Thursday 4 April 2019

Mahir pari's assignment on grain of wheat

Historical, biographical and Post colonial approach in "A Grain of Wheat" by Ngugi wa Thiongo.

Mahir pari's assignment grain of wheat

Name : Goswami mahir pari c.
Sem : 4
Roll no. : 21
Paper:- African literature
Submitted to : Department of English MKBU
Topic : Historical, biographical and Post colonial approach in "A Grain of Wheat" 
Enrollment no :  20691084201180021
Email Id :goswamimahirpari786@gmail.com


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*Introduction*

One of the most important characteristcs of literature is that it is Imaginative.Although we've to remember that it is not Fanciful ideas away from Reality.It has touch of realism. No writer can write anything unless that experiences is lived by himself, feel by himself.
So, lets discuss that how Ngugi wa Thiongo's personal experiences are poured into A Grain of Wheat. At the same time we will also keep in mind that Ngugi is very important figure in Post colonial world. So, we will also try to evaluate novel from post colonial angle.
 Colonial period was a time of turmoil, supression/repression of colonies. So this was experienced by the writers himself as a child. and when they grew up they have written their experiences of this time.
Lets have a brief look on What is Post colonialism?
Post Colonialism is an approach, a lens to see, understand and subvert notion of Western superiority.
~ It is an approach, in which colony writes back.
~We have to relook, rethink, revisit whatever written or spoken by the white people.
~Europeans have developed pre conceived notion about the East.
~Doubt whatever comes from West, every step taken by them is under doubt& question.
.  Postcolonialism  includes  terms  such  as  “resistance, hybridity, desire, difference”  in  addition  to “the  facts of slavery, migration,and political  independence”
# Hybridity:-
Concept of hybridity is very essential in post colonial era. Writer himself was born in colonial Kenya, given a christian name James and later on he also studied English authors. so the impact of European as well as native values, tradition and culture always remains at clash.
 Ngugi  wa  Thiong’o  is  one  the  most  important  postcolonial  writers  who  shows  his  protest against  the  colonizers  in  his  works.  In  Decolonizing  the  Mind,  he  stresses  how  the colonizers  exploited Africa,  and its people. He  asserts that, In  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  Europe  stole  art  treasures  from  Africa  to decorate  their  houses  and  museums;  in  the  twentieth  century  Europe  is  stealing  the treasures  of  the  mind  to  enrich  their  languages  and  cultures.  Africa  needs  back  its economy,  its  politics,  its  culture,  its  languages  and  all  its  patriotic  writers  (eds. Parker and Starkey, 125).  
Ngugi was born in 1938, and grew up in rural areas of heaviest European occupatipn , where memories of expulsion and displacement were within the life time of the people.
His elder brother joined the Mau Mau, and another brother, who was deaf and dumb, was shot by security forces in exaclt the way Gitogo dies in the opening pages of A Grain of Wheat, unable to hear an order to stop runing.- This point indicates that how biographical elements also shape the literature. He makes a character who stands for his own brother. The kind of description is given about character is very powerful and it touches to heart. we feel sympathy for the character as well as writer. we can imagine the pain that what may happen to him as well as his mother when their family members were killed by White people. After such terrible experiences what can we expect from him?? Definitely, it will be full of angst, anger and hatred.

*Hisgorical approach: 
The novel captures the period of independance of Kenya and Emergency. Mau Mau Emergency in A Grain of Wheat presented for the first time an African perspective on the Kenyan armed revolt against the colonial rule. novel is a reading of  past- present & - future of Nation (Kenya).

novel is  interesting historical document to read the contemporary time. we find many parallel of that time narrated in the novel-Mau Mau rebellion is one of them, so lets discuss about it.

