COMMITMENT AS AN AESTHETIC FORM: NGUGI WA THIONG'O

AND JOHN STEINBECK

Jean Zida
An Abstract
Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 1991
Thesis supervisor: Professor Peter Nazareth
ABSTRACT
This dissertation uses the works of both Steinbeck and Ngugi to
demonstrate through structural and thematic analyses that the two
writers are not only committed, but that their advocacy of fundamental
values for the improvement of human life constitutes an aesthetic form
that provides the force and direction of their works. Without such a
perspective, that is, the writer's will to move towards a better
alternative reality for the underdog, simple criticism amounts to raking
a polluted self-enclosed environment, an act whose lack of opening or
direction only increases the existing confusion or filth.
The first three chapters discuss the social relevance of art,
consider manifestations of the two writers' partisanship with the
underdog in their works, while drawing attention on the necessary
relationship between American or African social reality and the literary
text. Chapter four establishes the link and interpenetration between
content and aesthetic forms.
My concluding chapter brings out thematic and stylistic aspects
common to the works studied, as well as the inherent problematics of
comparing two writers separated by culture, time, and space. As a final
assessment, I point out how Steinbeck and Ngugi emerge as two great
writers making use of theme, technique, language, and symbol, to draw
wider and universal relation in the human experience of their respective
societies.
Abstract __
Thesis Supervisor
Title and Department

Date
COMMITMENT AS AN AESTHETIC FORM: NGUGI WA THIONG'O
AND JOHN STEINBECK
by
Jean Zida
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 1991
Thesis supervisor: Professor Peter Nazareth
Copyright by
JEAN ZIDA
1991
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
PH.D. THESIS
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Jean Zida
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English at the May 1991
graduation.
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To my wife and to our children
To all my family, relatives
and friends
I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to my supervisor Peter
Nazareth for his humanism and continued assistance. My thanks and
appreciation also go to my committee, Professors Florence Boos, Mary Lou
Emery, Archibald Coolidge, and Jacques Bourgeacq, for their sensitive
readings, encouragement, and advice.
I have many people to thank for helping me return to Iowa and
bringing about the successful completion of this thesis. I am greatly
endebted to Dr Cynthia Caples, the 1988-1990 Director of the American
Cultural Center in Ouagadougou, to Phil Carls, the representative of the
Office of International and Comparative Studies, who, jointly with
Professors Jacques Bourgeacq, Allen Roberts, and Christopher Roy,
obtained me a Teaching Assistanship at the University of Iowa through an
exchange program with the University of Ouagadougou. My appreciation
also goes to my colleagues in Ouagadougou.
I wish to express my deepest friendship and gratitude to Kate
Borowske, whose friendship, support and solicitude have been invaluable
to me. I am grateful to Lilian Gratama, with whom I developed a
friendly working forum to discuss my work. I remain very thankful to
Helen and Hunter Comly, my adoptive American family.
ii
Finally, special thanks go to my wife, Sabine, to our children,
Hyacinthe, Angeline and Patricia, for their patience, understanding, and
dedication, without which this work could not have been completed.
Their courage and sense of sacrifice have strengthened my resolve and
determination.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
John Ernst Steinbeck
I. THE NOTION OF LITERARY COMMITMENT
Commitment in African Literature
11. COMMITMENT IN NGUGI'S NOVELS
The River Between
Weep Not, Child.
A Grain of Wheat
Petals of Blood .
Devil on the Cross
1
7
14
23
35
47
49
56
61
73
95
III.COMMITMENT AND STEINBECK'S FICTION OF THE THIRTIES 113
The Pastures of Heaven
In Dubious Battle .
Of Mice and Men . .
The Grapes of Wrath
IV. STRUCTURE AND MEANING
CONCLUSION .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
iv
124
142
156
167
189
216
225
1
INTRODUCTION
Boileau said that kings, gods, and heroes only were fit
subjects for literature. The writer can only write about
what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring,
the gods are on vacation and about the only heroes left are
the scientists and the poor ... But the poor are still in the
open. When they make a struggle it is an heroic struggle
with starvation, death or imprisonment the penalty if they
lose. And since our race admires gallantry, the writer will
deal with it wherever he finds it. He finds it in the
struggling poor now.
Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover
its mission, fulfil it, or betray it. In underdeveloped
countries, the preceding generations have both resisted the
work"of erosion carried on by colonialism, and also helped
on the maturing of the struggle of today. [We are nothing
on earth if not first of all the partisans of a c u ~ e that
of the people, that of justice or that of liberty].
As a graduate student at the University of Iowa, I was introduced
to some twentieth century American writers whose books offer critical
analyses of American society either by casting retrospective, historical
glances at this society and culture, or by embodying completely new
attitudes that revolt against the established state of things.
None of these writers won my admiration and interest as much as
John Steinbeck. He focused my attention on the nineteen-thirties, on
the plight of those who were starving, particularly the migrant farm
workers of California. But to paraphrase Pascal Covini, it is
2
Steinbeck's concern for common, human values, for warmth, for love and
understanding; his tender evocation of the land, his celebration of its
fertility and the ecological notion of the link between human life and
this land; and his capacity to bring his characters and country alive
3
through his mastery of language; that stimulated my imagination and
stirred my emotions and thoughts, all the more as these concerns
crystallize into a form of awareness of the social perspective in
literature.
With my initial training in African literature, I found myself
comparing Steinbeck's concerns and social consciousness to those of
African writers, for in this area African literature provides good
examples of the relationship that does exist between the writer and his
or her society. These general concerns with social issues result not
only from a deliberate choice on the part of the African writer, but
also reflect the attitudes that the African writer adopted in the face
of various socio-political situations at particular periods of Africa's
evolution. Important landmarks in this evolution are colonialism, the
granting of formal independence, and the neo-colonial stage. But most
of African creative writers are part of the elite--"being the most
literate and the most articulate elements of a society whose majority is
denied any possibility of expression, they find themselves in the
position of intellectual leadership.1I
4
Arab points out the fundamentally reactive element in African
literature when he sees lithe emergence of modern African literature [as]
a response to the colonial situation, a response which is both cultural
3
by the fact that it interprets its world in European terms and political
as it is informed by a national stance. It is the permanent and
fundamental antagonism between colonialism and the African revolution
which forms the source and driving force of modern literary creation in
Africa. liS
While it might appear that any African writer would be relevant to
my discussion of artistic commitment, we shall see in the section
dealing with commitment and African literature that some African
writers, though socially and politically oriented, stop short of
suggesting solutions, while others walk the whole mile to find possible
ways out of the African predicament. The latter group I treat as
creating a positive aesthetics whereas the former are negative. My
interest in Ngugi wa Thiong'o6therefore resides in the fact that I
consider him one of the writers concerned with the neo-colonial new
poor; it also springs both from his constant search for a community
where these people would feel at home, and from the positive aesthetic
forms and language he constantly develops to suit his highly committed
stance.
In such a study, problems are bound to arise not only concerning
the relationship to be established between two writers separated by
culture, time and space, but also concerning their respective attitudes
to the central notion being discussed. For example, it may be easy to
summarily classify both of them as proletarian writers, a term used in
America during the thirties to characterize novels that deal primarily
with the life of the working classes or with any social or industrial
4
problem from the standpoint of labor. This term may, to some extent,
fit Steinbeck, but can it fit Ngugi, whose novels portray a basically
pre-industrial Kenyan society? Or again, if it is true that they are
both committed on the side of poor and the oppressed, how far does this
identification go and how does does the notion of commitment apply to
each writer, since their belonging to different social backgrounds (one
to the poor "Third World" and the other to the affluent "First World")
is bound to affect both their reaction to the problems in debate and the
the way they address their respective audiences. For example, Pascal
Covini qualifies Steinbeck's notion of collectivism as an "invigorating
paradox," for "the primary emotional counterpoint is that between group-
man, the organism that has a life independent of its members, and those
individuals who have, or who struggle toward, awareness, while retaining
7
their communion with and commitment to the life of the group." Does
Ngugi reflect the same paradox?
I shall try to provide tentative answers to such questions on the
basis of analyses of the central texts, frequently referring to other
major works by the two authors to illuminate the notions under
discussion. This study will also consider the artistic methods of the
two novelists to show their merits as artist and the relationship of
their portrayals with their respective social realities.
Chapters one, two and three will deal with the notion of
commitment and its manifestations in Steinbeck's and Ngugi's works. For
Steinbeck, the novel central to this discussion is The Grapes of Wrath.
Of Mice and Men will also be considered, for even if it seems to focus
5
on two individuals, George and Lennie, these two see their ultimate
salvation residing in their commitment to brotherhood in a successful
collective identity. I will also discuss In Dubious Battle, where
Steinbeck's concern with commitment as a supreme value makes him explore
its nature and its effects on the individual. I will use his non-
fiction, particularly his letters, to help us understand the above-
mentioned works and the active nature of his commitment.
With Ngugi, the central novel to be considered is Petals of Blood.
This is not to imply that his other novels are unimportant for the
topic; indeed, if we look at the ideas presented in his other novels,
The River Between, Weep Not Child, A Grain of Wheat and Devil on the
Cross, an intriguing developing pattern of commitment emerges. The
centerpiece of this pattern is Ngugi's growing awareness of the African
predicament and his determination to search for solutions. His non-
fiction writing, mainly essays, also brings out the degree of his
commitment to social and aesthetic forms.
The fourth part will in effect try to establish the link between
the aspects of commitment and how these works succeed as art and not
propaganda leaflets, as some detractors wish them to be seen; that is, I
shall consider the necessary interrelationship, interpenetration and
influence between structure and meaning.
This study recognizes no separation between art and life, or to be
precise, it views art as an extension of the artist's humanity.
Steinbeck and Ngugi can both be considered realists in the sense that
they make no concession to the demand for fiction writing to be an
6
objective in itself, but rather subscribe to its having social
relevance. Some form of materialism can be seen in both writers,
conceivably Marxian in the case of Ngugi but less clearly so in
Steinbeck, whose stance may be seen to hold aspects of humanism and
naturalism. By "Marxian materialism" I mean the tendency to trace back
states of mind and moral attitudes of character to the material (socio-
economic) conditions to which the person or the group has been subjected
through training, environment and/or social status. Of course, varying
attitudes to this and other notions are to be observed in each of these
authors' works.
