and class struggle.
In the explication of these themes, the study focuses
on the socio-cultural and traditional aspects of the
texts and the stylistic devices through which they
are realized.
Ngugi's portrait of a Kenyan society in the
throes of change is made more vivid by the iteration
of central metaphors, structural images and a fairly
varied system of expressive and structuring list.
As these echo through the narratives, in a complex
network of connotations, the thematic unity of each
book is achieved and a level of poetic reality of the
spiritual adventure of the characters created. On the
other hand, traditional and Christian mythologies are
narrated to provide identical models of behavior and
modes of being through the fusion of songs, poems,
tales of tradition and biblical references within the
dreams and dilemmas of the characters portrayed. As
such,myth becomes the medium through which Ngugi
exposes his society's deepest shared values or repressed
feelings and the means by which he expresses
its collective dreams, aesthetic play and ritual.
The study also approaches the novels through
their narrative method in the belief that narrative
is the essence of the African novel. In appreciation of his role as a social visionary, Ngugi posits his
novels as implied communication from an author to an
audience. He effects a synthesis of formal elements,
content and authorial consciousness as an effective
medium for recreating an external reality but also his
own universe. Ngugi's novel structure is primarily
inspired by the African oral tradition but is rooted
more in self-conscious modernist techniques. Techniques
of flashbacks, reminiscences, interlocking viewpoints
and the use of a collective narrator are utilized
to endow the novels with a consistent design
and to achieve a complex handling of plot-structure,
but also to explore the tensions of past and present
history and to work towards a “meaningful and constructive
future. As such, Ngugi's form becomes
more than a mute vehicle for mimesis; it has a logic
of its own which enables him to challenge and change
the reader's perception of the African experience.
In general the central contextual movement in the
novels is the"progress of the Kenyan society from a
tranquil communal past, through the stages of the
struggle for liberation to turbulent post-independence
times. Although Ngugi is apparently involved with the
historical and ideological ramifications of this process,
he is actually highly concerned with the alienating and
dehumanizing effects of colonialism on the African's
psyche. In the first, two novels we meet with characters seeking self-understanding against the backdrop
of either an alienating CUltural system or an oppressive
colonial system. The disillusioned assimilators
are moulded into symbolic figures illustrative of what colonialism has done to a whole generation of
Africans. In the later novels characters wrestle with
their own alienated selves with the disillusioning
context of post-independence era as they try to preserve
their integrity in order to rebuild their society.
The endeavour to confront and adjust to the realities
of the present in an attempt to construct a new
future is seen as a journey towards self-knowledge
and a movement towards total consciousness.
With Ngugi, language is more than an outer shell
of meaning. It is the primary subject of the novels
in the sense that all the issues concerning society
are reflected and promoted through it. As such, representation
becomes a narrative process which opens up
the conflicts that inform society as they are incapsulated
in language. Yet, Ngugi's style is neither
difficult nor laborious. Despite the complexity of
the vision and the elaborately patterned content, the
style is simple and often transparent. This is not a
mark of an inability to use the full resources of the
English language but a conscious attempt on Ngugi's
part to arrive at a clarity which imparts his vision
to his intended audience. Through the deceptive
simplicity of his vocabulary and sentence structure
Ngugi achieves sophisticated effects which are both
rich and subtle. | |
