Course no.:- 14 “The African Literature”

Course no.:- 14 

“The African Literature” 

Total words: - 2,362 

• Contents

“The Politics and Spaces of Voice: Ngũgĩ's A Grain of Wheat”. 2

 Abstract:- 2

 Acknowledgements:- 3

 Introduction:- 4

 Social circumstances:- 5

 Betrayed to the British:- 5

 Uhuru Day:- 6

 Mau Mau Oath and Identity:- 6

 Mugo as a hero or betrayal?:- 7

 Who is real enemies?:- 7

 Struggle of Kenya :- 7

 Role of women:- 8

 Conclusion:- 8

 Bibliography:- 9

“The Politics and Spaces of Voice: Ngũgĩ's A Grain of Wheat” 

• · Abstract:-

                                                           Ngũgĩ is a Kenyan writer and academic who write primarily in Kikuyu. If talked about his work so here have to mentioned that his spread horizon into various fields like, novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Kikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story The Upright Revolution: or Why Humans Walk Upright is translated into 90 languages from around the world. During his time ‘A Grain of wheat’ more commented by different critics because one of the reasons was, ‘A Grain of Wheat’ satire on political space which may be experienced by him. According to G.D. Killam and Andrew Gurr view it within the post-colonial frame in which ‘received history is tampered with, rewritten, and realigned from the point of view of the victims of its destructive process’. As per their views that Ngugi writes first three novels (Weep Not, Child, the River Between, and A Grain of Wheat) based on Kenya’s history which was time for independence or freedom of Kenya’s people. Ngugi has sense of views political-novelist-historian way that focused on the political background of Kenya which reflected in the novels but normally reader reads ‘A Grain of Wheat’ mostly as a story of heroism and betrayal of human relationships in a chosen situation. Here my assignment focused on political background and space of voice in ‘ A Grain of Wheat’.

Key words:- A Grain of wheat, Political background, Various movement in South Africa.

• · Acknowledgements:-

                                                          I want to thank to my family members, friends, classmate, teachers, relatives for always enthusiastically supporting me, listening to me talk about this assignments and especially when I was talking about it instead of actually doing it and also spending more times and give me some kind of guideline. One of the my post graduate teacher who telling the story of Heart of darkness into the class before I even knew what it was and in the M.A. level I got some kind of different clues which I never get during post graduate level. Reading again and again leads to me read between the lines. When I read some part from the book of ‘ A Grain of Wheat’ and reading some materials from the web sources at that time all the characters will always stay with me and I felt that I became victim of so thank you to all who constant support, encouragement, and inspiration! My dear classmate, I came to you with a dream of writing my assignments about ‘A Grain of Wheat’ as a based Political, historical and space of voice into the novel. Thank you to all for your enthusiasm and help to make this assignment as a reality!

• · Introduction:-

                                                         Ngugi has presented his ideas on various factors like as literature, culture and politics through the novels, essays and lectures which is collaboration in

A) Homecoming (1972),

B) Writers in Politics (1981),

C) Barrel of a Pen (1983),

D) Moving the Centre (1993), and

E) Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams (1998).

                                                   In Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, Ngugi mentioned that African-language literature as the only authentic voice for Africans and stated his own intention of writing into only in Kikuyu or Kiswahili from that point on. Such works earned him a reputation as one of Africa’s most articulate social critics.

                                                   Ngugi’s wrote so many novel, his third novel is ‘ A Grain of Wheat’ which set background at Kenya on the event of Independence deals mainly with the events leading up to Independence. During that time there were the slow awakenings happen about movement and consciousness among the Africans against a background of historical events. That’s culminated in the formation of a party led by Jomo Kenyatta and Harry Thuku in the struggle for freedom.

