Petals Of Blood Research Articles

Intertextual Borrowings in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood

In every writing, literary and non-literary, no text exists as a complete isolate and complete authorial innovation. It manifests and results from multiple borrowings, conscious and otherwise, from other texts. Following Kristeva (1986), Genette (1997) and William (2010), this study analysed Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel, Petals of Blood, to uncover differing extents of textual borrowing in the form of reference, quotation, parody, borrowing, allusion and translation. The study used document review and textual analysis to generate the data that were then subjected to content analysis register occurrences of different forms of intertextuality. Data analysis and interpretation entailed placing these occurrences into themes, establishing frequencies, and computing percentages. The resultant data were summarised and presented in tables and figures, coupled with evidential excerpts gleaned from the text. Borrowing emerged to be the most predominant intertextual element accounting as it does for more than one-third of all intertextualities in Ngugi’s novel. In second came parody and allusion in that order. The other three forms of intertextuality—quotation, reference and translation—are comparably less pronounced in the novel. Conclusively, Ngugi's intertextuality subscribes to the spirit of Africanizing the English as a literary medium in the mould of what terms decolonising the mind of an African writer.

Remembering the Nation

This thesis traces how national allegory is employed, developed, and altered in the early novels of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Primarily guided by Fredric Jameson’s essay on national allegory and his assertion that the category is “profoundly discontinuous, a matter of breaks and heterogeneities, of the multiple polysemia of the dream rather than the homogenous representation of the symbol,” this study explores how A Grain of Wheat (1967) and Petals of Blood (1977) reconstruct the dislocated memory of the individual through the traumatic history of the collective, and how this reconnection of the private and public allows for a new imagining of the postcolonial nation. The ambivalent motif of shared cultural memory and its many figurations throughout these novels are investigated extensively. In A Grain of Wheat, the motif of betrayal, experienced by nearly every character in the novel, signals an ironic, introspective turn on national unity and an examination of the unfulfilled promises of the Mau Mau’s decolonial struggle. Told through the characters’ individual flashbacks to one another, principally through the arch-traitor Mugo, the memory of betrayal is seen as simultaneously the hollowing of social bonds and the basis for collective regeneration, with the survivors of the Emergency recognizing and negotiating the pitfalls of national consciousness while dedicating themselves to redeeming those who sacrificed their lives for it. Benedict Anderson’s essay on memory and forgetting and Frantz Fanon’s critique of the national leader are vital components to this discussion of how the novel employs the motif of betrayal and memory in order to counter the mandate by Jomo Kenyatta to “forgive and forget” the Mau Mau’s struggle against Kenyan loyalists and colonial occupants. Whereas A Grain of Wheat was primarily concerned with the immediate aftermath of independence on the national psyche, Petals of Blood directs our attention to the epic volume of history and the metamorphoses that the nation undergoes in its constant battle against imperialism and its desire for unity. The ambivalent motif of betrayal in A Grain of Wheat is mirrored by the motifs of ceremony, fire, and education in Petals of Blood, which are employed to construct a Janus-faced history of the nation exploited by the neocolonial government for its self-interest, and intervened upon by the workers and peasantry to cultivate a tradition of renewed resistance. Anderson’s essay on Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History is discussed in reference to how the postcolonial nation inherits the state from its predecessor, and Fanon and Ngũgĩ’s essays on national culture are considered for their dialectical frameworks of history and the cultivation of “combat literature.” In both these novels of his early career, Ngũgĩ sought to imagine how the nation could rejuvenate the energy and idealism of the Mau Mau uprising and empower the Kenyan workers and peasantry into a different, more equitable, socialist mode of the nation. To see the complete thesis, please visit https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/fq977w193.

ECOLOGICAL IMPERIALISM IN YVONNE OWUOR DUST NGŨGĨ WA THIONG'O’S PETALS OF BLOOD

Modern African Literature grew out of the need for re-identification and reevaluation of the African cultural heritage. Despite that, colonialism and its legacies continue to have a powerful and lasting impact in Africa. Using two literary texts from East Africa, Kenya, reflecting post-colonial and neo-colonial eras, this study examines the validity of the continuation of Ecological Imperialism in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood (1977) and Owuor Yvonne Adhiambo's Dust (2013). An analytical appraisal of the texts reveals that the post/neocolonial nation-state, far from embodying the new hope of the masses, is a replica of the colonial master's political system negating the history of its people and perpetuating colonial authority and legacies.

