Adi Ramesh Babu Research Scholar, English Department, Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andra Pradesh
African literature is politically committed. Some of the African writers have been very much influenced by politics. Most of the African writer’s revolt against colonial rule resentment is at racial discrimination. The colonial rulers and their slave trade inspired African novelists. Colonialism and slavery are the important themes in the novels in these days. Like Chinua Achebe, Ngugi was attracted by it very much. He is the first person who touched colonial subject in Kenya with his first novel.
Weep Not, Child is Ngugi’s semi autobiographical novel and an account of his childhood during the Mau Mau period (1952–57). His attention is shifted more towards the problems of alienation of land and the Mau Mau rebellion which marks the beginning of the freedom movement in East Africa. It has been hailed as the “first East African novel in English, and the first to deal with the Mau Mau guerrilla war of the 1950s from an African point of view” (Harry Blanires, 1983: 198). Ngugi conforms in an interview with Dennis Duerden that the realtionships between people are destroyed by the war. He says, “Actually in the novel I have tried to show the effect of the Mau Mau war on the ordinary man and woman who were left in the villages. I think the terrible thing about the Mau Mau war was the distraction of family life, the distraction of personal relationship” (Dennis Duerden, 1972:121).
Weep Not, Child depicts about the people who were under colonial government during Mau Mau war, when nationalist sentiments have spread to Kenya. Ngugi gives a description of the power of the white rulers, the resentment of the Africans at being enslaved in their own land and their attempt to rise up against the tyranny. The revolutionary acts or colonial attack which has won in the final is the main story in the novel. Since the government is under the control of the white people, they finally won success but indirectly the local black people have won because they started revolution against the colonialism which later took a great shape and sent the foreigners to
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* Research Scholar, English Department, Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andra Pradesh
their country. The events focus on the Mau Mau emergency and also on the lives of the family of Ngotho and the family of Howlands a white settler farmer and Jacobo, a Kenyan landowner. The reality is shown in every event that happened in author’s life.
In the beginning of the novel, Njoroge, a young boy with black skin, is offered to go to school. Indeed it is a real opportunity for him, because he is the first one in his family who is able to go to school. After twelve years, he is denied the education by which he has sought to fulfill himself and enrich the life of his family and his country; he tries to take his life. Ngotho, Njoroge’s father and head of the family, usually tells some inspiring and exciting stories. Ngotho tells a very fascinating story that the land, which is now owned by the landlords, originally belonged to their ancestors. One day a big strike is announced that should bring higher wages for the black workers. Ngotho joins the gathering. Suddenly Jacobo, a black land owner, appears and tries to persuade the blacks to end their strike. Unfortunately Ngotho attacks Jacobo. The result is a big commotion, where two people get killed. However Jacobo survives and swears revenge.
Njoroge is taken to prison and he is released after a few days. He comes to know that his father protects his eldest son Boro, who has committed the murder. Boro’s decision to join Mau Mau is a result of the realization of the importance of black people. Colonial situations are seen in this novel including revolution against the white people. One week later Ngotho dies. Boro, Njoroge’s brother and also leader of the Mau Mau, kills Mr Howlands, who is another important landlord of the village. Therefore he is put into prison and later on he is executed. Another brother of Njoroge called Kamau has also been imprisoned for lifetime. Finally Njoroge stay with his two mothers. He attempts suicide but he is saved by his mother. So he finally wants to leave the town, but his two mothers hold him back. Finally he thinks that he is a coward, because he can not change the social system. Brendon says “The conclusion of the novel is ambivalent” (Brendon Nicholls, 2005: 96). Palmer has mentioned “One can not make great claims for Weep Not, Child. Nevertheless, it is an important work which within narrow limits has been modestly successful” (Eustace Palmer, 1972: 10).
The novel is divided into two parts and eighteen chapters. The first Part “The Waning Light” deals with the education of Njoroge, the central character in the novel. The second part “Darkness Falls” deals with the rising revolution in Kenya. In this novel, the total action is set in Kenya, which is also the home country of Ngugi. The main themes of the book are the importance of education and the rising revolutionary ideas in countries, which are dominated by colonialists. The two parts in the novel “chronicle the destructiveness of colonial penetration in the central Highlands” (Lionel Cliffe, 1977: 22).
II
Ngotho, the head of the family, lives in Mahua village with his two wives, Njeri and Nyokabi and his four sons Boro, Kori, Kamau and Njoroge. His fifth son, Mwangi,
has been killed during the Second World War while fighting in the war. We come to know in the first chapter that Ngotho’s home “was well known for being a place of peace” (11) but now there is a lot of enthusiasm in the family because the youngest son, Njoroge, is about to go to school, the first boy in the family to do so.