Despite their central concern with pressing but passing social
issues, the two writers can stand the test of time both because of the
great artistry with which they successfully dramatize these issues and
because of the universal relevance of their themes. For example, we
grant that it is the social problems of the thirties that confer on a
work like The Grapes of Wrath much emotional power, but it remains a
notable work of art today by virtue of the fact that all these social
issues are so masterfully dramatized. And, as DeMott points out,
"wherever human beings dream of a dignified society in which they can
harvest the fruits of their labor, The Grapes of Wrath's radical
voice ... can still be heard ... [it] not only summed up the Depression
era's socially conscious art, but, beyond that, [it] has few peers in
American fiction."B
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
7
Born in 1938 into a large polygamous peasant family in the Kiambu
District of Kenya, James Ngugi attended the mission-run Kamaandura
school in his home village from the age of nine. He later went to
another run by nationalists grouped around the Gikuyu Independent and
Karinga Schools Association.
9
The first of his area to attend High School, Ngugi went on to
complete a B.A. Honours in English at Makerere University College,
Uganda. He then attended the University of Leeds, England, for a
postgraduate study in Literature, but for various reasons never obtained
his Doctorate. During his undergraduate years, Ngugi had gained
recognition as a fiction writer by winning an English-Language novel-
writing competition, and he tried his hand at journalism by writing
regularly for a Nairobi newspaper. Upon returning from Leeds, he was
among the first Africans to lecture in the English Department in
Nairobi. He and two other faculty members led a debate rejecting "the
primacy of English literature and culture" in the university
. 1 10
Th
b' . f h h h 1 N' H
urn. e 0 0 t ese tree sc 0 ars-- enry Owuor-
Anyurnba and Taban Lo Liyong-- was "to orientate ourselves towards
placing Kenya, East Africa, and Africa in the centre. All other things
are to be considered in their relevance to our situation, and their
contribution towards understanding ourselves. "llThe oral tradition was
to play an important role in their redefinition of priorities because,
among other things, the African student's "familiarity with oral
literature could suggest new structures and techniques; and could foster
8
attitudes of mind characterized by the willingness to experiment with
12
new forms; so transcending 'fixed literary patterns.'"
Apart from being a novelist, Ngugi is a playwright, essayist and
literary critic. He is the first known East African to write a book of
. 1 ... H . 13
1
1977 N . h h H d f h
n t en t e ea 0 t e
Literature Department, was arrested and detained for almost a year.
Though official charges were never brought against him, his arrest
resulted from his leading the farmers of Kamiriithu Community Education
in staging a play in the Gikuyu language. This play, Ngaahika Ndeenda,
which later appeared in English under the title 1 Will Marry When 1
Want, celebrates the historic struggle of Mau Mau, the heroic role of
women in the struggle draws "heavily from the songs and dances of
different Kenyan nationalities [and] showed practical possibilities for
14
the integration of Kenyan cultures." Needless to say, the performance
of the play was banned.
Formerly known as James Ngugi, the artist dropped his Christian
name following a public declaration at the Fifth General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church of East Africa at Nairobi, on March 12th, 1970.
Ngugi denied being a Christian, even though critics see him as a
religious writer. He went on to say that his overriding concern is with
"people: ... in their hidden lives; their fears and hopes, their loves and
hates, and how the very tension in their hearts affects their daily
contact with other men: how, in other words, the emotional stream of
the man within interacts with the social reality."lS
9
Ngugi's literary works cover a wide range in which the recurring
issues are his concerns for the plight of the oppressed, the 80% of the
Kenyan people living under the poverty line; his all-out fight against
imperialism in its neo-colonial stage, which he considers to be the root
cause of many problems in Africa; and his recent but controversial
determination to "decolonize African literature" by advocating the use
of African languages. In this context, Ngugi stated in 1986 that he was
bidding "farewell to English as a vehicle for any of my writings. From
now on it is Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way." But he expressed the
hope that through the medium of translation, his writings would "be able
to continue dialogue with all." 16
Ngugi is perhaps the first Kenyan to write a novel in the Gikuyu
language with the appearance of Caitaani Mutharaba-ini, which he drafted
during his detention.
17
It later appeared in English under the title
Devil on the Cross in 1982. Having lost his job after his prison
experience, Ngugi went abroad for the launching of Devil on the Cross.
While away, he received information that he would be arrested on his
return, following a failed coup attempt that led the regime to take
repressive measures against those allegedly involved in the foiled coup.
Ngugi therefore opted to stay in exile, where he has been ever since.
Ngugi's latest novel, his second to be written in his mother tongue was
first published in Kenya in 1986 and later came out in English, in 1989,
under the title Matigari. This moral fable goes back to the theme that
those who had fought hardest for independence had gained the least.
This novel, like the two previous works, "was arrested and removed from
10
all the bookshops in Nairobi and from the publisher's warehouse," as the
authority attempted to banish both the writer and his writings. This
prompted Ngugi to comment on the difficult nature of the writer who,
paradoxically, inhabits two places at the same time:
The land of facts and that of fiction. But in the neo-
colonial situation fiction seems to be more real than the
absurdity of the factual world of a dictator. The world of
a dictator has an element of pure fantasy. He will kill,
jail, and drive hundreds into exile and imagine that he is
actually loved for it. One of course wishes that the world
of a dictator was only confined to hard covers. But it
isn't and a dictator will even think of dragging characters
from fiction into the streets. Perhaps that proves the
relevance of literature to life. Or put it this way:
dictators are the best students of literature! This does
not mean t ~ have learned anything from either literature
or history.
Ngugi is a well read intellectual. The Western education he
received both at home and abroad made him familiar with the works of
major Western writers. Frantz Fanon, Joseph Conrad, William Blake, Walt
Whitman, Bertolt Brecht - writers who devoted their lives to struggling
against oppression, exploitation and domination of all sorts - have
noticeably influenced his writing.
The curious parallelisms betwe
journey motif linked to the
Grapes of
the
capitalism as a monster--may suggest the possibility that Ngugi also
read Steinbeck but, more importantly, they show that like Steinbeck in
11
the thirties, Ngugi has reacted to the drama of human suffering played
out on his continent. My synopses of the two novels try to do justice
to these parallelisms. Arab Abderraman points out that Ngugi's novels,
like those of other African writers "of the Dawn of the Revolution,
combine the lessons learnt from litterature engagee with the vitality of
the American novel of the twenties and thirties in their attempt to
undermine the colonialist hegemony in its political structure.,,19
Synopsis of Petals of Blood
Behind Petals of Blood is basically a detective story, a Poe-like
thriller, the mysterious killer story, where the reader is kept in
suspense until the crime has been unraveled and the mask hiding the
killer's face thrown off. Three people, Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria, have
been killed, apparently by an arsonist in a brothel, in one of the new
flourishing towns of Kenya. Four suspects (Munira, Abdulla, Wanja,
Karega) have been taken into police custody for questioning. To police
and local newspapers, radical elements must be behind this killing. The
novelist, constantly pointing to the ways in which the dispossessed and
the oppressed are liable to be exploited, portrays a far more complex
reality. Gradually the detective story turns into an historical
analysis as the past of the people involved is brought under scrutiny to
shed light not only on the murder itself but also on the reasons behind
it. Munira is a teacher-turned-Christian fundamentalist. Abdulla is a
former member of the Mau Mau, a former shopkeeper, and now a seller of
sheepskins and oranges on the streets of Ilmorog. Wanja is a barmaid, a
12
prostitute, and the owner of the brothel. Karega is a former seller of
sheepskins and oranges, a former teacher, and now a trade unionist. How
and why are these people involved in the murder?
The novel's approach lays bare the socio-political, economic and
psychological motivating forces underlying the surface plot of the
detective story. At this stage the story becomes an ideological puzzle
as the characters (and the reader as well) manage to piece together the
different strands of their broken lives to become aware of their
connection with one another and with Kenyan history. They become the
native sons and daughters and by-products of neo-colonial Kenya. The
four arrested parties are not immediately revealed as directly linked to
one another, but the reader comes to see recent and remote ties between
these four and the three victims.
The three murdered men turn out to have been corrupt traitors,
pimps and stooges for imperialist exploitation. Mzigo was the teacher-
turned-businessman and the owner of vast premises in Ilmorog, who had
evicted, or extorted money from, people like Wanja. Chui was also a
teacher-turned-businessman. He betrayed the trust of his students at
Siriana when he called in the riot squad to quell an apparently peaceful
protest and caused the dismissal of students like Karega. Kimeria had
seduced Wanja when she was only a schoolgirl and had quickly dropped her
when he discovered she was pregnant. He was also the person who
betrayed Karega's brother, at that time Abdulla's comrade-in-arms, to
the colonial police force, who then hanged him. All three were important
13
shareholders in the Theng'eta brewery, an international Anglo-American
combine involved in alcohol, drugs and prostitution.
All these protagonists come together in Ilmorog and in their
relations to the same woman, Wanja. The story behind Ilmorog's
development from a distant, small village wary of strangers, into a
major industrial center littered with prostitutes, alcoholics and drug
addicts, is ironic rather than directly realistic.
This development started with a drought about ten years before the
fatal fire. Karega, who had come to Ilmorog after being recruited by
Munira as a substitute teacher, suggested the village send a delegation
to Nairobi to inform their invisible elected M.P. of their plight. The
delegation starts the journey filled with optimism. But disillusionment
sets in when they come face-to-face with the stark reality of city life.
The only helpful person they come across is an anonymous lawyer trying
to fight injustice. Disenchanted with the M.P., they publicly stone
him, are arrested and tried, and are brilliantly defended by the lawyer,
who describes Ilmorog as "a deserted homestead; a forgotten village, an
island of underdevelopment which after being sucked thin and dry was
itself left standing, static, a grotesque distorted image of what
peasant life was and could be" [Petals of Blood, p. 184]. Publicity
saves them and development comes to Ilmorog. With it come corruption
and exploitation, as multinational and local businessmen and religious
leaders scramble for a foothold on land being mortgaged by its local
M.P. The final picture of a neo-colonial Kenya controlled by an
intricate network of foreign capital and its local agents is set.