Just Add Global

What happens when a field is no longer the site of a shared political mission? This essay considers the simultaneous “global” turns in modernist studies and postcolonial studies, arguing that in each case a field defined by a set of central theoretical commitments and purposes was replaced by an understanding of a field as a hospitable location in which multiple competing projects might coexist. The essay suggests, using a reading of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's Petals of Blood in the context of Russian literature, that our new field formations invite an understanding of solidarity as a fragile, contingent possibility: something that we can't merely detect in the present, but must look for in new and sometimes unforeseen forms.

A New Historicist Study of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Anti-(neo)colonial Novel, Petals of Blood

This study aims at investigating how Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novel, Petals of Blood gives a close analysis of the pre-and-postcolonial history of the colonised through the recurrent use of anecdotes which have been eroded and destroyed during the British colonisation period of African lands, especially Kenya. Using new historicism theory as espoused in Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt’s (2001) Practicing New Historicism, as a theoretical framework, this research will unearth how Ngũgĩ’s anticolonial-postcolonial narrative, Petals of Blood depicts the Kenyan cultural norms and society and the damage caused to them due to colonisation. As New historicism deals with reading a text through its historical context to understand why a particular text has been written and under which circumstances it has been produced, the study has therefore traced new historicist concepts and their strategic employment by Ngugi (1977) in the novel to better explicate and contextualize his narrative, an effective illustration of writing back to the empire.

Post-Independent Kenya in Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood: A Neo-Colonial Study

For most of the colonized nations, the achievement of independence turned an illusion with the perpetuation of disguised imperialism which most of the postcolonial critics have termed as “neocolonialism”. Neocolonialism can be defined as the deliberate and continued survival of the colonial system in independent states by turning them into victims of political, psychological, economic and social domination carried out through subtle means that exclude direct violence. An inspiring advocate for freedom, justice, and human rights for the downtrodden peoples of the world, Kenya’s most celebrated postcolonial writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has depicted neocolonialism in many of his fiction and non-fiction works among which the novels A grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood are most influential. This study aims to show the emergence of local elites in the wake of independence in Kenya where white colonizers are replaced with them in order to initiate a new phase of exploitation. By depicting the major characters and their association with the former colonial forces and delineating various aspects of post-independent Kenya, this study will focus on the existence of neo-colonialism and its fatal impacts on the masses as represented in the respective novels. On the basis of the philosophy of neocolonialism by scholars like Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah and Ngugi himself, this study will also showcase how Ngugi sketches the continuation of classism and the prevalence of bourgeoisies in his novel A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood.

African Women as the Alpha and Omega of Their Own Promotion as Dealt with in Ngugi’s Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross

This paper aims at giving more insights into how African women at large can reverse the traditional trend to be the architects of their own empowerment as dealt with in the selected novels like Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross by the well-known Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o. In these novels, the author raises the thought-provoking issue of the great responsibility befalling African women to achieve their own empowerment today. The results of our findings will lead us to impart to the reader that the responsibility befalling African women to achieve their own empowerment is quite tremendous. With this in view, African women must use the potentials that they are endowed with so as to set the good example to the coming generation. Through the lens of feminism, womanism, and Marxist literary criticism this paper arouses African women’s awareness on the place they must carve out for themselves on the social, political, and even economic arena if they really want to stop paying lip service to gender equality.

Femme Fatale Poetics in Elechi Amadi’s the Concubine and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood

In this article, we focus on unravelling the femme fatale poetics in Elechi Amadi’s and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s, The Concubine and Petals of Blood, respectively. It is premised on the knowledge that the femme fatale is a shifting personage in interpreting feminist politics beyond national borderlines and the social procedures that frame relational contradistinctions of gender and its convergence with sexuality. It is believed that the term femme fatale refers to an archetypal female personality whose wicked features compel her to either unknowingly be destructed or consciously seek retribution. In light of this, Jung additionally submits that a femme fatale is often depicted as a lady who is stunningly gorgeous, has a sexually enchanting voice, is a thought-provoking figure, and has multiple character traits. She is both attractive and intelligent, and she frequently articulates in a soft voice and dresses in unconventional and attractive ways to attract men’s admiration. In line with Jung’s submission, the central concern of this paper is to unravel how the femme fatale has become a source of anxiety in the male domain. This article reveals that the femme fatale quest for individual sexual equality is emphasized as the fundamental source of conflict between patriarchal and feminist conceptions. Therefore, this article concludes that in order to solve the puzzling conundrum paused by the femme fatale, a need for a gender-equal regime should be advocated among all the gender cadres. The principal assertions made in this study serve to highlight an adequate solution to the problem of essentialism by the post-modern and post-feminist view context concerning the modern femme fatale as a threat to male dominance. This work was carried out by the use of close textual analysis to gather sufficient data for the phenomena under investigation and description of the significant claims.