Njoroge is most excited when her mother asks him whether he likes to go to school. “O, mother!’ Njoroge gasped. He half feared that the woman might withdraw her words” (3). His mother, Nyokabi, feels very proud of her son because he is the first person from their family who is going to school and she hopes that she gets good enhancement of her status in the society. Her ambition is to say that her son is well educated. Ngotho, his father, also takes pride in the matter of his son who is about to attend school.
Kamau, Njoroge’s half-brother, gets training as a carpenter. He thinks that education is very important thing for future prosperity. Kamau is apprenticed to Nganga, a village carpenter and a rich man. Nganga has land. Njoroge likes stories very much. Ngotho, Njoroge’s father, usually tells stories in his Thingira in the evening. Such story- telling is a part of the traditional Gikuyu way of educating their children. Ngotho tells a story which refers to the coming of the white man to their country and the misappropriation of their land which was originally belonged to the Black people.
Ngotho works under Mr Howlands who is a product of the First World War. Ngotho joins in a strike that should bring higher wages for the black workers. Kiarie speaks in the strike that “All the land belonged to the people-black people. They had been given it by God. For every race had their country. The Indians had India. Europeans had Europe. And Africans had Africa, the land of the black people (57). He reminds the crowd of people of their history under colonialism, of their alienation from the land. He is confident of getting more money for their work. In the meeting, the applause gathers strength, Kiarie’s re-telling of history continues. He tells of the Africans who have been taken to fight Hitler. He tells of a man named Jomo, the Black Moses. He pleads that Africans must rise and shout: “The time has come. Let my People go. Let my People go! We want back our land! Now!” (58). The government declares a state of emergency to force obedience from the people. Ngotho is labelled a Mau Mau leader and his family placed under close observation. Njeri and Kori are arrested in their compound for breaking the curfew law. Njeri is released when the money is paid. Kori is sent instead to a detention camp without trial. Ngotho is arrested confessing to a murder that actually he did not commit. He is tortured. At the same moment, many people are arrested in their homes and accuded as Mau Mau terrorists.
Mr Howlands takes charge as District Officer. He tortures Njoroge to tell where Boro has escaped. Boro becomes the leader in Mau Mau. After a few days Ngotho is released from prison. He is too old and tortured by the police. Actually Ngotho has not killed Jacobo. It is Boro who has killed Jacobo and again he has gone to forest. Ngotho tells Njoroge “Did I kill Jacobo? Did I shoot him? I don’t know. A man doesn’t know when he kills” (123). When Boro returns, Ngotho has already died. Boro kills Mr Howlands. When Mr Howland is going to be killed, he says that the Kenyan land is his
own. Boro, a revolutionary and radical is put in prison and later on he is executed. Another brother of Njoroge called Kamau, a carpenter has also been imprisoned for lifetime. Only Njoroge and his two mothers remain free. The novel ends on a dispodent note.
Besides the revolutionary story in the novel, there is a love story between Njorogo, son of Ngotho and Mwihaki, the younger daughter of Jacobo. In the beginning of the novel, Njorogo studies with Mwihaki. Njorogo and Mwihaki’s homes are near each other. Njoroge likes her very much and thinks that she is a good companion to him in the school. Mwihaki feels more secure with him than she feels with her brothers who don’t care much about her. After the results, Mwihaki joins boarding school for girls. Njoroge is in Siriana Secondary School which is five miles away from home. In the ending of the novel, when he meets Mwahaki and keeps a proposal before her that he loves her. If she agrees it, he wants to marry her and also he does not want to live in the village. She does not accept it. The novel ends on a deeply gloomy note that he is the guilty man who has avoided his responsibility for which he has prepared himself since childhood. He thinks that he is a coward. ‘Yes,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I am a coward’ (136).
III
The novel describes many points like politics, Mau Mau independence war, education, Christianity and cultural themes. Ngugi’s characterization of the people involved is quite interesting. Some characters are connected with the Mau Mau, not because of high-minded ideals but because of personal grievances with others. The white characters are, like Mr Howlands and Jocobo, considered outsiders by the Gikuyu but consider them Africans.
Njoroge is the central character in the novel. Njoroge is an alienated protagonist and he is a passive observer. He is socially isolated from his family and a symbol of victim. Ngugi has identified himself with Njoroge. One can easily draw the conclusion that “Njoroge represents Ngugi himself” (Ime Ikiddeh, 1975: 210). We see Njoroge from childhood to adulthood. Ime Ikiddeh says that “Weep Not, Child lies in a child-hero who is at the same time an innocent” (Ime Ikiddeh 1969: 6). Njoroge’s story is the story of many Kenyan youth during colonial period. He feels that the Western education has made him a coward and an old man at the age of twenty. He always depends on dreams but he does not know how to react when the difficult problems arise. When the teacher is murdered by colonial troops, he gets fear. His fear and his dream also die. His fear has given the way to Howlands for torture him. He is neither a revolutionary nor dare person. In every country and every village, we can see people like Njoroge who will fear of society. He does not understand what to do at the end of the novel.
