a grain of wheat as a national epic of anti-colonial struggle
TRANSCRIPT
Paper: 14 The African Literature
PG Enrollment No: 14101005MA Sem: 4Email id: [email protected]
Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar UniversityBhavnagar, Gujarat, India.
A Grain of Wheat as a National epicof Anti-colonial struggle
Nikunj Bhatti
A Grain of Wheat
Anti-colonial Struggle
National Epic
The West
White
colonizers
The Power
Patriarchal man
Fatherland
The Rest
Nonwhites
colonized
Have-not power
womanized
Motherland
Condition of African Labors
Mau Mau Rebellion
The Mau Mau Uprising, also known as the Mau Mau Revolt, Mau Mau Rebellion, or Kenya Emergency, was a military conflict that took place in British Kenya between 1952 and 1960.
It involved Kikuyu dominated groups summarily called Mau Mau, the white settlers including women and children and elements of the British Army. (Wikipedia)
Mau Mau Rebellion
PhysicalPsycholog
ical Political impact
The novel can be summarized as a ‘collective act of
recalling and reflecting on the past’ that is a narration of nation.
Uhuru : Freedom
The whole novel can indeed be summarized as a collective act of recalling and reflecting on the events leading to Uhuru, in order to understand what actual meaning it should have for Thabai peasants.That would be held on Kenya’s Independence Day. Kihika, a Mau Mau rebel who sacrificed his life to fight for Kenya’s freedom during the Mau Mau rebellion.People tries to struggle for their own Uharu and it is the main and central idea of Novel .
Anti-Colonial Struggle
The action of novel focuses on the protagonists’
remembrances of the events of the
‘Mau Mau ’ Revolt- the birth of
a new Kenya.
The author choose Christianity as a knife
to tear apart the society. “ They looked beyond the laughing face of the
Whiteman and suddenly saw a long
line of other red stranger who carried, not the Bible, but the
sword.”
Theme of Sacrifice
“A Grain of Wheat” can be called
‘impossible irony’ of nationalism in the
words of Terry Eagleton
Kihika
Gikonyo
Mugo
Heroism
Bhagat SinghKihika
Source
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising
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