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other words, the contemporary African writer does not seem able to
the Africa of his generation, even when he has not personally been
involved in politics.1
colonial encounter, the African novelist begins with the portrait of the
Child is very common. The novelist’s tireless fight for the rights of the
landless and the exploited has contributed much to his fame. The novel
portrays the landless native’s struggle against the white settlers in pre
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achievement in the novel is in illustrating how individual families came
loyalties and rejected older ones within the traditional power structure.
The novel deals with the adolescence of a young boy Njoroge at the
supremacy, and power. Deprived of their land the natives are reduced to
the status of landless labourers. Land is thus the biggest issue leading to
the crisis in the novel. Ngotho, the poor labourer, bemoans his
religious saint. But his sons do not accept the dispossession of their
regain their land and the reasons as well as the circumstances that
Njoroge, the protagonist, and Kamaua, his eldest brother, think that
white people “left their country to come and rob us acres of what we
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have.”3 Boro, the Mau-Mau activist, questions his father thus: “How can
you continue working for a man who has taken your land? How can you
has to come to terms with two conflicting visions. He has his emotional
the first half of the novel, Weep Not, Child - based upon dozens of short
the Mau-Mau revolt. The novel belongs to the period shortly after the
close of the Second World War. The events and sentiments which
and Jacobo, a Kenyan land owner. The events that the novel depicts are
seen mainly from the point of view of Njoroge, the youngest son of
Ngotho, from the time he steps into the school. The first chapter focuses
on his (Njoroge) story, and the two dominant motifs of this novel -
The educational theme is introduced first and will later be linked with
the land motif. Here the colonial, formal education is contrasted with the
The main character, Njoroge, who is being formally educated and is not
aware of anything around him, is contrasted with his brothers who are
waking up to the situation around them and beginning to fight and resist
the colonial evil. In the contrast between these two attitudes to life,
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opening scene continues, we are thrust immediately into Njoroge’s
on Njoroge and his changing attitudes toward the situation around him.
understand the other ethnic groups: “You did not know what to call the
The novel tells us how all the members of Ngotho’s family - his
sons Boro, Kori and Kamau by his wife Njeri and Njoroge by Nyokabi
become involved in the crisis and suffer the violence that it provokes.
Kenyatta, the political leader is arrested and tried, found guilty and
British forces are poised against them, joined by white farmers who are
soldiers seek to drive Europeans from the land from which they have
rightfully their land. In fact, the land was given to the Gikuyu people at
the time of the creation of the earth, and Gikuyu and Mumbi the
The novelist conveys two fundamental things in this passage. The land
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Jotno Kenyatta describes the Gikuyu belief thus:
the British dating from 1902: “a culture has no meaning apart from the
these terms:
forebears, now owned by Howlands, and he lives on land, once his but
the Gikuyu sage, Mugo wa Kibiro, that the land will be returned to it’s
experience of dealings he has had with whites and the example is his
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Boro and Kori have been to war on behalf of the British. They
cause on alien soil. But, they draw different conclusions from their
their own, and have learned of such movements in other parts of the
conquest. Boro and Kamau stand for that generation of Kenyans who
were moved to fight for the land when all other forms of appeal were
will not win them back the land. Ngugi presents this situation in plain
terms:
The anger Boro expresses for his father for the first time explodes
his frustration about the inactiveness of the ancestors like his father who
allowed the whites to occupy their land without any protest and
set up where youth like Boro had to suffer with the problem of
families’ was attributed to Ngotho, the centre of the home. The break up
of the home, which the novel dramatizes from this point onwards, and
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the break up of the homes of Howlands and Jacobo becomes a metaphor
for the break up of Kenyan society, paving the way for it to be replaced
by new order i.e., a process not completed by the end of the novel.
his family is about the same size as Ngotho’s, we learn little of them
except that his wife, after an initial romantic response to Africa, comes
to find life almost intolerable and spends her time hiring and firing
aware, she has a daughter from overseas, and she, like Ngotho, has lost a
son in the alien soil on alien cause. She has another son, Stephen, about
understanding. Howlands has come to Kenya after the First World War.
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Here was a big trace of wild country to
conquer, (p.33)
killed in the Second World War, his reaction is to turn wholly to the
land. In this backdrop Ngugi reveals most clearly the irony arising out of
would have no idea of the force of the idea which binds Ngotho to the
by Boro, Kori and others, to organize a strike. Kiarie reminds the crowd
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Pharaoh: ‘Let my people go,’ noting the analogy between Moses and
Jomo, the Black Moses, sent by God to liberate the Kenyan people.
gets the blacks to fight each other so that the white man will be safe. At
own and farm land, and thus accumulate wealth. But their position
depended on the good will of the whites and thus people like Jacobo,
and his colleagues fall in line about the reasons for reclaiming the land
but they lack consensus over how to do this. Jacobo and his accomplices
alienates him from Boro who holds his father responsible for the failure.
