A. K. Armah’s Exploration of the Pervasive Disillusionment

Abstract

The struggle for national independence and the search for an authentic cultural identity often coincide. In the case of Africa, where an entire continent has been subjected to unprecedented levels of exploitation as a result of Western imperialism, cultural assertion and the revival of indigenous social traditions have gone hand and hand with the political struggle for freedom from foreign domination. The work of the Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah continues this tradition. Like the generation of writers who wrote during the period immediately preceding and following independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Armah was inspired by the anti-colonial struggle and shared the hopes and aspirations of the broad masses. Like these writers, he exposes in his work the destructive nature of imperialism, documents the mental anguish that results from colonial racial policies and sets out to rehabilitate Africa’s history by evoking the sense of continuity that has existed throughout the continent’s long struggle to survive the onslaught of European domination. What distinguishes Armah’s novels from the literature that was produced on the eve of independence is their exposure of the betrayal of African independence and their condemnation of Africa’s new ruling elites. The purpose of this paper is to trace the intellectual and artistic progression in Armah’s work and in doing so to demonstrate that the strength and limitation of the author’s vision is his radical nationalism.