The other main character is Ngotho, father of Njoroge. Ngotho, ‘a truly tragic figure’ (Eustace Palmer, 1972: 3), is the head of the family and respected by his family members and the villagers. Ngugi has given the significance to this character in chapter three where Ngotho communicates his deep, almost sacred love for the land. Ngotho tells
a story to the children. He is confident that the prophecy of the Gikuyu sage, Mugo wa Kibiro, that the land will be returned to its rightful owners. He confides that his father also believed in the prophecy. When he is asked why he is working for white man, he does not have answer with him. As a victim of colonialism, he is unable to revolt against the white people though he knows the future that the white men would rob the local people. He continues to work in the land for Howlands. Since Ngotho is a coward, he does not attend the revolutionary meetings but finally he attends a meeting which is organized by Boro, Kori and others. Though he has a dare person internally, he is afraid of the white people. Finally Ngotho dies with pains.
The third important character in the novel is Boro. The character of Boro illustrates the stresses of adjusting to life in colonial Kenya and the losses and traumas of being in active service in a major war. He is very calm and silent person with many different and revolutionary ideas. He is the only real revolutionary sprout in the novel. He opposes the white people domination in their country. Boro goes to Second World War to fight for the white people. He can not forget the death of his step brother Mwangi. Boro can’t understand for what and for who Mwangi has died. When war comes to end, he returns to village but there he finds that their land has been occupied by the white people. He expresses his anger on his father because he does not like his father to work as a labourer in their own land. Boro can’t understand why the white man is allowed to take over the land without meeting any resistance. He knows well that the real reason for his journey to the forest is need to fight for freedom. But he kept it aside. His mission becomes a mission of revenge. If he kills a single white man, he will exact a vengeance for brother killed. By Boro’s character, Ngugi pointed if people have revenged the white people in the beginning, they might have got the real independence. Finally Boro joins the Mau Mau freedom fighters. Boro “bruised in mind,” (C.R. Visweswara Rao, 1993:
91) anatomizes the harvest dimensions of the Mau Mau struggle. Boro kills Jacobo and he says that “He betrayed black people. Together, you killed many sons of the land. You raped our women. And finally you killed my father” (128).
Jacobo is the fourth representative figure in the novel. He is a wicked person and he is a terror in the land and he is a loyalist collaborator. Jacobo is a “lackey of his white settlers” (David Cook, 1983: 57). He represents the small number of Africans who are allowed to own and farm land, who are thus able to accumulate wealth. The white people show their kindness on them and Jacobo is made like that and he becomes their flatterer. Such people become agents of division within the African community.
Mr Howlands, who represents the white settlers for whom the land has been misappropriated, is tall, heavily built, and with an oval shaped face that ends in a double chin and a big stomach. “He is a typical Kenyan settler” (30). His wife, Suzannah, is a good lady but she feels very bored in Africa and she knows that Africa means hardship and complete break with Europe which is her mother country. Like Ngotho, Howlands has also lost his elder son, Peter in the war. He has another son Stephen, who meets Njoroge in Siriana. Mr Howlands has come to Kenya after the First World War. “After years of security at home, he had been suddenly called to arms and he had gone to the war with the fire of youth that imagines war a glory. But after four years of blood and
terrible destruction, like many other young men he was utterly disillusioned by the “peace” (30).
Mwihaki is the most ambivalent of the female figures in the novel. We see her from childhood to adolescence. Ngugi has kept the scope limited and her characterization is not fully developed. Her father is a member of the landed class that is complicit with colonial capitalist domination. At a Christmas meal at her house, she admonishes Njoroge for laughing during grace, saying that she has raised her children “to value ustaarabu” unlike children from “primitive homes” (18-19). She loves Njoroge but Ngugi does not focus on their love too much. Njoroge wishes Mwihaki were his sister and he comes to view their relation as a filial one.
Besides Mwihaki, the other female characters in the novel are Nyokabi and Njeri, the wives of Ngotho, like each other and they are not controversial characters. Nyokabi is Njoroji’s mother and Njeri is his step mother. Nyokabi and Njeri mean “the devoted” (Herta Meyer, 1991: 30). In Jennifer Evans’ view about them is “Njoroge’s two mothers (and Ngugi’s female characters more generally) are all in their own ways ‘resistance heroines’ and the strongest symbols of cultural identity, community and continuity that these novels have to offer” (Jennifer Evans, 1987: 131). So we can say that most of the characters are suppressed and protest against the white men actions indirectly, except Boro but finally they could not get success with their illiteracy and also literacy.