Thus, it marks the beginning of the decline of Ngotho and his family.
brings about to retrieve the land for the peasantry has the effect of
symbolized by Ngotho, from the land. The latter’s nadir occurs after the
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ill-fated strike which fails because Ngotho, on impulse attacks Jacobo
compassionate farmer.
grows from boyhood to adolescence. When the novel opens his mother
t
asks him ‘would you like to go to school?’ and he becomes breathless
with the fear that she may go back on her words. But she does not go
back and we see how Njoroge’s school career progresses and how he
country.
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village. He saw himself destined for something
big, and this made his heart glow, (p.44)
teaching, exploiting the analogy between the two religious forces that he
is exposed to:
37
And Jesus answered and said unto them: Take
heed that no man deceive you.
For many shall come in My name, saying, I
am Christ; and shall deceive many.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of
wars: See that ye be not troubled: for all these
things must come to pass, but the end is not
yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be
famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in
diverse places.
All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Then they shall deliver you up to be afflicted,
and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all
nations for My name’s sake.
And then shall many be offended, and shall
betray one another, and shall hate one another.
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall
deceive many.
And because iniquity shall bound, the love of
many shall wax cold.
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same
shall be saved....
He read on. But when he came to verse 33, he
stopped and stared at all the people in the
church. Then he raised his voice and went on:
Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not
pass till all these things be fulfilled.....
38
It was as if darkness too had fallen into the
building and there was no one to light the way.
(p. 102)
the revivalist, Isaka, who professes his Christian faith. He is beaten and
shot, almost before the eyes of his young Catechists, but the dream does
despair as the horror of the emergency spreads over the land. When he
makes clear his ‘vision’ to her she angrily reacts, and out of fear says
thus:
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Njoroge’s faith is in his belief that:
his duty to prepare himself for his role after the troubles have been
On the other hand, the speech offers an ironic force indicating Njoroge’s
death blow. Police officers come to take Njoroge away to his village
from his school. Jacobo has been murdered, Ngotho has confessed the
crime and Njoroge has been denounced as an oath taker. Ngotho has
Howlands, now a maniacal District Officer, turns the full fury of his
40
hatred against Ngotho for whom he once held a special affection. In his
Ngugi brings the novel swiftly to a close. Boro comes out of the
forest to kill Howlands but not before he and his father, in one of the
4 S.K.U.L I B R A R Y
Acc. No..!.?.P9M......
Call.No,.............. ...... .
What? Njoroge look ... look - to - your -
moth -
His eyes were still aglow as he sank back into
the bed. For a moment there was silence in the
hut. Then Boro stood up and whispered, I
should have come earlier ....
introspective farmer who takes more consolation from his work on the
land than his family, into a brutal killer who only half understands the
forces which sweep around him and who, in the midst of his brutal
behaviour, finds repugnant the system which has cast on him on the role
as mentioned below:
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farm he had created, the land he had tamed.
And who were these Mau Mau who were now
claiming that land, his god? Ha, ha! He could
have laughed at the whole ludicrous idea, but
for the fact that they had forced him into the
other life, the life he had tried to avoid. He had
been called upon to take up a temporary
appointment as a District Officer. He had
agreed. But only because this meant defending
his god. If Mau Mau claimed the only thing he
believed in, they would see! (p.87)
When Boro confronts him with the reasons for fighting the war,
Howlands reveals that he does not comprehend that Africans have any
I killed Jocobo.
I know.
He betrayed black people. Together, you killed
many sons of the land. You raped our women.
And finally you killed my father. Have you
anything to say in your defence?
Boro’s voice was flat. No colour of hatred,
anger or triumph. No sympathy.
Nothing.
Nothing. Now you say nothing. But when you
took our ancestral lands -
This is my land. Mr Howlands said this as a
man would say, this is my woman.
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Your land! Then, you white dog, you’ll die on
your land.