The Mau Mau Uprising , also known as the MauMau Revolt , Mau Mau Rebellion , or Kenya Emergency , was a military conflict that took place in British Kenyabetween 1952 and 1960. The Mau Mau failed to capture widespread public support, partly due to the British policy of divide and rule and the movement remained internally divided, despite attempts to unify its various strands.(Wikipedia)
So, the resistance, the struggle for independence ( Mau Mau revolt) which is the spirit of the time is very much present in the novel. In  A  Grain  of  Wheat,  we  again  see  the  awakening  and  resistance  of  native  people,  who  go to  the  forest  to  fight  against  the  colonizers

The  novel  includes  four  main  characters,  who  are  all  from  the  Gikuyu  village  of Thabai.  These  characters  are  Mugo,  Gikonyo,  Mumbi  and  Karanja.  Mugo  is  a  heroic person,  who  started  hunger  strike  in  detention  camp  and  also  he  resisted  against  a  village guard  to  protect  a  pregnant  woman  from  beating.  Although  he  is  considered  to  be  a  hero throughout  the  whole  novel,  at  the  end  of  the  story  it  is  understood  that  Mugo  is  the  traitor of  Kihika,  who  was  a  freedom  fighter  hanged  after  being  betrayed  by  Mugo.  That  is,  Mugo is  the  symbol  of  betrayal  in  the  novel.  Apart  from  Mugo,  Karanja  is  also  betrayer  who collaborated  with  the  British  and  considered  to  be  the  traitor  of  Kihika.  Karanja  opts  for joining  the  government  guards  instead  of  fighting  for  his  own  people.  He  also  betrays  his close friend, Gikonyo, by sleeping with Gikonyo’s wife, Mumbi. A Grain of Wheat gives voice to this
underlying sense of loss. while also reaffirming the value of Africa’s past (pre-colonization), it offers an intimacy and strong clarity to the painful process of redefining and recreating a broken society.Gikonyo is driven to deny an oath he holds sacred because of a longing to return home where, “He only wanted to see his Mumbi and take up the thread of life where he had left it” (125). On a larger scale, the reality of Gikonyo’s wanting and its outcome illustrates this haunting consequence of colonization. Obviously, there can be no return from colonization; decolonization simply shifts.the forced relationship from exploitation to the painful struggle for independence and liberation.

All  of  the  characters  look  forward  to freedom.  Warui’s  expressions  show  their  love  for  freedom:  “Our  people,  is  there  a  song sweeter  than  that  of  freedom?  Of  a  truth,  we  have  waited  for  it  many  a  sleepless  night. Those  who  have  gone  before  us,  those  of  us  spared  to  see  the  sun  today,  and  even  those  to be  born  tomorrow,  must  join  the  feast”  (Thiong’o,  19).  Gikonyo  also  thinks  that  his country  is  ready  for  freedom.  “For  a  time  Gikonyo  forgot  his  mission  to  the  city  as  his heart  fluttered  with  the  flags.  He  got  out  of  the  bus  and  walked  down  Kenyatta  Avenue feeling  for  the  moments  as  if  the  city  really  belonged  to  him…  to  Gikonyo  Nairobi  seemed ready for Independence” (Thiong’o, 59-60). Ngugi,  by  means  of  Kihika,  expresses  his  thoughts  about  freedom.  In  every  case, Kihika  tries  to  motivate  his  people  for  the  independence.  Kihika  says  “Choose  between freedom  and  slavery  and  it  is  fitting  that  a  man  should  grab  at  freedom  and  die  for  it” (Thiong’o,  186).  Kihika  also  believes  that  black  people  are  the  owners  of  Kenya.  It  does not  belong  to  the  whiteman.  This  soil  belongs  to  Kenyan  people.  Thus,  nobody  has  right  to sell  or  buy  it.  He  sees  Kenya  as  their  mother  and  also  thinks  that  all  her  children  are  equal before  her.  She  is  their  common  inheritance  (Thiong’o,  96).  He  continues  his  speech  by giving  the  example  of  India  and  Gandhi  to  encourage  his  people.  Because,  he  believes  that if  they  never  stop  fighting  against  the  colonizers,  freedom  will  come  so  soon.  With  the story  of  Gandhi, he  also stresses the importance  of  togetherness. It  is  a  question  of  unity,  the  example  of  India  is  there  before  our  noses.  The  British were  there  for  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  years.  They  ate  India’s  wealth.  They  drank India’s  blood.  They  never  listened  to  the  political  talk-talk  of  a  few  men.  What happened?  There  came  this  man  Gandhi…  they  say  with  one  voice:  we  want  back our  freedom.  The  British  laughed,  they  are  good  at  laughing.  But  they  had  to swallow back their  laughter  when things turned out serious (Thiong’o, 86).  
We also  see  why  native  people  went  to  the  forest.  The  only  reason  of  this  is  the  increasing oppression  of  the  colonizers.  They  went  into  the  forest  because  whiteman  never  behaved them  in  a  good  way  as  he  declared.  “He  ruled  with  the  gun,  the  lives  of  the  all  black  people of  Kenya”  (Thiong’o,  95).  General  R.  talks  to  the  public  to  make  them  aware  about  the colonizers and  why  they  chose  to live in the forest: The  whiteman  went  in  cars.  He  lived  in  a  big  house.  His  children  went  to  school. But  who  tilled  the  soil  on  which  grew  coffee,  tea,  pyrethrum,  and  sisal?  Who  dug the  roads  and  paid  the  taxes?  The  whiteman  lived  on  our  land.  He  ate  what  we  grew and  cooked.  And  even  the  crumbs  from  the  table,  he  threw  to  his  dogs.  That  is  why we went into forest.

*POST COLONIAL FEMINISM
Gayatri  Spivak  also  mentions  the  inferior  position  of  third  world  women,  and  she uses  the  term  “subaltern”  to  describe  them.  She  focuses  on  mainly  colonized  females  who are  double-colonized  economy  and  gender.  And,  she  makes  it  clear  that  there  are  not  two basic  categorizations  of  people  and  nations  as  colonizer  and  colonized,  but  there  is  another group  except  for  this,  and  it  is  colonial  women  oppressed  by  both  the  colonizer  and colonized.  In her most famous  work,  Can the Subaltern Speak, she  points out  that: Within  the  effaced  itinerary  of  the  subaltern  subject,  the  track  of  sexual  difference is  doubly  affected.  The  question  is  not  of  female  participation  in  insurgency,  or  the ground  rules  of  the  sexual  division  of  labor,  for  both  of  which  there  is  evidence.  It is,  rather,  that,  both  as  object  of  colonialist  histography  and  as  subject  of insurgency,  the  ideological  construction  of  gender  keeps  the  male  dominant.  If,  in the  context  colonial  production,  the  subaltern  has  no  history  and  cannot  speak,  the subaltern female  is even  more  deeply  in shadow  (Spivak, 28). That  is,  the  oppression  of  colonialism  and  patriarchy  makes  it  unbearable  for  the  females, for  this  reason  non-white  women  were  silenced  and  nobody  can  hear  them. 
Woman  offered  their  naked  bodies  to  him,  even  some  of  the  most  respectable  came to  him  by  night.  But  Mumbi,  his  Mumbi,  would  not  yield,  and  he  could  never  bring himself to force  her (Thiong’o, 205). That  shows  the  bitter  lives  of  colonized  women  in  a  wretched  society.  Even  they  were enjoying  with  themselves,  women  have  the  fear  of  humiliation.  Ngugi  says  in  the  novel “Mothers  warned  their  daughters  to  take  care  not  to  be  raped  in  the  dark”  in  the  festival  of celebration (Thiong’o, 199) 
COLONIALISM- POST COLONIALISM:-

Oxford English Dictionary  defines the term as: A  settlement  in  a  new  country…  a  body  of  people  who  settle  in  a  new  locality, forming  a  community  subject  to  or  connected  with  their  parent  state;  the community  so  formed,  consisting  of  the  original  settlers  and  their  descendants  and successors,  as  long  as  the  connection  with  the  parent  state  is  kept  up. 
This definition of Colonialism is also problematic. Because it says Settlement in new locality..., But what about those people who were  already living there. What did they do with them??? What about the conflict between settlers and Natives?? The definition is silent over this matter. so we can understand that how under a good language even Oxford dictionary has totally changed the meaning of Colonialism. Whenever next generation will read this definition, they will think Colonialism means this only.Meaning is constructed by language.

