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ASSIGNMENT TOPIC:

SUBJECT: POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE


SUBMITTED BY: RIDA
BS 8TH SEMESTER
ROLL NO: 16001
SUBMITTED TO: MA’AM AMNA

Introduction of author
Ngugi WA Thiong’o is a writer of Kenyan descent. One of the foremost living African
novelists, he has also developed a reputation as a post-colonial theorist, and he has
taught at universities around the world. Ngugi WA Thiong’o was born James Thiong’o
Ngugi in Limuru, Kenya in 1938. He studied at Makerere University in Uganda; as a
student there, he published his first short stories. After graduating, he pursued a second
bachelor’s degree at Leeds University in England. He eventually became a professor of
English, and he has taught all over the world. As an adult, he dropped his Western first
name and adopted his current Bantu name to emphasize his cultural pride. 

This is why some editions of his early books – including weep not child and the river
between are published under the name "James Ngugi."

Despite his stylistic shifts, Ngugi's interest in the legacy of colonialism has remained
consistent. In 1977, Ngugi publicly announced that he would no longer write in English,
and he campaigned for other African writers to do the same. Since then, he has
published most of his novels in Giyuku, his native language, before translating them
himself for English-speaking audiences abroad.

Ngugi’s work is often highly political, which has caused much controversy for him in
Kenya. He was imprisoned in 1977 for a year of solitary confinement after his politically
provocative play.
After a decades-long exile from Kenya, Ngugi and his wife returned in 2004, only to be
assaulted in their home, in what is believed to have been a political attack. However, the
couple recovered and has continued to travel and promote Ngugi’s books in Kenya. In
recent years, he has been considered a frontrunner to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Ngugi currently holds a post as Distinguished Professor in Comparative Literature and


English at the University of California, Irvine.

SUMMARY
Devil on the Cross  is a 1980 novel by the Kenyan novelist, playwright, and activist Ngũgĩ
WA Thiong’o, written originally in Gikuyu (under the title Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ) and
translated into English by the author himself. The novel follows a long-suffering young
Kenyan woman Jacinta Wariinga as she attends the “Devil’s Feast,” a celebration of
Kenya’s exploitation by the forces of Western capitalism, attended by both Western
businessmen and the Kenyan bourgeoisie who aid and abet them in their expropriation
of Kenyan wealth. The novel blends allegory, dream-narrative, and a realist story of
ordinary Kenyan life to comment on the involvement of Western businesses in Kenyan
economic life.
The novel opens as the narrator introduces his story in a reluctant tone: it is his duty to
relay this sad and maybe even shameful account of events in the town of Ilmorog.

In Chapter 2, the narrator introduces his protagonist, Jacinta Wariinga, who is at the
end of her tether. During an affair with the “Rich Old Man of Ngorika,” she became
pregnant. The Rich Old Man abandoned her. Wariinga had her baby and returned to
secretarial school, finding a job at Champion Construction. Soon, her boss Kihara made
advances on her, and Wariinga was forced to leave her job. This didn’t stop her from
losing her boyfriend, John Kinwana, who believed she had slept with Kihara. Unable to
pay her rent, Wariinga has been thrown out of her studio apartment by three thugs
acting on her landlord’s orders.

In despair, Wariinga takes herself to the railway tracks, where she intends to kill herself.
However, she is prevented by the arrival of a man named Munti, who persuades her to
give life another chance and hands her invitation to the “Devil’s Feast.”

When Wariinga realizes that this Feast is taking place in her parents’ hometown of
Ilmorog, she decides to go. She travels by “matatu” (taxi-bus), and on the long journey,
she bonds with her fellow passengers: Gatuīria, an African Studies professor who works
overseas; Wangarī, a peasant woman from the deep country; Mūturi, an industrial
worker, and Mwĩreri WA Mũkiraaĩ, a businessman. They also get to know the driver,
Mwaūra, a hard-working man who worships money and idolizes the rich.

Businessman Mwĩreri explains that the Devil’s Feast is a competition: the guests will
choose the seven cleverest thieves and robbers in Ilmorog. Mwĩreri thinks this
competition is a good thing. It is not really organized by the Devil, he explains, but by
the Organization for Modern Theft and Robbery. The occasion for the Feast is a visit by
foreign guests from the Thieves’ and Robbers’ associations of America, England,
Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, and Japan.

The passengers agree that they will all go together to the Devil’s Feast.

At the Feast, Wariinga and the other passengers witness the local Kenyan bourgeoisie
(the members of the Organization for Modern Theft and Robbery) each set out their
case for the title of cleverest thief. Each man boasts of a different scheme that he has
used to rob Kenyan workers of the value of their labor.

Mwĩreri proposes that the Organization chase the foreigners out of Ilmorog in order to
take a bigger slice of the wealth for them; uproar breaks out.

Wariinga and Gatuīria decide to remain as observers, while Wangarī and Mūturi,
horrified by what they have heard, decide to summon the police to arrest the self-
proclaimed Thieves and Robbers. However, when the police arrive they arrest only
Wangarī, and drag him away.

Mūturi raises a mob of local workers, students, intellectuals and peasants, who march
on the cave where the Feast is taking place. They manage to break up the event, but the
members of the Organization and their foreign guests all escape.

Two years pass. Warming is engaged to Gatuīria, and through lengthy and expensive
training, she has fulfilled an old dream of becoming an engineer at a garage. Meanwhile
Gatuīria has finished the musical composition he has been working on, honoring
Kenyan history.

Wariinga’s old boss, Kihara, with the backing of businessmen from America, Germany,
and Japan, buys the garage where Wariinga works, so he can demolish it and construct
a tourist hotel on the site.
Gatuīria takes Wariinga to meet his parents. There she learns that Gatuīria’s father is
the “Rich Old Man” who left her when she was pregnant. Finally Wariinga snaps. She
shoots Gatuīria’s father and several other guests, whom she recognizes from the Devil’s
Feast. Gatuīria is left standing, unsure whose side to take, as Wariinga strides from the
house.

Devil on the Cross  explores economic exploitation along many different axes: its
characters allegorize the roles of the working classes and the peasants, the business
elites and the petit bourgeoisie, as well as the specific forms of exploitation suffered by
women, and the forms of abuse perpetrated by intellectuals and liberals—like Gatuīria
—who might consider themselves neutral. Devil on the Cross  is the fifth novel by Ngūgī,
who is widely considered a front-running candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Character
Jacinta Wariinga:
The protagonist that stuggles in the wake of Kenyan independence. She spirals into a
suicidal depression in the rising action of the book, but then right as she goes to take
her own life, someone stops her and takes her on an enlightening yet painful journey of
discovery.
Munti:
The mysterious figure that finds her and stops Jacinta from killing herself, He invites her
to attend a feast called "The Devil's Feast"

Thank you

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