Mr.Howlands thought him mad. Fear
overwhelmed him and he tried to cling to life
with all his might. But before he could reach
Boro, the gun went off. Boro had learnt to be a
good marksman during the Second World
War. The Whiteman’s trunk stood defiant for a
few seconds. Then it fell down, (p.145)
the job with slackness and is removed from it. At his last encounter with
Mwihaki he asks her to escape from Kenya with him to Uganda - just as
she had sought him to do in the past. This time it is she who refuses, and
himself but is saved from doing so by his mother. The novel ends on a
gloomy note:
wrote this novel. For example, he says, that he saw Jomo Kenyatta as a
kind of saviour or Black Messiah. But he admits that they are not such
role for himself, seeing the similarity between Jomo and Moses and his
the double murder of Howlands, the white settler and Jacobo, the rich
black settler. Ngugi skillfully exposes the world of conflict between the
white settlers and the black people, but at a deeper level, the battle is
represent Njoroge, the image of all which has robbed him of the victory
case of Ngotho. After his torture at the hands of the white men, on
Just as he is about to put his head into the noose to hang himself,
however, he hears the voice of his mother and feels a strange relief. As
man who had avoided his responsibility for which he had prepared
place as a man in the world, and accepts responsibility for his actions.
Implicit in this attitude is the message that the waking up to reality and
the call of responsibility are the only true education that man can have.
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The final ironic twist to the situation, however is that while Njoroge
his very rejection of death and his apparent cowardice, that he displays
his strength and courage. The rise of the individual in society, and his
the realism of the content. In the novel, Weep Not, Child, the creation of
the character and by implication in his creator also. Throughout the book
very often the novelist retreats into vague phrases, a measure of his
inability to control, at the age he is, something like his destiny. Often
which he had to face. The novelist gives Njoroge to do more than what
youth of his age can do and more to understand than a youth with his
limited intellect.
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If the point of view of the novel is incomplete to a full
examination of the theme, then it can be seen how much more will be
gained if we see the events of the novel through Boro’s eyes. This
pity when the boy’s dream melts. We share his fear in the forest when
the teacher is murdered by colonial troops and sense how the horror and
the pain of this affliction maddened Howlands to threaten him. But this
is not an idyll, not a tale for children. So, these are the events taking
be able to feel the same as the Howlands’ woman or Juliana, the wife of
Jacobo:
is the land that is everything and education is useful only if it can serve
Njoroge’s education but say little about why they do so. It is simply
The question of the value and the kind of education which is best
clearly focused than here. In this novel, we find the beginning of the
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of other principal characters. Ngotho gives his life in order to save his
son’s. Ngotho’s reversing the attitude makes him bluntly reject the oath
tradition and custom which he followed religiously through out his life.
In Ngotho’s mind, Boro had ‘no right to reverse the custom, tradition for
land. His obsession with the land is so great that the violence he gives
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been shot. The notebook had Boro’s name. At
first Mr.Howiands had been unable to
understand. But gradually he realized that
Ngotho had been telling a lie, in order to
shield Boro. But Boro was in the forest.
Slowly he arrived at the truth. Ngotho too had
thought that it was Kamau who had done the
murder. He had taken on the guilt to save a
son. At this Mr.Howiands’ hatred of Ngotho
had been so great that he had trembled the
whole night, (p. 144)
writers seeks to discover not what has happened but ways in which
things are felt to happen in history. The intermixing of history with myth
and his father on the death-bed. Ngotho’s parting words have a historic
and mythic undertone. “All right, Fight well. Turn your eyes to
father and derive the moral strength to wage war in future from
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Ngugi’s novel depicts the hopes and aspirations of the landless
imperialist power posed the main threat to the native in the pre-colonial
exploited. The novelist emphasizes the need to make the readers to look
commitment. Ngugi adroitly uses history and myth for this purpose. The
real fight is certainly not against an outsider but against the enemy from
dispassionate. The whiteman loves the land as his own and the thought
put the African case against the white settlers. The author’s balanced
view point takes into account the weaknesses of the Africans themselves
associations. Ngotho’s inspired story about the origin of the land makes
biblical Adam and Eve. The land which was given to them by God is
seen as part of a covenant between God and his people who are brought
together to rule and till the land. With the result people observe the
alienation of the land, and its annexation by an alien people, not only as
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God’s punishment for their sins, but as an alienation from their God and
awe with which Ngotho treats it. To him, land is something more than a
commercial asset. It is the link with his God and his ancestors. He
cultivates this land to bear fruit more than anyone else can do it.
land with that of Howlands. The latter loves the land in his own way,
respect and regard for the land as a sacred one to which he attributed
recover the land, but they are without a ‘modus-operandi’. The members
of the past generations are aware of the prophecy that a leader will one
day emerge to lead the people to freedom. They are perfectly prepared
to wait for its fulfilment. But the younger people who are much more
the course of events. He is uprooted from his home and his traditions
54
and his attention is drawn to the western world for participation in the
Second World War. His experiences are traumatic because he lost his
favourite brother, Mwangi. Thus his eyes are opened to the sordidness
returned home to find that the ‘inferior’ people have become his
absurd.
their problem is made all the more intractable because of their lack of
agreement about the best possible means for achieving the desired ends.
