English, Nationalism & Ngugi Wa Thiong'o Language in A Grain of Wheat

TOPIC: - English, Nationalism & Ngugi Wa Thiong'o Language in

A Grain of Wheat

PAPER 14: - The African Literature

NAME: - Gohil Yashpalsinh Baldevsinh

CLASS: - M.A. SEM-4

ROLL NO.:-15

YEAR: - 2014

Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat is a Kenyan novel written in English, a language traditionally associated with colonialism and oppression in Africa. Despite the fact that the novel is written in English, Ngugi still uses language to speak to the novel’s theme of revolution by incorporating his native Gikuyu in the form of proverbs and folk songs. Additionally, the novel juxtaposes these Gikuyu proverbs with verses and parables from the Christian Bible, a medium through which missionaries spread English early in its history in Kenya. Though Ngugi wrote a Grain of Wheat in English, he manipulates and uses language in order to promote Gikuyu and Kenyan culture and to discredit English as a Kenyan language. In portraying English in a negative light in his novel, Ngugi reveals his opposition to English as a language of African literature and his larger national concerns for Kenya after its colonization and for its new status as an independent nation.

In his essay “The Language of African Literature,” Ngugi expresses the opinion that the English language is unable to relate his African experience. Ngugi claims that every language is “a carrier of culture,” and that if African writers use English in their work they automatically promote European culture over their own (174). John Hawley notes that it is “the ‘linguae francae’ that have helped establish a ‘global village’ [that] have historically implied the subjugation of one community by another” in Africa. Similarly, Ngugi asserts that African writers using English represent “the final triumph of a system of domination [in that] the dominated start singing its virtues”; as a result, his vehement opposition to English takes on a nationalist and revolutionary outlook. For Ngugi, writing in English is a sign of “the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer” and still bears colonial overtones . This negative attitude toward English as a language of African literature, as well as Ngugi’s urges for the promotion of native African language and culture, is certainly evident in A Grain of Wheat.

Despite his vehement opposition to writing in English, however, A Grain of Wheat and many of Ngugi’s early novels were written in English. John McLeod claims that Ngugi’s “use of the English language and the literary form as the means to create a distinctly national representation” is questionable in that it is a language with colonial associations . One way to interpret Ngugi’s choice of language to keep it consistent with his view on English is to note that a Grain of Wheat is a novel about betrayal. Nearly all of the characters embody the theme of betrayal in some fashion, but two characters commit acts of betrayal against the nation. The first of these is Mugo, the main character of the novel. Who informs the colonial authorities as to the whereabouts of Khima, the nationalist hero, so that they could kill him. The second character is Karanja, who “quickly became a trusted servant of the white people at Githima”, thereby betraying his own background and people.

Ngugi writes that there is “a lucrative values of being traitor to one’s immediate community’ through the choice of English over African languages. As a result Ngugi’s decision to write in English and neglect his own  language linguistically represents Mugo’s choice to berry his own heritage and culture. Ngugi’s relation of writing in English to a betrayal of the nation further displays his nationalist opposition to English to a betrayal of the anion further displays his nationalist opposition to English and preference for African language.

If one does not consider Ngugi’s opinions toward English, however, the fact that the novel is writer in English has a different effect. The style in which Ngugi writes A Grain of Wheat, incorporation words and phrases in Gikuyu into the English text, is very representative of most African authors writing in English. McArthur notes that different” kinds of hybridization, with or without glossing” is a common feature in African fiction written in English. By incorporating words from an African language into his English, Ngugi, in the words of Chinua Achebe, may be “fashioning out an English… able to carry his personal experience” as an African. Similarly, Ngugi’s narrative style, which moves backward and forward in time through “flashbacks,” is also characteristic of some African novels; in contrast, the literary genre of the novel itself is, according to McLeod, European (93, 99). When viewed in this light, Ngugi’s choice of narrative structure seems to adapt European literary conventions like language, form, and style to suit his own needs as an African author. According to Ngugi, Africans writing in English fall victim to a kind of “Europeanized writing;” he, however, recognizes’ his own complicity in this scheme Hawley 71).

Many times Karanja had walked towards Thompson determined to ask him a direct question. Cold water lumped in his belly, his heart would thunder violently when he came near the Whiteman. His determination always ended in the same way: he would salute John Thompson and then walk past as if his business lay further ahead. 

