THE IMAGE OF THE WHITE MAIM IN THE WEST AFRICAN NOVEL

Abstract

The white man had attracted the attention of almost every West African writer about the African past and present. The novelists, like their counterparts in other parts of Africa, give the white man conspicuous places in their novels. They assign to him various roles and portray him in various shades of light and characters. This paper surveys broadly the kinds of image the white man cuts in some of the novels. The image varies according to the attitudes end vision of the individual novelists. (In the context of this paper, Europeans and Arabs are regarded as white men). European and Arab attitudes to the African peoples and to the communities they administered are important because they have shaped the attitudes of the novelists and of the communities to the white man. The Arabs wanted African territories. While they tried to convert the people to Christianity and their style of political administration they made use of the local leaders. The French adopted a policy of total assimilation and tried to make a Frenchman of the African.