14
Though all the suspects are shown to have sufficient motives for
the killing, Munira turns out to be the one who set the fire. Motivated
by religious zeal and, implicitly, by the psychological void that
results from his refusal to commit himself to anything, Munira finally
yearns to belong and comes to see Wanja's whorehouse as the source of
all evil, the Babylon of Ilmorog. He believes that the land must be
purified by fire. Before the fatal fire, Wanja, who had already made
preparations to murder all three of the victims, in fact manages to
eliminate Kimeria by her own hand. This fact remains unknown to Munira
and the investigating officer.
Munira is arrested. Abdulla and Wanja are to be released. Wanja,
after having slept with all of the story's male protagonists, finds
herself pregnant with Abdulla's child. Karega remains in prison, but he
is assured of the strong support of the members of his union. He learns
of new freedom fighters taking to the woods to organize an eventual
assault on the citadel of oppression, exploitation and injustice.
John Ernst Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck was born in February 27th, 1902 in Salinas,
California, of Irish-German ancestry. Since his mother was a
schoolteacher, he came early to books, but the countryside claimed him
more than formal studies. He graduated from Salinas High School and
later enrolled at Stanford University, where he failed to obtain a
degree.
15
Steinbeck was definitively educated by the events of the thirties,
which brought abysmal poverty and misery to millions of people.
Steinbeck portrays this in his engaged fiction, three or four novels out
of the seven novels he wrote during the depression. Whereas his earlier
stories and novels are generally set in his native state and describe
the lives of those working on the land with realism and compassion, his
committed fiction of the thirties shows more concern with the suffering
in society. Steinbeck's later fiction shows a wane in his commitment.
However, neat categorization is misleading as Steinbeck is a somewhat
politically ambivalent writer, as ambivalent as the reality that formed
him. It may sometimes be difficult to reconcile his stated anti-
collectivist stand and his veneration of the individual with his strong
belief in universal brotherhood, and his stand against large ownership
in favor of smaller private businesses with his hatred of the banking
system. Such paradoxes may be better understood when we realize that
all of us, including Steinbeck, are capable of embracing two or more
contradictory notions at the same time. Nevertheless, his is a
philosophy that sees human nature in terms of spiritual and material
characteristics, both of which connect humans to each other and to the
earth.
Steinbeck's beginning was as a biologist. His preoccupations as a
scientist greatly influenced his literary career. According to Sylvia
Cook, these preoccupations sustain Steinbeck's fiction both in its
philosophy and its approach at a time of "social upheaval, at the heart
of the Depression's last class war. ,,20Sylvia Cook also explains how
16
Steinbeck's biological studies took both human and political dimensions
and led to three main issues of importance in his fiction. The first
issue is "the group man or phalanx" theory, which takes meaning in the
society of the thirties "as the clash of totalitarianism and
individualism and of communal and selfish behavior." The second issue
has to do with the scientific approach to his material, an approach that
makes him see "the advantages and disadvantages of non-teleological
thinking" that variously manisfests itself "in the clash between
traditional patterns of American pragmatism, of limited and non-
idealistic thinking, and the need for a more encompassing solution to
the social crisis of the 1930s." The third issue, Cook sees as
Steinbeck's "holistic sense of the unity and interdependency of all life
f d h
.. ,,21
orms an t
Steinbeck is best known as a novelist, but he is also known for
what Tetsumaro Hayashi calls, "his wide-ranging activities
as ... dramatist, as journalist/reporter and diarist, as social essayist,
political commentator and screenwriter, and as folklorist. ,,22
Between 1929 and 1939, Steinbeck published seven books, of which
three novels (In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath and to some
extent, Of Mice and Men) directly concern the socio-political issues of
the Depression. The issues of discrimination that have plagued American
society for four centuries and became all the more excruciating at the
time Steinbeck was writing, may only have appeared in his general call
for brotherhood and understanding, but never became central to his
writing.
17
The novel that gained him universal popularity is The Grapes of
Wrath, which won the Pulitzer prize, the highest American literary
honor, in 1939. Steinbeck was later awarded the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1962. In his Nobel acceptance speech, Steinbeck stated
that the writer is
Charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures,
with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams
for the purpose of improvement ... Furthermore , the writer is
delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity
for greatness of heart and spiritual gallantry in defeat,
for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war
against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally
flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who
does not passionately believe in the man
has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
This optimism and belief in the perfectibility of human beings, made at
the end of his literary career and almost at the end of his life (he
died in 1968), constitutes perhaps Steinbeck's literary manifesto.
Steinbeck's general message about universal brotherhood and
commitment, or his attitude to human beings and nature, are not entirely
novel in American literature. In fact, due to the existence of such
echoes, many a critic has been tempted to identify Steinbeck closely
with this or that patron or literary current. Frederick F. Carpenter,
for example, sees in The Grapes of Wrath "the mystical transcendentalism
of Emerson ... the earthly democracy of Whitman and the pragmatic
24
instrumentalism of William James and John Dewey." Warren French, a
notable critic of Steinbeck, cautions us against any such easy linkages,
reasoning that such assumptions lead to what Whitman warned against when
he stated that "two men may independently develop the same ideas from a
18
sympathetic reading of Nature and observation of their
fellowmen.,,25Talking about the very complex nature of Steinbeck's
possible sources and borrowings in The Grapes of Wrath, DeMott believes
these "came from a constellation of artistic, social and intellectual
sources so varied no single reckoning can do them justice.,,26
Synopsis of The Grapes of Wrath
The novel starts with a worsening drought that spells impending
disaster for the people of Oklahoma. We first meet Tom Joad hitch-
hiking home on parole from the state prison, where he has served four
years of a seven-year sentence for manslaughter. A truck driver takes
him to the road leading to his parents' farm. As he is walking the rest
of the way home, he encounters Jim Casy, a former preacher, who informs
him that he (Casy) has discarded orthodox religion and has come to the
belief that all things are holy. On reaching the Joad family home, they
discover it deserted by all its inhabitants except Muley Graves. The
latter informs them that Tom's folks have all gone to Uncle John's to
prepare to leave for California.
At Uncle John's, Tom finds his family in hectic preparation for
the trip west, where they expect to find work, food, and a home, since
the banks and large companies have taken over the land from the indebted
small Oklahoma farmers. The Joads slaughter their pigs and auction off
their other belongings, getting only eighteen dollars for them. The
former preacher, Jim Casy, is democratically accepted as a new member of
the Joad family. But when the time comes for their departure, Grampa
19
Joad refuses to leave the land that is part and parcel of his life, and
has to be drugged before being taken away. Thus starts the westward
journey of one of the Oklahoma dispossessed families on Highway 66,
desperate but hopeful of finding a better condition in California.
When they stop for the night, Grampa Joad dies and is buried with
the help of another migrant family, the Wilsons. Granma is also to die
a few days later, during the journey across the desert. Before reaching
California, the Wilsons, who are now travelling with the Joads, have to
stop because Mr Wilson is seriously ill.
In California, disillusionment sets in: they meet thousands of
other migrant families in filthy camps, callously exploited and
maltreated by unscrupulous contractors, and cowed into submission by
local law enforcement agents. In one such camp, to prevent Tom's being
arrested as a "red," Casy intentionally provokes the pursuing agent and
has himself arrested instead. After moving to a well-run government
camp, the Joads have to move on in search of work since they are out of
money and food.
They manage to find work picking peaches, but have to be escorted
by policemen onto the farm premises across angry picket lines. Later
Tom slips out to investigate and sees Casy, now released from jail and
apparently the leader of the strike, killed by a deputy. In anger, Tom
kills the deputy and goes into hiding not far from where the family is
working. Eventually, he is made to leave the place altogether because
it has become too risky for him, but as he departs, Tom pledges to fight
for justice everywhere.
Meanwhile, Rose of Sharon, the Joads' daughter, whose husband
deserted her, gives birth, but the child is stillborn.
looking for shelter from the flood waters, the Joads
where they find an old man slowly starving to
man, Rose of Sharon suckles him from her full breas
20
21
Notes
1. Steinbeck, in a self-created interview for Joseph Henry Jackson's
syndicated NBC radio program, in Working Days: The Journal of the Grapes
of Wrath, ed. Robert DeMott (Ohio: Viking Penguin Inc., 1989), p. xxi
2. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press,
Inc., 1966), p. 167.
3. The Portable Steinbeck, rev., selected, and introduced by Pascal
Covini, Jr (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. xxi. All page references
will be from this edition.
4. Abderrahmane Arab, Politics and the Novel in Africa (Alger: Office
des Publications Universitaires, 1982), p. 7.
5. Ibid., p. 5. Arab also points out the overriding concern of
African literature with socio-political and economic issues; brings out
the affinities among the novels written in the various parts of the
African continent; and discusses the characteristic relation between the
European and the African novel.
6. I have chosen not to use the tilde, - (as in Ngugi or in wariiga)
throughout the rest of my thesis.
7. Pascal Covini, Jr, The Portable Steinbeck, p. xxi.
8. Robert DeMott, Working Days, p. xxiii.
9. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language
in African Literature (London: Heinemann, 1986), pp. la, 11. All page
references to this work are from the same edition.
la. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean
Literature, Culture and Politics (London: Heinemann, 1972), p. 146. All
page references to this work are from the same edition.
11. Ibid., p. 146.
12. Ibid., p. 148. The debate led to the "establishment of two
departments: Language and Literature. In both, African languages and
literature were to form the core" [po 150].
13. Peter Nazareth's book on literary criticism, Literature and Modern
Africa, was published at the same time as Ngugi's book. Publishers
consider Taban Lo Liyong's The Last Word (1969) as the first book of
literary criticism by an East African author.
22
14. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in
Neo-colonial Kenya (New Jersey: African World Press, 1983), pp. 41, 45.
All page references are from this edition.
15. Homecoming, p. 31.
16. Decolonizing the Mind, p. xiv. Ngugi goes on to explain that his
choice is "part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles of Kenya
and Africa peoples" [po 28].
17. Peter Nazareth has informed me that Ngugi indicates in one of his
recent books that there was a very prolific Kenyan novelist who wrote in
Gikuyu before him (Ngugi) and whose works were frequently banned by the
colonial rulers.
18. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "Life, literature and a longing for home," The
Weekend Guardian, Saturday-Sunday, 27-28 May, 1989. Ngugi also talks
about reports that when the novel appeared in 1986, President Moi
actually ordered the arrest of Matigari (the character) when he heard
that the latter, thought by him to be a flesh-and-blood Kenyan, was
going about the country talking about truth and justice.
19. A. Arab, Politics and the Novel in Africa, p. 37.
20. Sylvia Cook, "Steinbeck, the People, and the Party," in Steinbeck
Quarterly, 15 (1982): 12.
21. Ibid., p. 13.
22. Tetsumaro Hayashi, "Why is Steinbeck's Literature Widely Read?" in
Steinbeck Quarterly 13 (1980): 21-22.
23. The Portable Steinbeck, p. 691.
24. Frederick F. Carpenter, "The Philosophical Joads," in A Casebook on
The Grapes of Wrath, ed. McNeil Donohue (New York: Crowell Company,
1968), p. 80. All page references to this work are from the same
edition.
25. Warren French, John Steinbeck (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975), p.
100. All page references to this work are from the same edition.
26. DeMott, Working Days, p. xlv.
23
CHAPTER I
THE NOTION OF LITERARY COMMITMENT
The debate about the social relevance of art centers on whether
art should or should not be oriented toward fulfilling objectives deemed
non-literary, and on whether the artist should explicitly want to
influence his or her audience one way or another. To the advocates of
art for art's sake, all art needs to be set free and should serve no
other purpose than that of "art." A literary work that is socially
involved, especially when it is politically so, is seen as lacking in
artistic merit. For them, socio-political partisanship simply prevents
the writer from attaining any artistic dimension, for this limits his or
her perspective, leads to propaganda and to the pretentious belief in
the possibility of communication, and the denial of the relativity of
all truth and meaning in our modern world.
These "new moralists," according to Gerald Graff, see as bad all
art that is representational or meaning oriented, whereas good art deals
with: creation, text as an indeterminate "invitation," voyages into the
unforeseen, risk, truth as invitation or fiction, and meaning as
1
process. To these modern theorists, reality takes its order from
consciousness and not the other way round, in the same sense that
24
reality exists only as inchoate raw material for art to mould according
to its own designs. As Graff sees it, this trust in the 'constitutive
power of literature to impose order, value, and meaning on the chaos and
fragmentation of the industrial society ... is marked by the desire to
remain invulnerable to critical analysis. ,,2
But the attempt at divorcing literature from society only serves
to dramatize "the social ambivalence of the modern literary
intellectual," who joins the bourgeois position from which he or she
pretends to recoil, by having the illusion that he or she can fashion an
inner dwelling-place away from an increasingly insane reality. In the
process, this attitude actually transforms itself into a 'utopian
politics' as it is devoid of content or direction. Apart from this open
contradiction, Graff believes that the social 'mooring' of literature is
of utmost importance, for without it "the fictional imagination" not
only tends to go "slack," but
indulges in a freedom of infinite fabulation that is
trivializing in that the writer is not taken seriously
enough to be held accountable to an external standard of
truth ... This critical permissiveness has the short-run
virtue of protecting works whose lack of serious 3
intellectual content would otherwise be all too obvious."
Literature cannot be evaluated in a void, just as we cannot
overlook the fact that the literate object is produced by an individual
who lives in society and uses a social medium of communication,
language, both of which influence and are influenced by him or her.
Even more, communication implies the notion of meaning or message.
Trinh T. Minh-Ha is aware of this when she says the following:
2S
To write is to communicate, express, witness, impose,
instruct, redeem, save--at any rate to mean and to send out
an unambiguous message. Writing thus reduced to mere
vehicle of thought may be used to orient toward a goal or to
sustain
4
an act; but it does not constitute an act in
itself.
Boris Suchkov both emphasizes the centrality of social reality in
literature and the importance of realist literature in our understanding
of society:
The study of social relationship is a fundamental
ideological and aesthetic task for literature whose aim is
to understand and take cognizance of life. Realist
literature, by studying these relationships in their
movement and development ... relating them with the social
order that has conditioned this or that form of human
relations, has been revealing the specific features of
society, actual characteristics of a particular social
structure and of the changes that have taken place in it, or
in progress, or are likely to take place ... At the same time,
profound investigation of society, its conflicts and
contradictions, provides the key to cognizance of man
himself, in allsthe complexity of his personal and social
manifestations.
The notion of commitment not only relates with the above mentioned
social relevance of art and with realism which, according to Georg
Lukacs, "is the basis of all literature [and of] all styles,,,6 it also
has to do with the writer's awareness of the human plight and with his
or her choice and partisanship. Ngugi's or Steinbeck's response is not
a fanatical faith in a monolithic holy cause, but an overriding concern
in the face of human degradation which is essentially humanitarian.
Perhaps their degree of commitment is established by their humanity.
For example, DeMott explains how Steinbeck was so shocked by the extent
of the suffering he saw at a migrant camp that he "gave his novel (The
Grapes of Wrath) a specific human context, a felt emotional quality all
26
his earlier versions lacked. ,,7Steinbeck is even quoted as having
expressed his shock in terms of actual physical pain: "something hit me
and hit me hard for it hurts inside clear to the back of my head. I got
pains all over my head, hard pains. Have never had pains like this
8
before."
However, a compromise between a socially oriented art and pure
aestheticism is available to those who hunt for it, such as Iredell
Jenkins' stand in The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, where he
postulates that literary commitment and a belief in art for art's sake
may not be irreconcilable opposites. Considering the two philosophies
to be half-truths which need each other to be complete, Jenkins believes
art for art's sake is "necessary to preserve the independence of the
artist and the integrity of the artistic enterprise. But its other half,
which is the idea of art for life's sake, is equally necessary to
guarantee the integration of the artist into his society and hence the
meaningfulness of his art. ,,9Such a compromise is uncalled for, when we
are convinced that social relevance and aesthetic values are fundamental
to art.
Whatever we may say about the limitations of literary commitment,
no artist or novelist worthy of the name would limit him/herself to
cataloguing facts, or to voicing morality and political slogans as if
from the Deacon's pulpit or the politician's balcony. That is why
Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, and why his pamphlet, "Their Blood
is Strong," which deals extensively with the migrant problem, did not
suffice for him. Steinbeck even found a satiric treatment of the
27
problem quite inadequate and destroyed "L'Affaire Lettuceberg, " "a
vituperative satire aimed at attacking the leading citizens of Salinas,
'the committee of seven,' who organize and direct the ignorant army of
vigilantes." Steinbeck explains his decision thus:
This book is finished and it is a bad book and I must get
rid of it. It can't be printed. It is bad because it isn't
honest. Oh! these incidents all happened but I'm not
telling as much of the truth about them as I know. In
satire you have to restrict the picture and I just can't do
satire ... My whole work drive has been aimed at making people
understand each other and then I deliberately write this
book the aim 0towhich is to cause hatred through partial
understanding.
The central point of my argument is that literature as a way of
both looking at and interpreting the world does not and cannot exist in
the abstract, divorced from what it is trying to describe. Even looking
is not an activity performed outside political struggle, institutional
structures, or a given position. Rather, the nature and quality of the
picture obtained arises from all these, just as these aspects express
d b d h 1 f 1
llN' d f' f
an em 0 y t e va ue 0 e art as a "way 0
seeing or apprehending the world of man a.nd nature through visual, sound
and mental images." He compares the artist to a person holding a
mirror; the images depend on the quality of the mirror, the position
chosen by the holder, or on other limiting factors related to the
"margin of natural, economic, political, social and spiritual freedom
. th' h' h h l' ."12
w t e exp orer
In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Steinbeck gives his
understanding of the necessity of literature in society. According to
him, literature
28
was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical
priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches--nor is
it a game for the cloistered elect, the tin-horn mendicants
of low-calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It
grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except
to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers
are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their
functions, their duties
13
their responsibilities have been
decreed by our species.
At the same time as we see the necessity of commitment, our
consideration of the notion must take into account the shifting nature
of the phenomena to which the artist may be committed. Jean-Paul
Sartre, the "father of litterature engagee, " notes that unbridled
Marxist optimism can no more successfully resolve this problem than can
a placid philosophy of "quietism":
I shall always count upon my comrades in arms in the
struggle, in so far as they are committed, as I am, to a
definite, common cause; and in the unity of a party or a
group which I can more or less control ... but I cannot count
upon men whom I do not know, I cannot base my confidence
upon human goodness or upon man's interest in the good of
society, seeing that man is free and that there is no human
nature which I can take as foundational. I do not know
where the Russian revolution will lead ... I cannot affirm
that this will necessarily lead to the triumph of the
proletariat: I must confine myself to what I can see ... Does
that mean that I should abandon myself to quietism? No.
First I ought to commit myself and then act my commitment,
according to the time-honored formula that 'one need not
hope in order to undertake one's work.' Nor does this mean
that I should not belong to a party, but that I should be
without illusion and that I should do what I can ... Quietism
is the attitude of people who say, 'let others do what I
cannot do.' The doctrine I am presenting ... is precisely the
opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality
except in action. It goes further indeed, and adds, 'Man is
nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far
as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else u t l ~ h
sums of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.'
29
In the above quote, Sartre's philosophy of commitment shows that
the value of understanding human beings and, for that matter, literature
as a social institution, is not that it provides us with the ability to
prescribe a future course of action, but that it can be liberating by
forcing us to realize that we will make that future. In a similar vein,
Lionel Trilling deplores what he calls the death of will in the American
novel--"the religious will, the political will, the artistic
will ... surely the great work of our time is the restoration of the
011 ,,15
.
Perhaps Frantz Fanon refers to these important notions of
awareness, choice, and the necessity for a constant reappraisal of the
situation, when he calls on the African intellectual to
join the people in that fluctuating movement which they are
just giving shape to, and which, as soon as it has started,
will be the signal for everything to be called in question.
Let there be no mistake about it; it is this zone of occult
instability where the people dwell that we must come; and it
is there that our souls are crystallized and that oUf6
perceptions and our lives are transfused with light.