This passage details Karanja’s inability to communicate with the Whites. Though he is “determined,” he never succeeds in verbally communicating with Thompson. Ironically, the colonial official Karanja, the character most likely to use English ( a language often viewed in Kenya as “an elitist colonial remnant, a vehicle of Westernization, and a threat to local languages”) is unable to do so. Rather, the only communication that he achieves is nonverbal, and is a sign of derence (his “salute”). Karanja’s deference and subservience directly contrasts Kihika’s “cult of personality” and presence against colonialist oppression (McLeod 96). By stressing the importance of personality (and criticizing Karanja’s lack of presence) in the revolutionary movements, Ngugi seems to be paralleling Kihika with figures like Jomo Kenyatta, who charismatically led resistance movements against the British: “It is less the institution than the person of the president who is able to organize the people” of Kenya (Herve 258). Ngugi seems to criticize Karanja’s reticence and failure to use language at all, never mind in defense of his country, as further evidence of his antinationalist betrayal and negative role in the novel. 

In addition to displaying the rift between Whites and Blacks in Kenya in terms of communication, Ngugi also manipulates the English language to more firmly establish their defenses. In referring to a member of either racial group, characters in the novel employ the terms “Whiteman” and “Blackman”. As these are not accepted words in Standard English, Ngugi uses them as nonce words throughout his novel. In creating separate nouns for black and white man, rather than using two different adjectives to middy the same noun, Ngugi suggests that some kind of fundamental difference exists between the two groups of people. Karajan specifically states that the members of the Kenyan bourgeoisie had become “true Europeans but for the black skin”. On one hand, this difference  may represent the vehement resentment felt by the Kenyan people towards Europeans; on cause for independence in that it supports the notion that the Kenyan “Blackmen.” Who are so different from the European “Whiteman,” ought to have their own, separate, sovereign nation. 

Ngugi also manipulates language in A Grain of wheat though his inclusion of several words in Gikuyu. Though Ngugi could have translated these words, he leaves them in his African language. Two of the Gikuyu words that he frequently employs are “uhuru and “Mau Mau.” “Uhuru” is a word meaning “independence,” and specifically refers to Kenyan independence in 1963 puts the concept of Uhuru at the forefront of its concerns. In choosing to keep “Uhuru” in Gikuru instead of translating it into English, Ngugi suggests that Kenayan independence frees the country from the ties of colonialism. If he had chosen to translate “Uhuru” into independence, Ngugi would have been perpetrating the domination of the mental universe of the colonized embodied in the English language (“Language” 175). At one point in the novel Ngugi also employs Uhuru as a greeting and farewell; the use of the word in this light shows the concept of independence to be a major concern of the characters of the novel, a grain of wheat itself, and the nation of Kenya as a whole. Similarly, the Mau Mau movement is the Gikuyu name for the Kenyan guerrilla resistance movement; in keeping this word in Gikuyu, Ngugi linguistically embodies their resistance the colonizers and to the English language. Ngugi may also have chosen to include these Gikuyu words to elicit an emotional response, as well: in writing in Gikuyu for a potentially African audience, he transforms reading from “a cerebral activity” to an emotionally felt experience”.

In addition to these individual Gikuyu terms, Ngugi incorporates cultural artifacts like songs and proverbs into his English text. One of these is Uhuru bado! Or Let us carve Kenya into small pieces, a revolutionary song of the Movement .The inclusion of this song supports Ngugi’s anti-colonial outlook not only because it is in kikuyu, but also because its message is for tribal pride and independence. Though the dividing up of the n ation may not seem to fit with Ngugi’s snnse of Kenyan nationalism, it makes sense in the context of his larger argument against colonial domination: because the colony of Kenya, made up of seven different ethnic and linguistic groups, was first united by the British colonizers, reveling against that very unity is another way to resist colonialism (McArthur 282).

In addition to this song about independence, Ngugi also incluses a new song in Gikuyu, written by Kihika that also addresses revolutionary concerns:

Gikuyu na mumbi,

Gikuyu na mumbi,

Gikuyu na mumbi,

Nikihui ngwatiro.

While the text of the song is in Gikuyu, the song lyrics reference Gikuyu, the language, itself: the song lyrics also make extensive reference to Mumbi, the female character in the novel symbolically regarded as an allegorical mother figure of the Kenyan nation (McLeod 98). This song then, written b Kihika in Gikuyu and making explicit reference to the language and heritage of Kenya, comes to embody all aspects of the Kenyan nationalist and independence movement. The song also suggests the link between heritage and language, embodied by Ngugi in his essay on language and also by Hawley, when he asserts that the post colonial drive towards identity centers around language”).