From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and the Third Worlds

By coincidence, it seems, the critical vocabulary and concerns that came to be known as postcolonial theory and methodology rose to be a dominant school of inquiry in the Anglo-American academy in the same years that the Soviet Union collapsed (notwithstanding that key theoretical texts by Frantz Fanon and others predated this moment by decades). Yet, oddly, postcolonialist terms were seldom applied to postsocialist and post-Soviet cases until the 2000s, and they have become more broadly utilized in these territories only in the past decade. Further, it must be admitted that few results of these applications of postcolonial tools to postsocialist cases have made much of a mark among broader circles of postcolonial scholars and thinkers. Djagalov's book may help to correct this situation. Rather than work in the mode of “application”—applying a postcolonial framework to yet one more case—Djagalov reconstructs the history of a century of socialist anti-imperialism, as it was expressed in global cultural institutions and networks, and in so doing discovers the ignored or forgotten genealogy that links contemporary postcolonial thought to writers, activists, and theoreticians of the socialist world.Djagalov's book toggles between, on the one hand, chapters of institutional history that chronicle the global cultural institutions (such as the Afro-Asian Writers Association, the Tashkent Film Festival, and the Lotus Prize) that connected the Soviet Union with decolonizing countries and, on the other hand, chapters of synthetic cultural criticism that articulate typological analyses of common narrative forms that circulated in the fiction and film of the socialist world—recurring varieties of “solidarity narratives,” as Djagalov calls them. His work reveals how central the state-socialist political imaginary was for writers and filmmakers ranging from Nâzım Hikmet to Ngūgī wa Thiong'o, and how prominent their itineraries through Soviet institutions and networks were in their biographies. Ngūgī, for instance, finished his 1977 novel Petals of Blood during a residency in the Soviet Writers House in Yalta.In recovering the lost continent of anti-imperial socialist globality that bridged the “second” and “third worlds,” Djagalov has demonstrated not how postcolonial terms can be applied to postsocialist cases but how postcolonial theory and method are themselves postsocialist phenomena. Djagalov does not attempt to rectify the state-socialist prehistory of postcolonial thought with a critique of Soviet imperial habits or of the postcolonial contexts of contemporary Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. At least, though, the challenges of thinking “postcolonial” and “postsocialist” together have now become clearer. From Internationalism to Postcolonialism leaves us with new research problems: what, for example, does it mean to be a postcolony of an anti-imperial empire?

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS ON REVERSAL OF GENDER ROLES IN A COLONIAL AND A POST COLONIAL AFRICAN NOVEL: A COMPARATIVE STUDY ANGELA KIMARU

This study sought to critically analyze reversal of gender roles in Gods Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane and Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong’o. The study revolved around the following objectives: To examine the roles assigned to women in liberating their men from bondage of colonialism and neocolonialism in the two selected texts, to examine how the authors of the two selected texts embrace African woman’s spirit of welcoming change, to assess the challenges faced by women in liberating their men from the bondage of colonialism and neocolonialism in the two selected texts. The two selected novels portray reversal of gender roles where by the authors strongly believe in women’s natural abilities and qualities, they define roles of female characters in a male dominated society. In the two selected texts, men are exploited by colonial and neocolonial masters hence they are not in a position to fully provide for their families. Women therefore take up the men’s roles in the process they struggle to earn a living and safeguard the interests of their families and in the process they suffer indirect exploitation. This study therefore explored the possibilities of the healing powers of female bonding; it aimed at recommending and educating the society on the need to include women, because the society can develop better if women are given the rightful place in a male dominated society. This study was guided by feminism theory and Marxist feminism. The methodology was anchored by descriptive design. It was conducted using qualitative research approach and content analysis as a method of qualitative analysis that enabled analyse the selected collected data.