In his particularly African context, where oppression, atrocities
and human degradation are the common features of the day, Ngugi believes
the appropriate response is determination and even defiance on the part
of the writer. In the process, the writer must break out from what
Ngugi calls "the culture of silence and fear." Quite aware that the
precarious lives of the people and the instability of the situation have
instilled fear in both ruled and rulers, Ngugi is convinced that the
writer's advocacy of an alternative position of change will strengthen
30
the people's aspiration for it, while increasing the anxiety of the
masters:
Our pens should be used to increase the anxieties of all
oppressive regimes. At the very least the pen should be
used to 'murder their sleep' making them know that they are
being seen. The pen may not always be mightier than the
used in the service of truth, it can be a mighty
force.
In a similar, but larger, context Steinbeck is aware of the
"universal physical fear" engendered by the "gray and desolate time of
confusion humanity has been passing through," the effect of which has
created the illusion that "there were no longer problems of the spirit,
so that only the human heart in conflict with itself seemed worth
writing about." Like Ngugi, whose awareness of the problems inherent in
neo-colonialism involves a willingness to change that negative reality,
Steinbeck believes that the understanding and the resolution of the fear
in contemporary society
Steinbeck and Ngugi are prominent because
concern for the human plight and both, in their
for
for resolving it remain more abstract than is P,
-::
revolutionary because of their belief that such negative reality can be
changed and also because of their versatile styles that allow no
obsolescence. Their works show individual characters evolving in the
context of the larger American and African societies that they
themselves inhabit. In Ngugi, I see an increasing commitment to socio-
cultural and political issues typical of Third World writers, whose
31
partisanship with the oppressed is described by Peter Nazareth: "To
belong to the Third World is ... to accept an identity, an identity with
the wretched of the earth spoken for by Fanon, to determine to end
1
. d . ,,19
exp oitation an oppression.
Ngugi's fiction is so closely tied to the details of the life and
the struggle of the people of Kenya that he constantly projects the
reality of their underdevelopment and the necessity of change.
Paradoxically, it is this national consciousness that gives Ngugi's
writing its universal stamp. As Fanon reminds us, "the consciousness of
self is not the closing of a door to communication ... National
consciousness, which is not nationalism, is the only thing that will
. . . 1 d' . ,,20
N
., k f
give us an internationa imension. gugi seen awareness 0 great
suffering of the majority of his people certainly explains his constant
attack or denunciation of neo-colonialism, exploitation and dependence.
Similarly, Steinbeck shows a correspondence between his fictional
world and the American social reality. The novel, Henry James tells us,
"is a personal. .. a direct impression of life: that, to begin with,
constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the
intensity of the impression.,,21To Steinbeck, the historical reality
that touched him the most, or that sene the strongest shock wave to
Americans of his time is the Depression years, with their accompanying
train of natural and human-made calamities: drought, dust bowls, crop
failure, evictions, misery, death.
32
However, unlike the African context, where the concern has much
more to do with how to rid society of a parasitic system (neo-
colonialism), or with how to produce more, and in spite of the legacy of
the Depression, the major problem in American society is how to
distribute the goods so as to remove the threats of starvation--why must
children be malnourished when fruits are dumped to raise prices? In a
sense, Steinbeck lifts the whole economic debate from the realm of
imperative and inevitable laws of supply and demand into the arena of
what we may call humanism; for Ngugi, the economic debate is at the very
heart of his works, concerned as he is with neo-colonialism,
exploitation, poverty, dependence.
To both Steinbeck and Ngugi, commitment is certainly a matter of
consciousness and an imperative call of conscience. But their position
in different social settings (one in the poor Third World and the other
in the affluent First World), inevitably creates differences not only in
their form of commitment but also in the way of diagnosing the problems
and the solutions offered. For example, it is Steinbeck's great
optimism and belief in the intrinsic goodness of human beings (important
components of the American democratic ideal) that leads him to advocate
a necessary solidarity across class lines, in contrast to the class
struggle with the have-nots pitted in mortal combat against the haves
that Ngugi projects. Now, this manner of combatting individualism is,
as Alexis de Tocqueville tells us, particularly American. De
Tocqueville calls it the "Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest" and
33
notes its basic philosophy: "man serves himself by serving his fellow-
creatures." Though this doctrine is not peculiar to America, "it has
become popular there; you may trace it at the bottom of all their
actions ... It is as often to be met on the lips of the poor man as of the
rich. ,,22De Tocqueville, then shows the importance of this doctrine
thus:
The principle of interest rightly understood produces no
great acts of self-sacrifice, but it suggests daily small
acts of self-denial. By itself it cannot suffice to make a
man virtuous, but it disciplines a number of citizens in
habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight,
self-command; and, if it does not lead men straight to
virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in that
direction by their habits. If the principle of enlightened
self-interest were to sway the whole moral world,
extraordinary virtues would doubtless be more rare; but I
think ~ gross depravity would then also be less
common.
As Patrick Talbot says, such a philosophy also participates in the
liberal credo according to which Americans consider individual or
private initiatives more effective and rewarding than those coming from
a central government.
24
But Steinbeck was writing at a time when the
principle of "enlightened self-interest" had almost entirely eroded, and
individualism had become egoism of the worst type.
Describing the Great Depression, in his perceptive book about the
general intellectual climate of the thirties, Richard H. Pells likens it
to an earthquake both in effect and magnitude, at a time when a crude
form of individualism had resurfaced in American society:
The Depression meant more than the simply the failure of
business; it was to many people an overwhelming natural
catastrophe, much like an earthquake that uprooted and
destroyed whatever lay in its path. Men became preoccupied
with floods, dust storms, and soil erosion not only because
34
these constituted real problems but also because they were
perfect metaphors for a breakdown that appeared more
physical than social or economic. It gave Americans the
feeling that their whole world was literally falling
apart ... It propelled the individual into a void of
bewilderment and terror ... What stood on the way was not so
much class divisions as the old nemesis of cultural lag:
Americans ... adhered to an outmoded individualism, a refusal
to see that personal freedom was impossible without social
cohesion, an unwillingness to surrender the dream of success
for the more vision of a harmonious and stable
commonwealth.
Though constantly committed to the plight of the underdog, Steinbeck
lacks the acute socio-cultural and political partisanship of Ngugi. He
has repeatedly shown his aversion to political ideologies, which he
believes deprive people of their individuality, and actually considers
communism jointly with industrialization as human beings' most dangerous
threat, a threat he is determined to fight:
There are monstrous changes taking place in the world,
forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of
these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but
because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold
good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than
one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better
than one man ... In our time mass or collective production has
entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion,
so that some nations have substituted the idea collective
with the idea God. This in my time is the danger ... Our
species is the only creative species, and it has only one
creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a
man ... And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the
group have declared a war of extermination on that
preciousness, the mind of man ... And this I must fight
against: any idea, or government which limits or
destroys the individual.
What comes out of the above quote is Steinbeck's fear that
collectivism will become so authoritarian as to encroach on individual
initiative and, in the long run, lead to totalitarianism and to the
35
reinforcement of an established order of things. The quote also brings
out Steinbeck's ambiguous stand, for he is neither an orthodox
individualist nor a radical celebrapt of collectivism. If anything, he
draws from all sides. To use Pells' description of the American
intellectual of the thirties, it is Steinbeck's use of "private thought
and collective action, individual freedom and the search of
community,,,27and his ability to be both a detached artist and an

involved journalist, that mark him out as versatile writer.
A
Commitment in African Literature
In dealing with African literature, it seems important to dwell a
little longer on the question of commitment, for many critics tend to
downgrade this literature for its social emphasis. These critics have
advocated a literature uncontaminated by a concern for the socio-
political problems arising from the African colonial past. An English
critic objected to the concern with the "situation of the individual
writer at a particular moment in space and time." The revolutionary
poetry of David Diop gave this critic the opportunity of pressing home
his stand: "The agonies described were real enough under primitive
colonialism. But they are not experienced by David Diop himself. His
passion is genuine enough, but it is vicarious passion. He is not
leading us into the heart of an immediate situation, but lecturing us
from the public platform. ,,28To deny the artist any use of the past and
to judge the merits of art by the immediacy of the writer's experience
ignores the fact that literature deals not only with perceptions about
36
what is, but also about what is possible. It also leads to negative
aesthetics whose secrets are known by individuals like John Nagenda.
Actually, Nagenda is one of the rare African writers who has chosen to
glorify the elect personality of the artist against the common mass.
Here is how he justifies his peculiar stand:
As far as I am concerned, my part in society is not
necessarily to make the society better than I found it, that
is a good bonus, but essentially all I care about as an
individual, as a writer ... is that I have an individual
capacity ... to live my life in this world before I die. And
anything, whether it be something less than that, anything
that stands in the way of myself having this experience of
what is around me I must consider to be a buffer between
myself and the spontaneous enjoyment of life. And if it
came to a point at which all the rest of the world was being
murdered and I could escape to live in a cave and still
manage to find a private 'explosion
29
I would do that, and
to hell with the rest of the world.
Though the above quote is naively anti-social, it must be noted
that, under the pressure of social realities, Nagenda has recently
admitted the necessity for the African writer to be socially committed.
Actually, in his novel, The Seasons of Thomas Tebo (1986), Nagenda tells
the story of a character whose erotic life is interrupted by the social
realities; when he returns to his self-centered life, he feels self-
critical.
The issue of whether the African artist should or should not be
concerned with what is happening in society is essentially the same as
the art-for-art's-sake controversy. What lies behind the tendency to
denigrate African literature and the identification of commitment with
half-baked art is principally the critic's lack of insight into both the
37
driving force behind the different phases of African creative writing
and the particular position occupied by the artist in African society.
African creative writing is a fairly recent phenomenon which
developed during the last part of the colonial period, that is, in the
first half of the twentieth century. During this period and immediately
after the granting of formal independence in the sixties, African
creative writers, like the other nationalist leaders, were principally
concerned with denouncing the exploitative, destructive and dehumanizing
nature of the colonial system, while demanding the liberation of
Africans and the reassertion of their lost values. There was good
reason for this; the impact of colonialism on African societies not only
created political suppression but also the economic and psychological
dwarfing of the Africans, making it necessary to fight for their
cultural, social and political freedom in whatever way they knew best.
