Deconstructing Truth as a Symbolic Construct in Mukoma wa Ngugi’s Nairobi Heat

Abstract

As a literary work which builds its plot on the intricacies of crime and murder, Mukoma wa Ngugi's Nairobi Heat has many of its criticisms focused on vices thus giving the text a meaning as expected, of a crime fiction. However, critical discourse has not been focused on deconstructing the symbolic idea of Truth in the text and its relevance in generating new and multiple meanings in the text. Therefore, through a close reading, this research aims to explicate the running idea of truth in the novel as a symbolic construct and traces the chains of multiple meaning it signifies. This is achieved through a focus on Paul Ricoeur's dialectical hermeneutics of faith and suspicion, which seeks to unearth hidden meanings from the primary symbol. To this end, the research focused on three objectives, first, it devotes itself to the identification of truth as a symbolic construct in the text; second, analyses the symbol of truth based on the hermeneutics of faith, which reveals truth to be that centred on the true reasons behind the death of Marcy Jane and other crimes in the text thus making it a quest for justice: while lastly, the symbol of truth is critiqued based on the hermeneutics of suspicion, which demystifies the hidden meaning of truth as truth for self-identification and truth about Africa which also serves as the supreme finding of the research. Keywords: Truth, Symbol, Hermeneutics, Faith, Suspicion, Meaning, Mukoma. DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/95-02 Publication date: January 31 st 2023