The idea that Kihika parallels a Christian maxim with a Swahili one is a motif that recurs throughout the novel. At several points, Kihika uses language from the bible in englsh, but subverts the messages to have revolutionary significance. Ngugi make it clar that the Christian bible was certainly a means to elevate English over African languages and culture, especially in elementary schools:What was the colonial system doing to us Kenyan children? What were the consequences of, on the one hand, this systematic suppression of our languages… and on the other the elevation of English and the literature it carried?

Kihika’s education under the colonial schools exemplifies this de-valuing of African language and culture in favor of Christian religious education, and by extension, education in English culture and language. Carol sic Hermann notes that Ngugi attempted to find a doctrine to replace the Christian imperial model that was inculcated during his years of schooling, and found it in nationalism (13); it is not surprising that Ngugi also discredits Christianity in favor of nationalist views in his fiction, as well. Ngugi recounts Kihika’s resistance to European interpretations of the bible presented to Kenyan children: in response to the statement made by his teacher that the circumcision of women is Kenyan children: in response to the statement made by his teacher that the circumcision of women is a heathen custom and as Christians we are forbidden to carry on such practices, Kihika notes that it is just the white people say so. The bible does not talk about circumcising women” this scene is not only an instance of Kihika resisting the domination of the mental universe of the colonized, but also establishes a motif of biblical re-interpretations that permeate the novel.

Kihika’s knowledge of the bible is used to resist the colonial teaching he is exposed to. The bible was one of the chief resources that Christian missionaries used to condemn indigenous African religious practices. He transforms the tool of the oppressors into the weapon of the oppressed.

Ngugi’s inclusion of numerous biblical passages to promote nationalism is also linguistically significant, in that the bible was a tool used by missionaries not only to gain converts, but also to teach English (and, in many cases, to teach English so that African converts might be able to read the bible). Though the Christian bible, a means of oppression and disenfranchisement for African language and culture, would not seem to support Ngugi’s revolutionary opinions on colonization.

Kihika manipulates and subverts biblical verses, and consequently the colonialist power structure, so that they actually support his cause for Kenyan independence.

Ngugi, through the character Kihika, references specific biblical passages and, altering the context of the passages rather than their language, uses them to inspire the independence movement. Between the larger sections of the novel, Ngugi places biblical verses with a note that they are underlined in red in Kihika’s bible. One of the main biblical stories that Kihika references is the parable from which the book draws its title: that which concerns the corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies, and as a result, it bringeth forth much fruit. Though this story is western in origin, it comes to represent Kihika’s betrayal and death for Uhuru and the sovereignty of the nation. Peter Nazareth takes a Marxist view of this biblical allusion, stating that the book’s title comes from a bible verse further Ngugi’s, as well as Kihika’s, campaigns for nationalism and independence. Ngugi attaches Kenyan revolutionary significance to this bible verse through his novel, just as through his character Kihika.

Kihika uses several verses from exodus in a revolutionary and subversive way, as well. Most notably, he employs passages describing the affliction of people in Egypt and Moses command to pharaoh to “let my people go” in including these passages in a grain of wheat, Ngugi parallels the plight of the colonized people with that of the Israelites in Egypt, again lending a revolutionary interpretation to a traditional tool of colonial oppression. In this way, biblical stores that are uniquely European come to represent Kenyan nationalism and thereby subvert the colonialist worldview of the British, by whom the bible was first brought to Kenya as a tool for oppression.

In this way, in his novel a grain of wheat, Ngugi wa thiongo’s uses both English and African languages to promote the revolutionary movement that fought for independence in Kenya. Thoughj English is language with colonial overtone3s in Africa, Ngugi uses the negativity associated with English to parallel the theme of betrayal that runs through the the novel. In addition to using English, Ngugi also employs African languages, in his native Gikuyu and Swahili, through folk songs and proverbs. By incorporating these traditional aspects of African culture in their original languages, Ngugi reinforces his observation that language is a carrier of culture. By discrediting European language and culture in a grain of wheat, Ngugi promotes the language and culture of the Kenyan people, and as a result furthers Kihika’s cause in the novel for Kenyan sovereignty and independence.

Thank You.