Various African writers have reflected this problem in a way that
shows their awareness of and commitment to the African predicament of
the time. From the beginning, as the Nigerian critic, Omafume F. Onoge,
says, it was "a literature using the weapons of words for the legitimate
defence of the African heritage." This political consciousness or
African confirmation crystalized into what became known as the Negritude
Movement. From this movements sprang up two subsidiary currents which
Onoge calls the "Revolutionary Affirmation" and the "Negritude
Realists." Whereas the revolutionary current demanded
from African social scientists ... analyses grounded in
historical materialism, revealing the exploitative nature of
capitalist imperialism and not metaphysical conjuring tricks
that were potential opiates crippling the will to
38
revolt ... [the main body of the Negritude Movement] never
strayed beyond the particular identity concerns of the
culturally uprooted black
3
setit bourgeois class that was
emerging in the thirties.
The problem with Negritude resided in the fact that instead of
being a means to an end, it soon became the end itself. In The Wretched
of the Earth, Frantz Fanon points out, among other things, the danger of
such a narcissistic fascination with the past, stressing the dynamic
nature of culture, and that the past can only be significant "when the
writer uses it with the intention of opening the future and as an
31
invitation to action and a basis for hope." In a similar note, Abiola
Irele points out how, by emphasizing the past for its own sake, the
philosophy of Negritude "tended to become alienating, in so far as it
ld 1 d
. 1 . ,,32
cou not ea on to s o c ~ c t ~ o n
The "Negritude Realists" believed that their cultural heritage
needed no apology. Like Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, they
aimed to portray traditional life faithfully, with the intention to
reassert their dignity, to correct colonial distortions and, in Achebe's
words, to show that "African people did not hear of culture for the
first time from Europeans."
Meanwhile, by the 1970's, the first decade of independence had
still not brought about a genuine transformation of African society.
With independence, the political terrain altered greatly, but this
change failed to lead to qualitative improvement in the lives of the
people. Various nationalist leaders virtually stepped into the shoes of
the departed colonialists, maintaining the same old system and only
39
introducing superficial changes as helpful as make-up to a leper. If
anything, these changes suited the ruling elite, working in league with
foreign powers who actually controlled the socio-economic policies of
African countries. The people, who had hoped to benefit from national
independence, continued to be exploited under a new and subtler form of
colonialism, neo-colonialism. Confronted with the old problem of
domination and exploitation under a new guise, the African writer
reacted in the same way as he had done under colonialism, but his
criticism is now against former nationalist leaders.
Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Prize laureate in literature,
predicted both this orientation on the part of the African intellectual
and the resultant estrangement between the "conscious" writer and the
ruling elite:
In new societies which begin the seductive experiment in
authoritarianism, it has become a familiar experience to
watch society crush the writer under a load of guilt for his
daring to express a sensitivity and an outlook apart from,
and independent of, the mass direction. The revolutionary
mood in society is a particularly potent tyrant in this
respect, and since the writer is sensitive to mood, he
respects the demand of the moment and effaces his definition
as a writer (that is, as a mere chronicler of events) by an
act of choice ... He therefore took his place in the new state
as a privileged person, placed personally above the effects
of the narrowness of vision which usually accompanies the
impatience of new nations, African, European, or Asian. He
becomes ~ special eye and ear, the special knowledge and
response.
At the same time, Soyinka inveighs against African writers
themselves, who could not escape the "narrowness of vision" in their
fascination with, and over-simplification of, the past; an attitude
40
which, he says, made it possible for the new leaders to consolidate
their position in society:
When the writer woke from the opium dream of metaphysical
abstractions, he found that the politician had used his
absence from earth to consolidate his position... when he is
purged from the long deception and has begun to express new
wisdoms, the gates detention fortresses open
up and close on him.
The prevailing situation in the seventies brought about further
deterioration in the African socio-economic fabric, so that Africa now
leads the world in poverty, starvation, and human suffering, resulting
from the greed and mismanagement of nepotistic, corrupt state
bureaucracies allied to foreign exploitative forces.
In the face of this state of affairs, the African literary world
once again evolved alongside the socio-political process of
clarification to the realization that the'he'ne,}'l wisdoms" must contain a
- V"l'

"definite vision." This vision Soy' defines ....
,J QJ 8p
: 1JoI {'Cl
a creative concern which conc ] actuality
beyond the purely narrative, la
beyond the immediately , a ch upsets
orthodox acceptances in an to free soJ y of
historical or other superstitiori's... hes.e- ualities
possessed by literature of a Revolutionary
writing is generally of this kind.
The critical attitude in this quote is unquestionably
revolutionary. However, in several other instances, Soyinka identifies
more with the critical realists, whose works are basically limited to
describing the noise and filth of neo-colonial society and,
consequently, exhibit a negative aesthetics in their inability or
41
refusal to come out with concrete social visions, that is, give a
perspective to their writings.
The difference between negative and positive aesthetics can
perhaps be demonstrated when, on the issue of whether the writer should
provide an alternative social perspective in his or her art, Wole
Soyinka places much more emphasis on criticism at the expense of an
alternative social pespective of art:
Both on the personal and collective levels, I have made
positive proposals for the direction in which I want the
country going. Having said that, however I will also state
categorically that the aim, the duty of the writer does not
necessarily involve making proposals, recommendations for
social direction. No. Criticism, when you say something is
negative ... that is also the beginning of construction... A
satirist, for instance is an iconoclast whose duty is to
destroy those social aspects of human conduct which are
not,. ,appropriate to the promotion of human welfare. So for
me he serves a very useful function, even if he never once
proposal for the amelioration of the human

Unlike Soyinka dislike of "dirigism" in the above quote, Georg
Lukacs sees the aesthetics of socialist realists in terms of its
"inside" or "concrete" perspective which, he says "involves an awareness
of the development, structure, and goal of society as a whole ... [but
this perspective] is a possibility rather than an actuality; and the
effective realization of the possibility is a complex affair,,,37 In this
quote, the important point is that the perspective of socialist realism
is predictive and not prescriptive. True enough, this positive future-
oriented perspective enables the writer to hint at existing but still
hidden social tendencies, and must not be assimilated with a
prescriptive view of human life, or a dogmatic ideological road-map for
42
society. The latter view necessarily entails utopic, prophetic, and
perhaps fatalistic notes that, in the process, deprive fiction of its
consciousness or its ability to describe the contingency of human
experience.
Unlike Soyinka, Onoge considers mere criticism as a form of
revisionism tantamount to advocacy of the status quo in Africa:
Critical realist literature on Africa often leaves us with
the implication that our crisis would be overcome if only
the right men--and decent men--manned the state apparatus.
If only the prime minister were an intellectual! If
only ... these are irrelevant ... moral effluvia ... Justice
becomes the right of the laborer to his shack and the right
of the business tycoon to his mansion. The right of the
laborer to the smoky Scania bU38co-existing with the right
of the tycoon to his Mercedes.
The implication of Onogers criticism is clear: just as reforming
the Apartheid system, short of destroying it, is utterly unacceptable,
so is any attempt to reform, or referee, a basically corrupt and unjust
social system founded on greed and irresponsibility. Furthermore,
though we might find Onoge's attitude toward the rich too
uncompromising, it must be pointed out that the ethical view underlying
this attitude is that wealth becomes perversion when the degree of its
enjoyment increases with the poverty of one's neighbor. If this
explanation still sounds moralistic-sentimental, we are reminded that,
though "literature is one thing and morality is quite a different one,
at the heart of the aesthetic imperative we discern the moral
imperative.,,39In the African context, most of these politician-business
43
tycoons were, as one of Achebe's characters characterised them, "ash-
mouthed paupers five years ago, but who had become near-millionaires
under our very eyes."
The socialist realist not only incorporates critical realism in
the way he or she wields the critical scalpel against the cancer in the
African body politic, but also surpasses critical realism in its
positive aesthetics and advocacy of fundamental social changes, changes
that would result from the necessary overthrow of an unjust,
exploitative way of life and unjust socio-economic order.
44
Notes
1. Gerald Graff, Literature Against Itself, Literary Ideas in Modern
Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 23. All
page references to this work will be from the same edition.
2. Ibid., p. 33.
3. Ibid., p. 209.
4. Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Women, Native, Other (Bloomington and Indiana:
Indiana University Press, 1989), p. 16.
5. Boris Suchkov, A History of Realism (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1973), p. 232.
6. Georg Lukacs, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (London: Merlin
Press, 1969), p. 48. All page references to this work will be from the
same edition.
7. DeMott, Working Days, p. xiii.
8. Ibid., p. xliii.
9. Iredell Jenkins, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), Vol. I, p. 110.
10. DeMott, Working Days, p. xl.
11. Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American
Fiction 1790-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 23.
12. Barrel of a Pen, p. 57.
13. The Portable Steinbeck, p. 690.
14. Jean-Paul Sartre, in The Modern Tradition, Backgrounds of Modern
Literature, ed. Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson, Jr (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 853-854.
15. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1979), p. 250. All page references to this work will be
from the same edition.
16. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 227.
17. Barrel of a Pen, p. 69.
18. The Portable Steinbeck, pp. 691-692.
45
19. Peter Nazareth, The Third World Writer (Nairobi: Kenya Literature
Bureau, 1978), p. xxi.
20. F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 247.
21. Henry James, The Art of Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press,
1948), p. 8.
22. John Stone and Stephen Mennel (eds.), Alexis de Tocqueville On
Democracy, Revolution, and Society, (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1980), p. 299. All page references to this work will be from the
same edition.
23. Ibid. J p. 300.
24. Patrick Talbot, "Qui subventionne la culture aux Etats-Unis?" Le
Monde diplomatique, aout 1990, p. 24.
25. Richard H. Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams (Middletown,
Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), p. 72. All page references are
from this edition.
26. The Portable Steinbeck, pp. 687-689.
27. Richard H. Pells, p. 149.
28. Marxism and African Literature, ed. Georg M. Gugelberger (New
Jersey: Africa World Press, 1985), p. 31. All page references to this
work will be from the same edition.
29. Per Wastberg (ed.), The Writer in Modern Africa, African-
Scandinavian Writers' Conference (Stockholm: The Scandinavian Institute
of African Studies, 1967), pp. 53-54. All page references to this work
will be from the same edition.