So, the tale which OXford definition tries to hide, is made public by Ngugi wa Thiongo in the novel. There is always another side of coin, the darker shade which White people's definition was trying to hide is shown to the world- that what colonialism actually was. Supression, torture, slavery, killing of mass, rape were faced by Natives.




In  spite  of  these  deaths,  nobody  stepped  back.  “The  movement  remained  alive  and  grew,  as people  put  it,  on  the  wounds  of  those  Waiyaki  and  Kihika  left  behind”  (Thiong’o,  17). 
 And the  deaths  of  these  people  were  the  grains  of  wheat,  which  led  to  freedom.  Especially, Ngugi  stresses  the  death  of  Waiyaki:  “Then  nobody  noticed  it,  but  looking  back  we  can  see that  Waiyaki’s  blood  contained  within  it  a  seed,  a  grain,  which  gave  birth  to  a  movement whose  main strength thereafter sprang  from a  bond with the  soil”  (Thiong’o, 12). The  colonizers  showed  no  mercy  to  the  native  people  during  the  emergency.  But  in the  beginning,  the  colonizers  were  not  as  hard  as  during  the  emergency.  “…  whiteman came  to  the  country,  clutching  the  book  of  God  in  both  hands,  a  magic  witness  that  the whiteman  was  a  messenger  from  the  lord.  His  tongue  was  coated  with  sugar;  his  humility was  touching”  (Thiong’o,  10).  By  using  the  Bible  and  mild  language,  they  attracted  several people. But their  attitudes changed day  by  day, they  threw  the  Bible  and used sword: 

Kihika  also  deals  with  the  colonizers’  use  of  the  Bible.  He  is  aware  of  the  fact  that  the colonizers  benefited  from  the  Bible  just  to  get  the  lands  of  the  native  people.  He  makes  it clear that: 
We  went  to  their  church.  Mubia,  in  white  robes,  opened  the  Bible.  He  said:  let  us kneel  down  to  pray.  We  knelt  down.  Mubia  said:  let  us  shut  our  eyes.  We  did.  You know, his remained open  so that he could read the  word. When we  opened  our eyes, our land was  gone  and the  sword of flames stood on guard  (Thiong’o, 14)

The  most  grief  oppressions  were  generally  experienced  by  the  women.  They  were  seen  as sex  tools  for  the  colonizers.  Ngugi  mentions  an  event  in  which  Mugo  also  takes  place, “Mugo  had  been  arrested  during  the  Emergency  for  intervening  to  stop  a  policeman  from beating up a woman who, it was said, had refused him sex” (Thiong’o, ix).  Emergency  is  the  other  name  of  Mau-Mau  rebellion,  and  during  this  movement  a lot  of  people  suffered  so  much.  Githua  is  one  of  these  sufferers,  who  lost  one  of  his  hands. He  says  “I  tell  you  before  the  Emergency,  I  was  like  you;  before  the  whiteman  did  this  to me  with  bullets,  I  could  work  with  both  hands,  man”  (Thiong’o,  3).  Kihika,  one  of  the main  characters  of  the  novel  who  died  for  his  own  country,  was  also  excruciated  by  the colonizers.  “Kihika  was  tortured.  Some  say  that  the  neck  of  a  bottle  was  wedged  into  his body  through  the  anus  as  white  people  in  the  Special  Branch  tried  to  wrest  the  secrets  of the  forest  from  him”  (Thiong’o,  17).  His  sufferings  ended  with  death.  He  “was  hanged  in public,  one  Sunday,  at  Rungei  Market,  not  far  from  where  he  had  once  stood  calling  for blood  to  rain  on  and  water  the  tree  of  freedom”  (Thiong’o,  17).  Waiyaki  is  also  one  of  the sufferers, who was killed brutally  by  the  colonizers.  Conclusion:- Thus, we can examine A Grain of Wheat from Historical, biographical and post colonial approach.

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