THE KNACK OF NARRATION: A POST-COLONIAL CRITIQUE IN NGUGI WA THIONG’O’S WEEP NOT, CHILD

Abstract

The downfall of the European colonialism in the African and Asian colonies was not the end of the colonial hegemony, but the beginning of indirect imperial policies. In a unique narrative style, Ngugi has creatively fictionalized his anti-colonial stand through creating characters with Kenyan names to voice his resistance to colonization. The methodology of this study is descriptive analysis. The paper analyzes critically Ngugi’s novel Weep Not, Child and shows how he implemented different narrative techniques (e.g. free indirect narration, freewheeling narrative technique, and author surrogate) to depict the atrocities and aftermath of colonization. It explicates how Ngugi uses narration to liberate gradually the minds of his people and their land from the settlers through the decolonial styles of peaceful struggle and focus on education. Specifically, the paper elaborates how Ngugi, like many other post-colonial writers, resisted and challenged the neo-imperial forms over the previous colonies in the neo-colonial era. Ngugi’s novel sheds light on the impacts of colonialism which affected negatively not only Kenya, but also all the colonized nations.