30. Omafume F. Onoge, "The crisis of Consciousness in Modern African
Literature: A Survey," in Marxism and African Literature, p. 27.
Further reference to Onoge will be from this work.
31. F. Fanon, p. 232.
32. Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology
(London: Heinemann, 1981), p. 141.
33. The Writer in Modern African State, African-Scandinavian Writers'
Conference, p. 15.
34. Ibid., p. 18.
46
35. Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge;
New York: Cambridge University Press), 1976, p. 66.
36. Wole Soyinka, in an interview with The Courier no. 102- March-April
1987, p. 4. On the issue of writing in African languages, Soyinka says
that without a continental language like Swahili for a 'one step
translation,' writing in an African language amounts to 'a withdrawal in
the cocoon of tribe.'
37. Georg Lukacs, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism, p. 96.
38. Onoge, p. 38.
39. Jean-Paul Sartre, What is Literature?, trans. Bernard Fretchman
(New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1965), p. 56. Further page references
will be from this edition.
47
CHAPTER 11
COMMITMENT IN NGUGI'S NOVELS
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o feels that the criticism of "a referee or an
interpreter, standing on the fence between the new men of power and the
people," is quite inadequate. He believes the committed African writer
"cannot leave things in the air without suggesting solutions;" for after
telling his society where it came from and where it is at present, he
must, as well, tell it where it is going. Such an artist is necessarily
one "with a questioning spirit, the trumpeter of possibilities of a
better social order. ,,lElsewhere, Ngugi shows how his firm attitude
basically derives from his keen awareness of, and determined reaction
to, the Kenyan neo-colonial predicament--the debilitating social climate
fostered by a corrupt ruling class, characteristic of modern Africa:
In the mentality of the Kenyan ruling class, to put Kenya
first; to love Kenya; to have faith in the capacity of the
people to change their lives; to insist that people are the
subjects and not the passive objects of development; to
insist on certain minimum professional ethics and democratic
principles; to reveal that ordinary peasants and workers
struggled for liberation; to sing praises to the Mau Mau
movement; to write positively about the anti-imperialist
heroes of Kenyan history ... ; to reject foreign bases; to
reject a society based on corruption; to reject the rule of
fear; to oppose imperialism and its local Kenyan allies, is
a crime. Above all, [to oppose] the slave philosophy of
nyayoism--that is, the mentality of always following ... ; the
48
policy of begging and charity; ... the chronic 2ependence
complex--is sedition, subversion and treason.
Ngugi is committed to the just cause of the oppressed group in
society, and ready to put forward solutions toward solving their
problems. And since the problems are basically political in nature, the
solutions cannot but be political and ideological. Like other African
writers, Ngugi's ideological stand has undergone a significant
evolution. Between 1964, when his first novel was published, and 1977,
when Petals of Blood saw the light of day, Ngugi's perspective has
developed from nationalist to revolutionary politics, from critical
realism to revolutionary art. And from the writer who was praised in
the sixties for writing novels critical of racism in the colonial
system, he became the detainee of Kamiti Maximum Security Prison in the
seventies, for his partisanship with the underprivileged, for writing in
a language understood by peasants, and for daring to question the very
foundation of imperialism and of foreign domination of Kenya (Barrel of
the Pen, p. 65). If we look closely at the ideas presented in Ngugi's
novels, from The River Between (written before 1963, published in 1965),
Weep Not, Child (1964), A Grain of Wheat (1967) and Petals of Blood
(1977), Ngugi's concern with the plight of the oppressed and his
constant search for a community spirit seem to emerge as the common
thread linking his novels. Besides, a careful study of both the texture
and structure of Ngugi's works reveal him to be an innovator always in
quest of more appropriate forms to express the very fluid contemporary
African experience.
49
The River Between
The River Between 3depicts the impact of colonialism, mainly
Christianity, on the Gikuyu traditional community. It dramatizes the
clash of Christianity vs. traditional religion and culture between the
two World Wars in the form of conflicts between the inhabitants of two
villages, one dominated by traditional culture, the other representing
the Christian-influenced culture that has begun to replace the
tradition. Placed in the middle of this conflict is Waiyaki, a
missionary-educated local leader, who vainly tries to reconcile the two
opposing sides through a symbiosis of Gikuyu tradition and Western
education.
In this novel, Ngugi answers two basic questions: What are the
roots of the African predicament? And what role can Africans with
formal education play in a divided society? These questions recall the
now-famous Achebean saying: the man who does not know where the rain
began to beat him cannot know where he began to dry himself. In Ngugi's
historical vision, the rain began to beat the African with the arrival
of missionaries, with the conversion of a handful of local inhabitants
to foreign ways, and the consequent confusion and contradictions that
resulted at both societal and individual levels.
Although the conflict between traditional and Christian-influenced
cultures is shown to have been triggered by external forces, The River
Between also hints at the latent conflict between the two ridges on
which the villages stand. The ridges, ironically, are both separated
and united by the Honia River: "When you stood in the valley, the two
50
ridges (Kameno and Makuyu) ceased to be sleeping lions united by their
common source of life. They became antagonists. You could tell this,
not by anything tangible but by the way they faced each other, like two
rivals ready to come to blows in a life and death struggle for the
leadership of this isolated region" [RB, p. 1]. This ambivalence between
antagonism and unity manifests itself when the reader is told that while
the seat of political power is in Makuyu, "spiritual superiority and
leadership had been left to Kameno" [RB, p. 2] In the past, the Gikuyu
from the two ridges managed to overcome their separation by symbolically
re-enacting their unity in ceremonies of circumcision on the banks of
river Honia.
The novel starts at a time when Christianity has caused one
village to abandon this practice, so that the Christian villagers on one
bank of the river are now in conflict with the traditional practices on
the other side. The entire communities of Kameno and Makuyu are thrown
into utter confusion. The gulf between them
the life-giving waters of river Honia become
and spiritual separation.
Almost a decade after writing The Rive
..::..:..:'-'.-..::..:....-....:::.;r7-'P"-"-'=
collection of essays dealing with the social
the fictional world of his first three
that even
impact of
Christianity on Kenyan society and the basic contradiction inherent in
colonialism and its religious ally, the Christian Church:
I say contradiction because Christianity, whose basic
doctrine was love and equality between men, was an integral
part of that social force--colonialism--which in Kenya was
built on the inequality and hatred between men and the
51
consequent subjugation of the black race by the white race.
The coming of Christianity also set in motion a process of
social change, involving rapid disintegration of the tribal
set-up and the frame-work of social norms and values by
which people had formerly ordered their lives and their
relationship to others. This was especially true ... where
the Church ... could not separate the strictly Christian dogma
or doctrine from the European scale of values, and from
European customs. The evidence that you were saved was not
whether you were a believer in and follower of Christ, and
accepted all men as equal: the measure of your Christian
love and charity was in preserving the outer signs and
symbols of a European way of life; whether you dressed as
Europeans did ... and of course whether you had refused to
have your daughter circumcised... So that in Kenya, while the
European settler robbed people of their land and the
products of their sweat, the missionary robbed people of
their soul. Thus was the African body and soul bartered for
thirty Rieces of silver and the promise of a European
heaven.
At the individual level, the basic contradiction revolves around
the missionary-educated headmaster whom the people look to for
leadership in their fight against the white man, but who turns out
ironically to be the person who poses an immediate threat to their
culture. Like the chief priest Ezeulu, in Achebe's Arrow of God, who
breaks ground by sending his son, Oduche, to join the missionaries in
the belief that this is a precautionary step suitable to a changing
world, Waiyaki's father, Chege, sends him to the mission school to get
the white man's education, which will later prove useful in their fight
against the white man's encroachment: "Arise. Heed the prophecy. Go to
the Mission place. Learn all the wisdom and all the secrets of the
white man. But do not follow his vices. Be true to your people and the
ancient rites" [RB, p. 20]. Though a little mechanistic in its concept
52
of learning, Chege's message recognizes that in order to combat an enemy
effectively, one must know his or her tactics.
Waiyaki obeys his father's command, goes to the missionary school,
acquires an education, and, by the time the division of the ridges is
well under way, is appointed headmaster on his side of the river. But
once he sets foot in the white man's school, Waiyaki's life is a series
of dilemmas: he finds good points in the white man's education and
religion, yet he remains convinced that "a religion that took no count
of a people's way of life, a religion that did not recognize spots of
beauty and truths in their way of life, was useless" [RB, p. 141]. At
the same time, he is unable to make his traditional followers see the
spots of beauty in the white man's religion; in similar fashion, he is
unable to define clearly his ambivalent stand to them. Between his
conflicting loyalties to his tribal customs and to the European
education, Waiyaki becomes the hostage of opposing sides, with the
individuality and freedom of action he clings to seriously clashing with
the commitment to communal salvation embodied in his messianic mission.
This series of contradictions materializes in his love affair with
the catechist Joshua's uncircumcised daughter Nyambura. If, as he
theorizes, his love affair is a symbolic gesture designed to lead to the
unification of the two antagonistic camps, he remains, however,
oblivious to the fact that such a union is unwanted by either side and
is therefore doomed from the start. Not only does it go counter to the
spirit of the traditional oath of purity he has taken, but he does not
realize that the ground has not been prepared for such a union--the
53
incompatibility of the two sides has actually increased. Furthermore,
such an unwanted union, had it taken place, would have violated the
spirit of traditional marriage, which is a union between two families or
clans rather than between two individuals.
The attempt to resolve the conflict between the Christian faith
and traditionalism is also treated in the tragic story of Muthoni,
Joshua's other daughter. Muthoni's decision to defy her father and have
herself circumcised in order to become "a woman, beautiful in the tribe"
[RB, p. 53] leads to her death when her wound refuses to heal. Even if
she dies with a vision of Jesus, as she tells Waiyaki minutes before her
death, her "martyrdom" apparently fails to bridge the gap but rather
exacerbates the existing poisoned social climate. It also becomes
subject to conflicting interpretations and appropriations. Her father,
after disowning her, sees her death as a sign of her spiritual
damnation: "anything cursed here on earth would also be cursed in
Heaven. Let that be a warning to those who rebelled against their
parents and the laws of God." To Chege, "this was a punishment to
Joshua. It was also a punishment to the hills. It was a warning to
all, to stick to the ways of the ridges, to the ancient wisdom of the
land, to its ritual and song" [RB, p. 54]. To the white missionaries,
it "confirmed the barbarity of Gikuyu custom" [RB, p. 55] and justified
their determination to wage war against this African traditional way of
life. As a result of this death, even Waiyaki becomes an object of
suspicion to the elders who question the wisdom of sending him to learn
the white man's ways: "the death of Muthoni had clearly shown that
54
nothing but evil would come out of any association with the new faith.
