Monday, April 16, 2012
Postcolonial Kenya 2
Soon after Njoroge’s dreams are smashed when the vengeful Jacobo places blame of Mau Mau connections on Ngotho and Mr.Howlands has Njoroge removed from school for questioning. Both father and son are brutally beaten before release and Ngotho is left barely alive. Njoroge’s brothers assassinate both Mr.Howlands and Jacobo and Njoroge is left as the sole provider to his two mothers. Doomed to failure, he has lost all hope of returning to school, has lost faith in God, and when he finally pledges his love to Mwihaki, she is too afraid to marry him. At this the idealistic protagonist of Weep Not, Child, can take no more, and fails an attempt at suicide at the novel’s closure. The main contention of Ngugi against colonialism emerges clearly from this narrative. Here, we witness a boy full of hope for a bright new future, full of love for his family, joy at the prospect of an education, yet still anchored with a strong sense of cultural identity to support him through his endeavors. Ngugi seems to apply a sociological experiment on the protagonist when one by one taking away all that sustains his strength. Naturally the first enabling quality stripped away stands as the most irrevocably destroyed—tribal identity. Njoroge finds his life full of conflict. He stands with one foot in western modernism and the other in a world awed by the mythologies of olden times. He must accept Christian faith as a prerequisite to a European education, yet yearns to know the ancient stories of his origin. One instance where this notion prevails is when Njoroge stands before his class, a class aimed at learning western culture and language, and is asked by his teacher to tell a story. Njoroge knows many stories passed down by his mothers, but becomes frozen; in fact, devastated that he does not remember a single one. Ngugi here makes the first of several statements about Africans choosing between two social modes and failing when trying to live in both. Going to school with more westernized children teaches Njoroge to feel for the first time shame of his social position. He avoids walking past Mwihaki and hides so that she does not see his worn calico smock. Before attending school the boy knew nothing of wearing shorts and shirts, and so, had no concept of shame. Colonialism imparted desirable new technologies to the Kikuyu people, yet in the same hand brought a sense of inferiority never before felt by the culture. According to Simon Gikandi of the University of Michigan, the Kikuyu people where not prone to individualism. They, as a culture, saw life as conducted according to the ‘basic rhythm of nature’; [in Gikandi’s view], the African encounter with colonial modernity was a catastrophic event (Gikandi). Another manner in which Ngugi deteriorates his protagonist occurs after Ngotho’s attack on Jacobo at the worker’s strike. To understand the weight of this event it is first imperative to examine the circumstances of generational divides between the youth brought up under colonial rule and the elders of tribal heritage. Ngugi aims to reveal the duality of the oppressing force. Many white settlers were colonizing to avoid conflicts of war in Great Britain.
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Postcolonial Kenya 2
Soon after Njoroge’s dreams are smashed when the vengeful Jacobo places blame of Mau Mau connections on Ngotho and Mr.Howlands has Njoroge removed from school for questioning. Both father and son are brutally beaten before release and Ngotho is left barely alive. Njoroge’s brothers assassinate both Mr.Howlands and Jacobo and Njoroge is left as the sole provider to his two mothers. Doomed to failure, he has lost all hope of returning to school, has lost faith in God, and when he finally pledges his love to Mwihaki, she is too afraid to marry him. At this the idealistic protagonist of Weep Not, Child, can take no more, and fails an attempt at suicide at the novel’s closure. The main contention of Ngugi against colonialism emerges clearly from this narrative. Here, we witness a boy full of hope for a bright new future, full of love for his family, joy at the prospect of an education, yet still anchored with a strong sense of cultural identity to support him through his endeavors. Ngugi seems to apply a sociological experiment on the protagonist when one by one taking away all that sustains his strength. Naturally the first enabling quality stripped away stands as the most irrevocably destroyed—tribal identity. Njoroge finds his life full of conflict. He stands with one foot in western modernism and the other in a world awed by the mythologies of olden times. He must accept Christian faith as a prerequisite to a European education, yet yearns to know the ancient stories of his origin. One instance where this notion prevails is when Njoroge stands before his class, a class aimed at learning western culture and language, and is asked by his teacher to tell a story. Njoroge knows many stories passed down by his mothers, but becomes frozen; in fact, devastated that he does not remember a single one. Ngugi here makes the first of several statements about Africans choosing between two social modes and failing when trying to live in both. Going to school with more westernized children teaches Njoroge to feel for the first time shame of his social position. He avoids walking past Mwihaki and hides so that she does not see his worn calico smock. Before attending school the boy knew nothing of wearing shorts and shirts, and so, had no concept of shame. Colonialism imparted desirable new technologies to the Kikuyu people, yet in the same hand brought a sense of inferiority never before felt by the culture. According to Simon Gikandi of the University of Michigan, the Kikuyu people where not prone to individualism. They, as a culture, saw life as conducted according to the ‘basic rhythm of nature’; [in Gikandi’s view], the African encounter with colonial modernity was a catastrophic event (Gikandi). Another manner in which Ngugi deteriorates his protagonist occurs after Ngotho’s attack on Jacobo at the worker’s strike. To understand the weight of this event it is first imperative to examine the circumstances of generational divides between the youth brought up under colonial rule and the elders of tribal heritage. Ngugi aims to reveal the duality of the oppressing force. Many white settlers were colonizing to avoid conflicts of war in Great Britain.
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