CHARACTERS, THEMES AND STRUCTURE IN NGUGI WA THIONG'O'S A GRAIN OF WHEAT

Abstract

I must state from the outset that Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat is the proverbial dirty dish that contains a delicious meal. It is indeed a great novel but it is flawed by countless blindspots. What with crowding a moderately-sized novel with characters too numerous to remember- characters too quickly and violently eliminated to be allowed to develop any meaningful interpersonal relationships with other characters in the novel. Who is so clever a reader of A Grain of Wheat that he remembers off-hand what part half of these characters are supposed to play in the novel: Wambui, Githua, Gitogo, Warui, D.O. Robson, Waitherero, Wangu Makeri, Harry Thuku, Mbugua, Rev. Jackson Kigondu, Muniu, Kariuki, Njeri, Gatu, Dr. Brain O'Donoghue, Roger Mason, Mrs. Dickinson, Mr. Rogers, Dr. Lynd, Wangari, JVambuku. The above reads already like a list of characters from a Russian novel. And what sensitive reader is not irritated by the all too palpably loose structure oi the novel, befuzzed even more by its endless and confusing flash-backs-flashbacks that make it almost impossible for the reader to trace any emerging pattern in the novel. Add to all these the most infuriating artistic blunder by Ngugi in the novel -the all.too evident lack of narrative distance between the author and his subject matter. Rather too often the author comes out in propria-persona and intrudes with too many a "we" and "us " in purely narrative passages that cannot be attributed to the voice of any character in the novel.