The novelist skillfully analyses the causes of the travails of the people
and locates them not merely in the acts of intimidation committed by the
a place of peace, and his son Njoroge admires him for providing security
man of action but a traditionalist who would rather wait for the
fulfilment of the prophecy than take up arms against his arrogant rulers.
Thus, he is contrasted with his son, Boro, who is openly scornful of the
weakness, is revealed. The scene in which he and his wife discuss brings
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Ngotho could bear it no longer. She was
driving him mad. He slapped her on the face
and raised his hand again, (p.60)
Ngotho’s doubts.
number of humiliations. He loses his job and his house, and has to face
father’s irrational action for the failure of the strike and its
Boro attempts to force him to take the Mau Mau oath. Ngotho is further
humiliated by the arrest of his wife Njeri and his son Kori when he fails
himself in the reader’s eyes before his death. Thinking that Kamau was
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the murderer of the arch-traitor Jacobo, Ngotho confesses to the murder
in order to save his son. It is a great act of sacrifice. In that way, the old
man rises once more in our estimation. On his death bed, he rises to his
former stature, and even the contemptuous Boro returns to his father’s
bed side and acknowledges his worth, and, in tears, he asks for his
forgiveness.
However, Ngotho is not the hero of the novel, but his son Njoroge
becomes the hero. It is through his eyes and especially from his point of
view that we see the details of the story. Truly for the most part the story
seems to emerge from the consciousness of the hero, which accounts for
the novel’s apparent simplicity. Ngugi attempts to keep the reader close
and dramatizes the enthusiasm with which the boy responds to the
did not lie in education. It merely gives people an excuse to shrug the
very sensitive and very much tied to his mother’s attitude. He is also
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country’s ills. He sees himself as destined to play a very important role
59
... And help me God so that Mwihaki may not
beat me in class; and God ....
He fell asleep and dreamed of education in
England, (pp.49-50)
and singles out Old Testament characters. For example, Moses for his
completing his education. He is confident that one day he would use all
his learning and equip himself to fight the white man, and he would
violence. But unfortunately, neither his religious faith nor his knowledge
are effective protectors against the menace of the times. Teacher Isaka
and other Christians are destined to die even when they carry their
Bibles, and Njoroge himself is brutally tom in school and tortured. His
had also placed implicit faith in the Bible, and had believed with an
optimism that the world is governed by equity and justice. But later in
he had imagined. His ideals are shattered, his illusions exposed, and his
mutual passion like the Romeo and Juliet love affair, she had suggested
Njoroge had an objection, not because he was more mature and more
disturbed his visionary plans. After several years, Njoroge revives the
same proposal to Mwihaki, who has become his last anchor in a rapidly
disintegrating world. But the girl demonstrates how much she has
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No! no! she cried, in an agony of despair,
interrupting him. You must save me, please
Njoroge. I Love you.
She covered her face with both hands and
wept freely, her breast heaving.
Njoroge felt sweet pleasure and excitedly
smoothed her dark hair.
Yes, we go to Uganda and live -
No, no. She struggled again.
But why? He asked, not understanding what
she meant.
Don’t you see that what you suggest is too
easy a way out? We are no longer children,
she said between her sobs.
That’s why we must go away. Kenya is no
place for us. Is it not childish to remain in a
hole when you can take yourself out?
But we can’t. We can’t! She cried hopelessly.
Again he was puzzled. As a child Mwihaki
had seemed to be the more daring. She saw the
hesitancy in him. She pressed harder.
We better wait. You told me that the sun will
rise tomorrow.
I think you were right.
He looked at her tears and wanted to wipe
them. She sat there, a lone tree defying the
darkness, trying to instill new life into him.
But he did not want to live. Not this kind of
life. He felt betrayed.
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All that was a dream we can only live today.
Yes. I have a duty, for instance, to my mother.
Please, dear Njoroge, we cannot leave her at
this time when -
No! Njoroge. Let’s wait for a new day.
(pp. 150-51)
that he has ‘two mothers’ and that his father on his death bed had asked
him to take care of them. As all that hope has vanished, he plans only
the alternative of escape i.e., suicide. But even here his courage fails
him:
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‘Yes’, he whispered to himself. ‘I am a
coward.’
And he ran home and opened the door for his
two mothers (pp. 153-54).
The best sentence which is also the last sentence of the novel, has
novel’s events, but because a young, inexperienced boy is not the best
about the future, and we can hardly expect them to understand the
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References
5. Ibid., p.24.
6. Ibid., p.317.
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