                                                 However, it was the story of the white men who established their rules and right to suppress the freedom struggle and capture and imprison members of the Mau-Mau. They put them in detention camps where they doing cruelly like physically or mentally tortured for handled to revolt against the colonial government or British government. There were pioneers who dislike the chaos and destruction. They had reasoned nevertheless to see a genuine movement for freedom on the part of the utilized and dispossessed Africans, as subversive and needing repression. As John Thompson, the white administrative secretary writes in his diary:

                                               “No government can tolerate anarchy; no civilization can be built on this violence and savagery. Mau Mau is evil: a movement which if not checked will mean complete destruction of all the values on which our civilization has thriven.”
                                               Let’s discuss about the novel, ‘A Grain of Wheat’ ant try to notice that what extended into the culture of African, experiences and predicament are depicted in it.

• · Social circumstances:-

                                                         Here in the novel Ngugi try to put the social circumstances through his characters of the novel and specially put into the background of a Mau Mau refusal to accept movement against pioneer government which these figures lived their lives. He showed the causes of the refusal to accept and he given very much at pains for example, In the novel one of the character tortured through the speeches and actions who used as the freedom fighter and to make his readers to know the genuineness of the struggle. The background was kept firmly in control. The novelist mainly wants to examine the frailty of human being which was revealed through the states of mind of the characters who the producer of the violence of the independence struggle.

• · Betrayed to the British:-

                                                                   In the novel there were four central characters who are Mugo, Gikonyo, Mumbi, and Karanja. Their dominated by their lives through remembrance of Kihika who was betrayed to the British by one of the villagers and was hanged. His companion in their arms had survived the struggle and come to the village, Thabai for discover the betrayer and to publiccly declare to be wrong him at the Uhuru function.

                                                                  Ngugi has skill of make every moments in to current time and he used flash back technique and the narrative technique, he adopts in conformity with T.S.Eliot Seminal Critical essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. So that he stripped away from the layers of their lives and each character at the end of the novel also stands fully revealed. Out of the recollections of these people we come to know Kihika and understand the motives which made him a forest fighter.

• · Revolution as a betrayed:-

                                                             Uhuru Day celebrted as a solemn day for the people of Thabai in South Africa. A hero’s played role as surveyed and found wanting. Through him the revolution was betrayed. General R. also surveys the causes and achievement of the independence movement. He finds that the revolution has been betrayed: You ask why we fought, why we lived in the forest with wild beasts. You ask why we killed and spilt blood.

                                                             As we know that Human beings sometimes allow themselves to become content with the status quo by going along with what is undemanding or less stressful. That having been said, it is understandable that some individuals would prefer to choose peace rather than violence, especially if it means staying in their comfort zone. This seems to have been the case amongst many of the Kikuyu people during the Mau Mau revolt, as alluded to by Ngugi wa Thiongo in his fictional narrative. In A Grain of Wheat, one of the women (Wumbuka, Kihika’s wife), for instance, tries to talk Kihika out of revolting against the British.

• · Mau Mau Oath and Identity:-

                                                                In the novel’s one of the character Gikonyo’s confession of the Mau Mau Oath is an act of betrayal at the end. He behaved like the other detainees in the prison, he had been demoralized by the cold-blooded murder of Gatu. Betrayal Gikonyo was impact by his desire to join his Mumbi who described as pure, an incorruptible reality in a world of changing shadows. Her purity crashed by him. Gikonyo return home only to be disillusioned. Mumbi became mother of one child by Karanja during his absence. Karanja admited his oath and as a betrayed by his friend’s wife. It is extremely painful to Gikonyo. He says:

                                                           “There is nothing so 132 painful as finding that a friend, or a man you always trusted, has betrayed you.” (122)

                                                            Gikonyo found his identity and fulfillment through his involvement in love with Mumbi. He shifted the identity of ‘purity’ to Mugo, “without realizing that Mugo is not an angel.” According to him,
                                                          “Mugo’s purity, Mumbi’s unfaithfulness, everything had conspired to undermine his manhood.” (123).
                                                           But the fact is that none is pure in the world of adulterated relationships, as delineated in the novel, ‘ A Grain of Wheat’.

