Hello Readers!
Welcome to my blog. I have written about Neo-Colonialism in the novel 'Petals of Blood'. This task assigned to Yesha ma'am.
Ngugi Thiong'o
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, original name James Thiong’o Ngugi, (born January 5, 1938, Limuru, Kenya), Kenyan writer who was considered East Africa’s leading novelist. His popular Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major novel in English by an East African. As he became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngugi adopted his traditional name and wrote in the Bantu language of Kenya’s Kikuyu people.
Petals of Blood
Petals of Blood is a 1977 novel by Ngugi wa Thiong'o set in post-independence Kenya; its title derives from a line in Derek Walcott’s poem, “The Swamp.” The story centers on four characters whose lives are drastically changed as a result of the rebellion, as they learn how to adapt and survive in a rapidly Westernizing environment.
In 1969, Ngugi told an interviewer that the ideal African novel would
"embrace the pre-colonial past[,] . . . the colonial past, and the post-independence period with a pointer to the future,”
and critics see Petals as the encapsulation of such an ideal. Ngugi worked on the novel for five years, finishing it in 1975 at the Soviet Writers Union in Yalta.
Neo- Colonialism in Petals of Blood
The perceptions of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o concerning the reflection and impacts of colonialism from the viewpoints of the colonial languages and the local elites constitute the main substance of his theoretical and literary works. While aiming to arouse the colonized peoples’ awareness of the prospective risks of acquiring the colonial languages and theemergence of the local elites working in harmony with the white colonizers after formal colonization ends, Thiong’o attempts to be an inspirational source of regaining anti-colonialist national culture and system for his society.
Thiong’oPetals of Blood might be handled through the same emphasis placed by Thiong'o on the potency of the colonial languages as regards putting out new alienated identities and minds. To illustrate, when imparting the school memories in the past, Karega complains of the fact the Western literature and English language are taught at school in place of their national historical achievements and literature by turning attention to the black headmaster’s reprimand of the teachers concerning the insufficient education of English: “Teach them good idiomatic English” (Petals 173), which points out his adoption of the significance of English and his anxiety to impose it on the colonized students. Karega continues to narrate the approach of the headmaster to Shakespeare whom he speaks in praise of since he attributes significance and perfection to this poet as is disclosed in the novel: “He read a passage from Shakespeare … ‘Those words are words of a great writer – greater even than Maillu and Hadley Chase.’ … whoever heard of African, Chinese and Greek mathematics and science?” (Petals 172). This specifies the belief that the Eastern nations have not been able to make any contributions to the scientific world whereas the Western science and literature as more estimable and praiseworthy subjects have to be instructed at each school in Africa. Karega reveals his discomfort caused by the subjects and fields of study at their school that are inculcated into them in order to make the Western figures and historical events absorbed well when he mentions it: “Chaucer, Shakespeare,Napoleon,Livingstone, Western conquerors, Western inventors and discoverers were drummed into our heads with even greater fury. Where, we asked, was the African dream?” (Petals 173). In preference to the indigenous subjects and fields of the African studies, the English language and other branches of Eurocentric studies are always chosen to enlighten the fresh and blank minds of the native students. As regards the intense effect of language on imposing a worldview on its users, Fanon argues: “To speak a language is take on a world, a culture. The Antilles Negro who wants to be white will be the whiter as he gains greater mastery of the cultural tool that language is” (Black Skin 25).
Therefore, the educational system with English and the Western subjects carry the means of removing the African culture and civilization from the native students’ brains and cramming them with the so-called supreme European thinking. With the colonial languages and Western studies taught at native schools, a new phase of colonialism which does not take in any violent and bloody actions forming the first phase emerges. Being aware of the possibility that the ex-colonized nations might enter the protests and nationalist struggles against the colonial system, the Western powers have endeavored to set up formidable barriers between the native peoples and these peoples’ civilization or indigenous culture with the help of the colonial languages and education that have enabled them to make the native peoples forget their local values and to make them overcome by an inferiority complex as well as deviated by the desire to mimic the European models.
Citation
Thiong'o's Criticism of Neocolonial Tendencies: Petals of ... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342199989_Thiong'o's_Criticism_of_Neocolonial_Tendencies_Petals_of_Blood_and_Weep_Not_Child.
