Resurgence of the Native: The Thematic Paradigm in the Short Fiction of Nguri Wa Thiongo

RESURGENCE OF THE NATIVE: THE THEMATIC PARADIGM
IN THE SHORT FICTION OF NGUGI WA THIONGO

Post-Colonial literature in the Commonwealth nations is marked by a nostalgia for the native culture, customs, styles of life, familial and social relations, class hierarchy which have been suppressed under the British Imperialism and the associated unreasonable adulation for the colonial ethos. Most of these Countries shared common sufferings, exploitation by the British Raj, cultural, intellectual and socio-economic suppression but these countries could set free themselves at least politically from the white man’s domination. Ironically, political freedom has not brought total freedom as expected, because the impact of the colonial rule is deep-rooted in these countries as can be witnessed even today in the spheres of education, religion and linguistic predilections.

...the socio-cultural experience portrayed in African literature written in European languages is so much similar to our own socio-cultural world in India.....1
(Narang 1995:xi)

It is in this context that Indians, as co-sufferers, should seek solace or derive moral and spiritual strength from the sister African and Asian Countries. Indian writers like Mulk Raj Anand, R.K Narayan and Raja Rao reacted in their own individual styles to this problem of post ­colonial encounter and voiced the newly emerging Indian resurgence in their works of fiction. Likewise Africa reacted powerfully to curse of the British colonial imperialism. Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya are only the few nations of the vast continent of Africa which recorded their post-­colonial experiences in their literatures. As most of us are familiar, the Nigerian novelists Chinua Achbe’s Things Fall Apart which dramatises the crisis of one important Igbo Nigerian native tribe and the tragic end met with by its strong leader Okonkwo. Other African Countries like Kenya and Ghana are no exception to this tragedy. The travail and trauma as experienced by these countries is therefore best recorded in their literatures, more so in the literatures they produced in English. Among the African writers, who recorded the sufferings of their countries, the most important names are of Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka from Nigeria, James Ngugi from Kenya, Peter Abraham from South Africa, Camara Laye from Guinea, Lenrie Peter from Gambia and Ieayie Kwei Armah from Ghana. For an Indian student of literature, the experience and the output of these great African creative writers is highly relevant.

Against the above drop an attempt is made in this paper to seek a post-colonial experiential paradigm in the short fiction of Ngugi Wa Thiongo, the leading writer of Kenya. For this purpose about ten short stories of Ngugi have been chosen. Most of them were published in various magazines including Pinpoint, Kenya Weekly News, Transition, The New African, Zuka, Ghala, Joe.

A close look at Ngugi’s short fiction reveals a common pattern in all his short stories, the writer or a native attempts to revive a certain traditional practice or custom lost because of the onslaught of Westernization or a native Kenyan with strong local roots is miserably displaced and strives hard or sacrifices his life to revive the lost glory of his native roots. Keeping this thematic paradigm in view the short stories of Ngugi can be divided into different categories. Yet all of them commonly depict a resurrection of an individual against native superstition, western interference in the form of Christianity or socio-political suppression under the white man’s rule. Ngugi himself classified his stories under the following categories.

1. Mother and Children
2. Fighters and Martyrs and
3. Secret Lives

1. Mother and Children: As one educated in the western tradition exposed to liberal and scientific thought and a choice of political ideologies and above all as an enlightened man and a creative writer, Ngugi was greatly pained at the plight of the Kenyan women in his community. An average Kenyan woman was illiterate, suppressed and the most downtrodden as seen in the stories of Mukami, She was a helpless woman neglected, humiliated and persecuted by her husband, her family and her community in ‘Mugumo’, of another childless and quarrelsome woman, Nyokabi in ‘And the Rain Came Down’ who overcomes her petty jealousies and quarrel­someness when she finds and protects the last child in the ridge on the outskirts of the village, to the surprise of her husband, and the mad woman whose madness was due to the ruthless and prolonged drought during which time she lost all her children in ‘Gone with the Drought’ - are all examples of the average illiterate and helpless Kenyan woman, She carried the curse of barrenness, social ostracization, hardwork, loneliness and starvation.

This miserable plight of the Kenyan woman can be compared to that of millions of women suffering in the villages of India.

2. Fighters and Martyrs: The second important strand, in the thematic paradigm of Ngugi’s short fiction is the image of the native African of Kenya who grapples with an adverse situation and comes out successfully through either a fight or self - sacrifice.

The following short stories illustrate this theme. Mr. Joshua in ‘The Village Priest’ embraces Christianity under the influence of Rev. Livingston who is his god father in a way, and attends to his priestly duties in the village very sincerely. The price he pays for his new religious affiliation is a total expulsion by his tribe. When drought seizes the villages, the tribal people perform a traditional sacrifice of a black ram. To Joshua’s consternation and his prayers to disprove the power of the tribal ritual, it rains torrentially. Joshua is puzzled and seeks Rev. Livingston’s shelter. The only answer the latter gives is –“Let’s pray”. Joshua’s case is a clear instance of puzzlement to choose between Christianity, the white man’s religion, and the local tribal religion which he has come to believe as a cul-de-­sac of superstitions.

In the story, ‘The Black Bird’ also the theme of superstition manifesting into reality is repeated. Mangara, a healthy, strong and talented youth suffers periodical obsession and failure because he is haunted by a belief (superstition?) that his family was cursed. His grand father, who had embraced Christianity did not believe in the local or tribal black magic. There was an old wizard and medicine man of the village by name Mundu Mugo whose equipment was destroyed by Mangara’s grand father in a fit of Christian zeal. Mudo Mugo had left the village and after many years came in the form of a Black Bird. Then followed a chain of tragedies. His grandfather died, his grandmother died, other children of the family also died. For fear of life, Mangara’s father fled from the village and settled in another village. In the new place also the Black Bird did not leave them. First his father died and later his mother, both meeting the final end after an encounter with the Black Bird. This became an obsession with Mangara who otherwise was an extraordinarily intelligent and talented boy. He secured admission to a medical course as a result of creditable performance at school but ultimately he failed in the examinations and also in life. Eventually, he met with a miserable death, reported to be the consequence of an encounter with the Black Bird.

Another story, ‘The Return’ depicts the plight of young Kenyans who were detained after the Mau-mau and return after serving imprisonment during the emergency, in the detention camps. A young man Kamau by name returns to his deserted native village after serving the detention period. To his dismay he finds the whole village deserted and his own wife has left the village after marrying another man, his rival. It was believed that his parents and wife received news that he was dead in the detention camp and to avoid starvation and forced prostitution, his own parents were instrumental for this turn of events. He leaves the village, attempts suicide but reconciles himself to reality and proceeds to start a new life.

‘A Meeting in the Dark’ is the story of a young man John who is brought up under the strict tutelage of his Christian father who is also the ideal priest of the village. John falls secretly in love with a beautiful girl, Wamahu but he meekly succumbs to his father’s seemingly noble but dictatorial commands and tries to get rid of the girl who is already pregnant by him. He kills her with good intention.

3. Secret Lives: A related theme is that of ‘Secret Lives’ of individual men and women of Kenya caused by the Mau-mau insurgence and the consequent Emergency.

In the story ‘Minutes of Glory’ Wanjaru, a native African girl, aspires to justify her Christian name, Beatrice. Coming from a poor, rural family, she works as a bar maid in several restaurants and fails to make money. Another African girl, Nyaguthii steals the show. In a desperate attempt to capture glory as a beautiful girl and as a centre of attraction for the neo­rich customers of the Treetop bar, she sleeps with a lorry driver, steals his money and displays herself ostensibly in stolen plumes. She is caught red-handed by the police and ends up behind the bar.

The story, ‘Wedding at the Cross’ shows how Wariuki, a talented, but a poor native young man steals the heart of a native girl, daughter of a devout Christian family elopes with her and marries her. Later he becomes a prosperous timber merchant and ideal Christian in the village to the utmost dismay of his own wife who has been a child of the soil. The more he becomes prosperous and socially important, the more she suffers estrangement from him. As if to avenge his past humiliation, Wariuki makes elaborate arrangements for a respectable Christian marriage with his own wife after begetting two children which his in-laws are too glad to attend. But poetic justice guides the events in such a way that his own wife stoutly refuses to marry him at the eleventh hour when the priest begins to administer the oath of the sacred wedlock.

The two stories illustrate how native African men and women were forced into artificial, unnatural and hypocritical styles of life under the impact of the materialistic civilization of the West and Christianity, the white man’s religion.

Classifying African fiction thematically into five categories, Charles Larson describes the long fiction of Ngugi as “situational novel”.

According to Larson, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Ngugi’s The River Between illustrate the situational novel.

If we extend this definition of the situational novel a little further to encompass the short fiction, we find that it clearly accounts for the thematic possibilities of Ngugi’s short stories as discussed above. Each of the stories portrays one or two characters caught in a particular socio-cultural situation, but the characters or situations are not at all confined to one or two individuals. They are representative of a majority of the community, thereby representing the “collective consciousness” of the community. Therefore one will be justified in describing Ngugi’s short stories also as “situational” fiction, after Larson.

Finally it is very important for us to notice a striking parallelism between the contemporary social life in Kenya and that in India. The two countries which are still struggling to free themselves from the impact of colonial chains, one can come across similar people anywhere in rural India, which still groans under the burden of illiteracy, ignorance, superstition, gender discrimination and hypocritical values imposed by colonial culture and English education.

WORKS CITED

Harish Narang. 1995. Politics as Fiction: The Novels of Ngugi Wa Thiongo. New Delhi: Creative Books.     .
Ngugi Wa Thiongo. 1975. Secret Lives (African Writers Series-150). London, Nairobi: Heinemann.
Larson, R. Charles. 1972. The Emergence of African Fiction. Bloomington-London: Indiana University Press.