• · Mugo as a hero or betrayal?:- 

                                                     

                                                        The novel begins with Uhuru celebration, Here Uhuru means freedom or fight for the independence but in the novel after few days away, Mugo faced with a new challenge: the Party has questioned that he was a hero of the Kenyan struggle who lead to the lJhuru ceremonies in Thabai. He must now came to terms with himself. The only honorable course is to admit to himself his own perfection and frailty and to confess the responsibility for Kihika's death before the village. 

• · Who is real enemies?:-

                                                        The challenges laid before Kihika and Mugo differed in several respects. Kihika's enemy was the British, a plain and external threaded. His strategy was that physical combat in which he risked his life. I contrasted that Mugo's enemy is his own fears and desires, he has an internal, mental struggle in which he may loosed both his life and his fragile honor. Kihika's objective had cleared and straightforward in front of the expulsion of the British but Mugo's had less obvious and he rewarded less certain, for there will be no honor when Mugo true to himself at last, admits his crime.

• · Struggle of Kenya :-

                                                       Kenya was colonized by the British in 1895 and it was not independent until 1963. In the subsequent years of the country struggled to negotiate a post-colonial reality in which the divisions caused by political and economic oppression, the Emergency, violence, racism, exploitation of rivalry and competition amongst Kenyans, and psychological trauma endured and deepened. Even though Ngugi did not take his readers into the days after colonialism, Ngugi hinted at the difficulties the characters will face. Thompson's claimed that Africa will always need Europe may not be true in the sense he wishes it to be, but it was prescient in that Europe's involvement in the region can never fully be erased. Finally, on a more personal level, all of the characters lived or affected by colonialism whether they are in detention camps or the Movement or losing their homes and land or trying to repair their fractured families or dealing with paternalistic colonial administrators. Colonialism is an inescapable reality even after it is ostensibly over.

• · Role of women & Children:-

                                                           Some outsiders probably thought it cruel and barbaric that so many innocent lives were taken during the revolt, especially those of innocent children who had no say or part in the matter. Mowever, thought otherwise and felt that all opposed to the revolt should be put to death. Interestingly, some in the latter group were women who were determined to help in every way they could to end their suffering under British rule.


                                                                  Thus, Ngugi wa Thiong’o insightfully employs fictional characters such as Njeri, Wambuku’s friend, to illustrated that sentiment. Unlike Wambuku who was unwilling to live outside of her comfort zone, Njeri had an entirely different view on the matter. She, though partly out of her love for Kihika, is determined to help Kihika fight against the British in an effort to prevent them from exercising dominance over their land. Even though petite in stature, Njeri was depicted as being robust, detests “women’s weaknesses” and at one stage calls out toward the forest, promising Kihika that she will join him in the fight against the British.
                                                                  Wambui, for example, She was not only a symbolic figure but plays the role of a middle-aged woman who during the revolt, conveys secrets in between the villages and towns to those hiding in the forest. 

• · Conclusion:- 

                                                               At the end inthe conclusion, other hand one can only speculated about what would have happened if the Mau Mau uprising had not taken place. Would Kenya still have been under British rule or would the Kikuyu still have been deprived of their land today? I am of the opinion that Ngugi wa Thiong’o proficiently accomplishes bringing history to life in ‘A Grain of Wheat’. His depiction of the role of women during the Mau Mau emergency was a detailed correspondence of what actually occurred, hence an extremely insightful piece of literature. 

• · Bibliography:-

Dhar, Tej N. " Ngugi’s retrospectiv ospective gaze: The shape of history in" A grain of wheat"." Kunapipi Volume 29.Issue 1 (2007 ): Pages.-1 to 13.

Lotha, Gloria. Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Ed. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14 February 2020. inc. Encyclopædia Britannica. 05 March 2020 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ngugi-wa-Thiongo>.

West-Pavlov, Russell. "“The Politics and Spaces of Voice: Ngũgĩ's A Grain of Wheat and Conrad's Heart of Darkness.”." JSTOR, vol. 44, (2013): pp. 160–175.