IV
Weep Not, Child deals with the political theme of Kenyan national movement. Ngugi locates his novels at a very crucial phase in the history of colonial Kenya. Most of the Gikuyu population and local people are forced to leave their land by the white colonialists. Ngugi has used the historical event Mau Mau in his other novels also. He says in an interview “Mau Mau is the most important event in Kenyan history, even in African history. Mau Mau war, which started in 1952, was the first armed struggle in the colony of Britain. Remember that, unlike other liberation wars that happened afterwards, the Mau Mau didn’t have any basis outside Kenya because all they got, they made themselves. In terms of sheer impact on British colonialism, it was immense. That is why it’s so prominent in my works” (Henry Akuburio, 2006). Mau Mau is seen as an important subject in this novel. Ngugi in another interview says “The Mau Mau war in Kenya is a very important factor in the creation of the present individuals in Kenya. It was a very formative factor in nation building” (Dennis Duerden, 1972: 124).
Political conflict is the most important thing in this novel. It can be seen that this novel is set at the colonial times; this is when the British are ruling over Africa. Ngotho and his father have participated in World War for the white people. But when they return from there, their land has been occupied by the white people. “My father and many others had been moved from our ancestral lands. He died lonely, a poor man waiting for the white man to go” (25). African people do not like the British ruling there, and taking over their lands. Many black people have lost their loved ones in the war that they have fought for the British; this was one of the main reasons as to why Africans are so upset. The
blacks think that white people have land in their own country and they have left their country to come and rob the black people country. The black people want their land back. The blacks develop hatred towards the whites, and this is one of the most intense events of the novel. In middle of the novel, we come to know that there is a strike that is going to be conducted by the blacks. The power is under controlled by the whites in black people country. This incident is the turning point of the story because the political conflicts get stronger. With the political power, the whites have tortured the blacks immensely; this is seen through the family of Njoroge. Hence it is seen that political conflicts make up the basis of the plot.
In African culture the land is the most important thing to them, it is also revealed that God has given the land to them, and they must retrieve it from the Whites, who have forcefully occupied their land. Ngotho says “It is the best land in the country” (32). Both Mr Howlands and Ngotho tell that they give more importance to the land. In many novels, Ngugi has pointed that land provides food for the Gikuyu people and that is why everybody in the country likes land. The land will connect the people. Ngotho and Mr Howlands are suffered a deprivation caused by war. The land brings them together. Ime Ikiddeh agree with Ngugi and points that “Historically, land is the source of man’s life, the basis of any social community and the foundation of all human culture, remained the sensitive factor in connection between Africans and Europeans in Kenya” (Ime Ikiddeh, 1975: 210).
Boro, the angry man, brings the revolution against the colonilism. His resentment and antipathy leads him to join the Mau Mau freedom fighters. They begin as the political resistance to fight the terror of government which is viciousness against them. The protest comes from Boro but not from the Njoroge or other characters. The fight is for their land and rights but Boro including some other revolutionaries unnecessarily arrested and tourtured by the colonial phantoms. Revolutionary sprout will always win in the end. Though Njoroge does not participate in war or fight against, finally he understands that something would surely change in the future. Mwihaki says that they have to do some work in the village that is revolutionary acts against the Britishers who tourtured them.Ngugi indirectly says that the local people must oppose the white people in their country.
Notes:
Brendon Nicholls, “The Topography of “Women” in Ngugi’s Weep Not, Child,” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 40:3 (2005): 81-101.
- Visweswara Rao, “Ngugi and New Historiography,” Indian Response to African Writing ed. Ramakrishna Rao and Visweswara Rao (New Delhi: Prestige, 1993): 153-161.
David Cook and Michael Okenimkpe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o: An Exploration of His Writings (London: Heinemann, 1983).
Dennis Duerden, “Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o,” African Writers Talking
(London: Heinemann, 1972) 121-131.
Eustace Palmer, An Introduction to the African Novel (London: Heinemann, 1972).
Harry Blanires, ed., A Guide to Twentieth Century Literature in English
(London: Methuen, 1983).
Henry Akuburio: “How Chinua Achebe Inspired Me” http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages//features/literari/2006/jun/04/literari-04-06- 2006-001-htm, 2006.
Herta Meyer, Justice for the Oppressed: The Political Dimension in the Language-use of Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1991).
Ime Ikiddeh, “James Ngugi as Novelist,” African Literature Today 2 (1969): 3- 10.
. “Ngugi wa Thiong’o: The Novelist as Historian.” A Celebration of Black and African Writing ed. King and Ogungbesan (Ibandan: Oxford UP, 1975) 204-16.
Jennifer Evans, “Women and Resistance in Ngugi’s Devil on the Cross (Women in)”
African Literature Today 15 (1987) 131.
Lionel Cliffe, “Penetration and Rural Development in the East African Context.” Government and Rural Development in East Africa: Essays on Political Penetration ed. Lionel Cliffe, J.S.Coleman, and M.R. Doornbos (The Hague: Martnus Nijhoff, 1977) 19-50.