Reflection of past in A Grain of Wheat.

Name :Hetalba C Gohil

Paper :   402  African Literature

Sem  :4    M.A: 2

Topic : Reflection of past in A Grain of Wheat.

Submitted to: 

Dr, Dilip Barad,    

M.K. B.  Universty

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o :

“Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow [...] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes” 

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said,

“The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.”  

       This quote applies directly to Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s novel A Grain of Wheat. One could infer from this quote that some writers write not just for the enjoyment derived from it, but rather out of a feeling of obligation to let readers hear what they may have to say.

       The action of the novel focuses on the protagonists’ remembrances of the events of the ‘Mau Mau’ Revolt, which Ngũgĩ Sees as the only historical moment which allows “the space to imagine the birth of a New Kenya” The way these events are recounted and reshaped is a collective one, as a shifting focalization and a complex time structure create a polyphonic, choral narrative that shows in detail the physical, psychological and political impact of the Revolt on individuals living in a small community .

      The novel is set in Thabai, an imaginary gĩkũyũ village of Kenya’s White Highlands, in the days preceding and following 12 December 1963, the day Kenya got its Independence. The latter is continually evoked in the narration with the swahili word Uhuru (“freedom”): Ngũgĩ’s choice not to translate this term is significant, as in the novel the definition of the actual meaning of Uhuru is an open political and social question: the new Kenyan bourgeoisie sees it indeed as the possibility to replace the colonizer without changing the existing social,political and economical structure, whereas for gĩkũyũ peasants Uhuru means a profound break with the colonial past, a rebirth which has to bring about the restitution of the lands usurped by the white settlers and the eradication of poverty.

     The meaning of Uhuru is thus a central question, quite far from being obvious: so much so that Ngũgĩ clarifies what Uhuru should be only in the 1986 version of the novel, when the former ‘Mau Mau’ guerilla General R. states in his Independence speech

“We get Uhuru today. But what’s the meaning of ‘Uhuru’ ? It is contained in

the name of our Movement: Land and 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/could have for Thabai peasants. It is precisely in the act of recalling and reflecting on the past that A Grain of Wheat constructs a narration of the nation: the pedagogic moment (the act of recalling the liberation struggle) materializes in a performative moment (Bhabha 1990a) disseminated in lots of narratives, each of which is a speech act. The narration becomes therefore an active (re)construction of the past, an act of writing, in the sense of modeling

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abided alone: but if it die, it bring forth much fruit”

    These quotations give a religious and epic tone to the novel and assert the necessity of a sacrifice for the (re)birth of the nation. In A Grain of Wheat the heroic character par excellence is the late Kihika, the courageous guerilla leader full of messianic spirit. We learn of Kihika’s life and deeds mainly from the memories of those who survived, but it is the narrator-storyteller who gives his life a meaning in the perspective of the liberation struggle, summarizing its course in the second chapter, after a long digression on the story of the party. This digression is central in the narration of the nation, as here the modern history of Kenya is identified with the story of the resistance to colonization and of the development of the liberation movement: