Kenya’s Rural Landscapes and Colonial Destructive Will in Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat

Abstract

For over five decades, scholars and critics have subjected Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat to different interpretations. Most of the studies centre on Ngugi’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes, the stylistic devices, the political, structural and historical thrusts of the novel. This paper shifts from these previous ways of reading to engage with Ngugi’s representation of Kenya’s rural landscape in the novel. In so doing, the paper looks at the aesthetic, social or recreational, economic, political and spiritual values of landscape to the Kenyans as well as the lifestyle of the people of the countryside before the destruction of the landscape and the people by the colonialists. The paper argues that it is not the drive towards modernity, but colonial destructive will that informs this destruction. The paper uses the post-colonial theory and the ecocritical approach to literary criticism. The article is analytical and is organised in four sections. The first section is the introduction, while the second explores the landscapes of Thabai and other villages in the novel. The third section deals with the importance of land in the life of the characters, while the final section focuses on the destruction of the rural landscapes and the people by the Europeans. The paper finds that, like his other novels, landscape is a dominating presence in A Grain of Wheat. It concludes that Ngugi uses the landscape to show the relationships between the Kenyans or the Gikuyu people and the natural world.