Intertextuality in Selected Novels of Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o

Postcolonial African fiction has been successful in resisting colonialism and its dehumanizing ideas, which have caused unfathomable physical pain and psychological crises for Africans. While fighting back against the injustices, African writers played a catalyzing role in dismantling the system by creating intertextual connections with different texts from near and beyond. The main objective of this paper is to determine the use of intertexts in selected novels by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o. The article examines three novels from different periods: <i>Weep Not, Child</i> (1964), <i>Petals of Blood</i> (1977), and <i>Wizard of the Crow</i> (2006). The novels are selected purposively, considering the significant contexts of each of the texts. The contexts include the anti-colonial struggles of the early 1960s, the post-independence disillusionment period, and contemporary neocolonialism. The study relies on the notions of intertextuality propagated by Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva, for these scholars focus on the connection between text and context. After a close reading of the novels, the study identifies intertexts such as quotations, references, citations, and allusions inserted either to reinforce or criticize the meaning under different local and global contexts. Then, through the textual analysis method, the article determines the significant impact of the inserted texts in the novels. Finally, the analysis demonstrates that the intertexts are used aesthetically to criticize monologic narratives, resist post-independence corrupt political systems, and confront the danger of neocolonialism. Furthermore, the article suggests that studies of the intertextuality of novels across periods depict the predicaments of different times and the role of the elites in raising the consciousness of the masses to respond to these predicaments accordingly.

Paradoxes of Prostitution in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood

This paper investigates the contradictions surrounding the prostitute figure in Ngugi’s Petals of Blood (1977). The figure of the prostitute is a striking issue in Ngugi’s oeuvre. As a Marxist advocate, Ngugi writes about post-colonialism, anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism in his essays, novels and plays. Ngugi views romantic love as pure, hence not to be soiled or dirtied by material gains. This paper considers the question of material concerns in the romantic relationship through the way in which the prostitute is figured in Petals of Blood. By applying a qualitative descriptive method, the study will enter into a conversation with other African works, which explore intimate relationships in exchange for material benefits. In these contexts, material concerns do not devalue an idealised love, but are part of the love relationship. However, in Petals of Blood, Ngugi presents “transactional sex” as a means of financial survival among young girls in Kenyan society. In the novel, the woman figure capitalises on her power of sexuality to meliorate herself but ends up enslaved by the male counterpart.

Love and Money: Erotic Materialism In Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Petals Of Blood

This paper offers a reading of Petals of Blood (1977) in which Ngũgĩ exposes the practical, utilitarian side of intimate relationships, revealing ambiguities that complicate the romantic love ideal that is the social embodiment of his utopian political vision. It is clear that the term “materialism” in all its connotations is a central concern in Ngũgĩ’s philosophy. As a Marxist materialist, an ideological paradigm that influences the construction of the novels from his middle career, Ngũgĩ writes novels that repeatedly show how the unjust economic base of Kenyan society, and its unequal relationship with the world economy, is the root cause of many of its social ills. This paper examines materialism in the ambiance of romantic love as well as investigates the intricacies revolving around love and marriage. From the analysis, this study draws conclusion that the implications of materialist love defeat the notion of romantic love which naturally results in marriage.

Marxist Perspectives Reflected in Ngugi wa Thiong'O's Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross

This study aims to analyze the class exploitation and proletariat struggle in Ngugi wa Thiong’O’s Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross. Both novels carry the same issues; they portray African struggle to escape from exploitation of capitalism and neo-colonialism. Thus, the objectives of this study are: 1) analyzing the class exploitations described in Ngugi wa Thiong’O’s Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, 2) analyzing the struggles of proletariat against neo-colonialism and imperialism described in Ngugi wa Thiong’O’s Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, and 3) analyzing the final result of proletariat struggle in both novels based on the concept of Marxism. The theory used in this study was theory of class exploitation and class struggle of Marxism. Hence, the collected data were analyzed qualitatively by focusing on the Marxist perspectives. The findings of this study were elaborated into three points, consisted of class exploitation, proletariat struggle and the final result of proletariat struggle. First, the finding shows that the story depicted in both novels significantly reflects Marxist perspectives about class exploitation. Second, the story depicted in both novels significantly reflects Marxist perspectives about proletariat struggle. Third, the reflection of Marxist visions about proletariats’ accomplishment is presented differently in both novels. In Petals of Blood, the collective struggle of proletariat was ended before they achieved their vision of the proletariat dictatorship, resulted perpetual proletariat dreams to achieve a classless society. Contrary, in Devil on the Cross, the collective struggle of proletariat was ended up with a victory portrayed by the freedom achieved by the proletariat and the death of capitalist leaders. This last finding shows that story depicted in Petals of Blood does not reflects Marxist perspectives especially the idea of the dictatorship of proletariat while the story depicted in Devil on the Cross reflects Marxist perspectives especially the concept of a dictatorship of proletariat as a golden way to manifest classless society. Overall, both novels denote a typical color and character of struggle that inspire people to realize that total liberation is a right of every human being. It is a must to keep a nation for being away from imperialist-neo-colonialism supposed to achieve a real nationalism. There is no more beautiful than a life without “Exploitation de l’ homme par l’ homme and exploitation de nation par nation”.

Development Mania, Land Politics and Conflicts in the Selected Novels of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o

The paper is going to discuss the links between the development mania, land politics and concomitant conflicts through a comparison of colonial and post-colonial periods in light of the two novels Weep Not, Child (1964) and Petals of Blood (1977), both of which are written by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. Thiong’o is a post-colonial writer who showed through his novels that colonialism started from imperialism and through that neocolonialism evolved which is so far the last stage of imperialism where the colonial rule still dominates but keeping the gun on the shoulder of the capitalistic society in countries like Kenya. Both the above mentioned novelswere written in post-colonial period but still the former novel portrays colonial rule in Kenya while the latter features the picture of post-colonial Kenya. Different studies have been conducted analyzing both the colonial and neocolonial periods of these two novels. But there is no concrete paper that points out the evolution of domination from one period to another focusing on the crucial issues of land, development programs and ruler-ruled conflicts. Through qualitative analysis of the two novels under post-colonial criticism, the paper will show the dynamics of development craze, land politics, and persistent conflicts.

Subversion of Hegemonic Gender Perspectives as a Means to Postcolonial Authenticity in Ngugi‟s Petals of Blood and Ogbu‟s The Moon Also Sets

Subversion of Hegemonic Gender Perspectives as a Means to Postcolonial Authenticity in Ngugi‟s Petals of Blood and Ogbu‟s The Moon Also Sets

Internal-Time Consciousness in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Novels

Studies on Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novels, specifically Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, and Wizard of the Crow, have been commonly read as a reflection of Ngugi’s historical and political stances. The assessments of narrative time in these works have commonly been categorised as the different folds of time in the author’s experiences. Some critics also analyse these novels as political weapons used in fighting capitalism. These modes of reading these texts have become stereotyped and generated a blurry distinction between reality and fiction and/or between author and narrator. This study deviates from the previous forms of reading that make reference to the author by proffering a different study of time in fiction. It adopts a new approach to study these texts as self-sufficient literary tools. This is achieved through Currie’s analysis of internal-time consciousness enshrined in poststructuralism. Internal-time consciousness in these novels is established through narrators’ and characters’ consciousness of the beginning and end and their zeal to extend the duration of the present by arresting the moment. The study of internal-time consciousness in these texts further explores their literariness by recognising the interconnectivity between characters, events, and actions.

Reclaiming the Past: Restoration of Personal and Communal History in Petals of Blood

Abstract The implications of the colonialist discourse, which suggested that the colonized is a person “whose historical, physical, and metaphysical geography begins with European memory” (Thiong’o, 2009), urged postcolonial writers to correct these views by addressing the issues from their own perspectives. The themes of history and communal/national past thus play a prominent role in postcolonial literature as they are inevitably interwoven with the concept of communal identity. In Petals of Blood (1977), the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o explores the implications of social change as brought about by the political and economic development during the post-independence period. This paper seeks to examine the crucial relation between personal and communal/national history and relate it to the writer’s views of principal legacies of colonialism. As Thiong’o states: “My interest in the past is because of the present and there is no way to discuss the future or present separate from the past” (Thiong’o, 1975). Clearly, the grasping of the past and one’s identification with it seems fundamental in discussing national development. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s narratives are always situated in the realm of political and historical context, blending fiction with fact, this paper also aims to elaborate on the implications of his vision.

Letting-be: Dwelling, Peace and Violence in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood

It is dwelling that allows mortals to initiate themselves in time and space. As such, dwelling constitutes the event of being. In his essay “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Martin Heidegger stipulates that dwelling can only be achieved through harmonious relations among the constituents, earth, sky, mortals and gods (“divinities”), of the “fourfold.” Heidegger writes, “To preserve the fourfold, to save the earth, to receive the sky, to await the divinities, to initiate mortals – this fourfold preserving is the simple essence of dwelling.” Initiating themselves in time and space is the great difficulty that the residents of Ilmorog, the remote village in postcolonial Kenya in which Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s novel Petals of Blood is set, experience; in Petals of Blood, dwelling is what defines mortals’ being.

The Loss of Hope in Postcolonial Kenya in Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood (1977)

The Loss of Hope in Postcolonial Kenya in Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood (1977)