Historical, biographical and Post colonial approach in "A Grain of Wheat" by Ngugi wa Thiongo.
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
To evaluate my assignment
click here
*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.