And Chege's son? The elders feared that Chege ought never to have
allowed him to be associated with Siriana, "that is, the missionary
school and religion" [RB, p. 58]. All these reactions illustrate the
impracticability, if not the impossibility, of trying to marry two
fundamentally irreconcilable sides, which should have been a warning to
Waiyaki.
The apparently detached witness to the unfolding conflict at both
individual and societal levels is the landscape with the River Honia
meandering across it. This landscape looms large in the setting and may
actually be seen as constituting a main character in its own right.
Ngugi himself changed the title of the novel from The Black Messiah to
its present one, The River Between. Having raised the landscape to the
status of character and thus stressing its importance, Ngugi is in fact
preparing us for its eventual loss--a loss which will contribute to
triggering the Mau Mau warfare dealt with in the next novel.
As Ngugi himself readily admitted during his Fall, 1986 visit to
Iowa, this first novel has its limitations. Not only is the treatment
of the central issues too general and vague, with the protagonist
tending to adopt a rather simplistic, elistist attitude toward finding
solutions to the problems of the people, but without giving due
attention to the content of Waiyaki's missionary education, Ngugi
actually creates a weak point about his protagonist's basic motivation.
As if critical of Waiyaki's education, Ngugi makes the following
statement in Homecoming:
55
Education was not an adequate answer to the hungry soul of
the African masses because it emphasized the same Christian
values that had refused to condemn (in fact helped) the
exploitation of the African body and mind by the European
colonizer. The first education given was merely to enable
converts to read the Bible,so that they could carry out
simple duties as assistants to the missionaries. As
education came later to be the ladder to better jobs and
money and to higher standard of living, albeit in the image
of the European mode of life, the Christian educated African
became even more removed from the ancestral shrines and
roots [po 32].
Waiyaki fails to understand that the cultural revolution that will
spring from his program of mass education cannot but be abortive if he
ignores the political side to it. Elsewhere, Ngugi admits that if he
were to write this novel again, he would probably not write it exactly
the same way, especially as regards his sympathy for Waiyaki.
The presumed weakness of the protagonist's motivation is less
important than Ngugi's artistry, his ability to handle richly suggestive
language and very complex images. For example, the inherent conflict
and yet necessary complementarity between the secular and the spiritual,
as manifested in the physical description of the two ridges, is
sustained by a series of other conflicts that clearly spell out the
social dimension of the problem: Waiyaki's timely intervention to stop
the fight between Kinuthia, the son of a traditionalist, and Kamau, the
son of a Christian convert, illustrates the prevalent antagonism between
the Church and tradition; it also foreshadows his messianic mission to
unite the two ridges. The symbolic importance of this intervention is
shown when Waiyaki rebukes his two friends and reminds them of the oath
of brotherhood binding them all: "Please stop this, Kamau. Didn't we
56
swear that we of the hills were comrades?" [RB, p. 5]. Though this
arbitrating stand remains throughout the rest of the novel, the
overriding attempt to bridge the rift in the Gikuyu community ends in
failure, a failure which probably reflects Ngugi's objective attempt to
come to terms with the complexity of the African experience. It is this
ability to remain faithful to the contingency of human experience and
the refusal to pursue oversimplified solutions that mark Ngugi out as a
great writer from the start.
Weep Not, Child
In Weep Not, Child,5Ngugi explores the African tragedy from the
standpoint of Njoroge, an African child, who lives in his little world
of innocence and illusion at a time of growing national unrest. The two
parts of the novel, 'Waning Light' and 'Darkness Falls,' deal
respectively with Njoroge's unbounded optimism in spite of the worsening
social climate and with the despair that overwhelms him when his dreams
are swept away on the outbreak of violence.
Like Waiyaki in the previous novel, Njoroge pins his hope on
formal education and, even more, believes that hard work and
righteousness are adequate solutions to the evils of his time:
Education for him, as for many boys of his generation, held
the key of the future ... Njoroge came to place his faith in
the Bible and with his vision of education life in the
future was blended a belief in the righteousness of God.
Equity and justice were there in the world. If you did well
and remained to your God, the kingdom of heaven would be
yours. The tribal stories told him by mother had strengthed
his belief in the virtue of toil and perseverance. His
belief in the future for his family and the village rested
then not only on a hope for a sound education but also on a
belief in a God of love and mercy, who long ago walked on
57
the earth with Gikuyu and Mumbi, or Adam and Eve [WNC, p.
45] .
Meanwhile, social tensions engendered by the widening class
differences between the rising, land-owning, collaborating black
bourgeoisie represented by Jacobo, and the dispossessed peasantry
represented by Ngotho (Njoroge's father) are exacerbated by an even more
exploitative and repressive colonial system represented by Howlands.
The small locale of The River Between has given way to a semi-urbanized
center with schools, a shoe factory, wage labor as well as unemployed
landless peasants.
The dramatic heart of the novel is the expropriation of peasants'
land. Even if the focus is limited to Njoroge's family, the general
implication of the problem is very apparent: Howlands' success in land-
grabbing stands for the systematic colonial policy that deprived
peasants of their land through trickery, treachery, or sheer banditry.
Ngugi gives us an insight into the socio-economic implications of this
policy in Homecoming:
The conflicts on the land of Kenya, at their most marked in
the relationship between the African and the European, have
operated on three planes: political, economic and cultural.
The white settler came early in the century and he
immediately controlled the heart of the economy by
appropriating the best part of the land to himself.
Alienation of land, after all, was then the declared British
colonial policy for the region which later became Kenya ... A
cultural assertion was an integral part of political and
economic struggle [po 26].
In Weep Not, Child, the dispossessed Ngotho tells his children
how, after being forcibly sent to fight in the white man's war (World
War I), he came back to find that his land had been confiscated and has
58
become the property of both Howlands and Jacobo. As a landless peasant,
he has been working in Howlands' plantation. It was, therefore, in a
gesture reminiscent of Waiyaki's father (Chege) that Ngotho sent his
son, Njoroge to school: "it would lead to the recovery of the land [WNC,
p. 39]. Like the other peasants, Ngotho also has his hope pinned on
their nationalist leader (Jomo Kenyatta), and they become increasingly
aware that they belong to the group of the exploited. Such an awareness
is shown in the short-lived strike they organized.
Initially called to obtain a livable wage, the strike becomes a
nationalist demand for freedom and a restoration of peasants' land; and
then turns into a duel between Ngotho and Jacobo, the representative of
business and the colonial system: To Ngotho, "Jacobo crystallized into a
concrete betrayal of the people ... the physical personification of the
long years of waiting, suffering. Jacobo was a traitor. Ngotho rose.
He was now near Jacobo ... then all of a sudden, as if led by Ngotho, the
crowd rose and rushed towards Jacobo" [WN, p. 59]. Ngotho becomes the
hero of the day, but he has lost his house in the process, as Jacobo
orders him to vacate his land. At this stage, Ngugi, the militant
writer and social critic out to dramatize the events that culminated in
the Mau Mau warfare, informs us of the arrest of nationalist leaders and
the sudden heightening of tension at the national level.
Events actually worsen from then on: Howlands becomes the new
District Officer, Jacobo is named his chief, and the animosity between
Ngotho and the chief fiercely boils to the surface; after the murder of
six natives, Teacher Issaka with all his Bible students (except Njoroge)
59
are rounded up and shot (actually, by colonial forces). Such horrors
make the people aware of the necessity to take up arms to defend
themselves and on to the ultimate determination to shed blood to regain
their land, freedom and dignity. With the radicalization of the
conflict, the colonial government declared the state of Emergency,
arrested and detained more nationlist leaders and "intensified its acts
of indiscriminate terrorism, thereby forcing many peasants and workers
to take to the forests. For about four years, these people, with little
experience of guerilla warfare, without help from outside powers,
organized themselves and courageously resisted the British military
forces" [Homecoming, p. 29].
All this strife only spurs Njoroge on in his optimistic view of
the future. He still believes education can change things, becomes more
faithful to his studies by successfully passing his final exam to
Siriana Secondary School and, with Mwihaki (Jacobo's schoolgoing
daughter), he is convinced of their being the future saviors: "the
country needs me ... we must get and rebuild the country ... the sun will
rise soon" [WNC, p. 106].
Njoroge's dreams are shattered when he is suddenly dismissed from
school, is accused of taking the Oath and tortured. The real issue is
that Jacobo has been found murdered and Ngotho's family become the
immediate suspects. Ngotho himself has been arrested and castrated on
Howlands' orders. At this stage, the social strife Njoroge had been
trying to avoid catches up with him and his escapist attitudes can no
longer provide him any protection: "the dreamer and visionary, who
60
consoled himself faced by the difficulties of the moment by a look of a
better day to come, is shocked and shown a different world from the one
he had believed himself living in" [WNC, p. 120].
Njoroge now entertains the romantic idea of running away from
Kenya with Mwihaki, the girl he has grown to love: "Mwihaki you are the
one dear thing left to me. I feel bound to you and I know that I can
fully depend upon you. I have no hope but for you, for now I know that
my tomorrow was an illusion... [WNC, p. 132-133]. Mwihaki turns down his
offer, finds it too easy a way-out and reminds him of their duty: "our
duty to other people is our biggest responsibility as grown men and
women" [WNC, p. 134]. Now aware of his isolation and overwhelmed by
despair, Njoroge decides to commit suicide, but is rescued by his
mother.
Despite Njoroge's initial claim that he was going to save the
community through his education, Weep Not, Child becomes the story of
the uncommitted individual, or better still, the individual committed
only to his selfish goals believing it possible to insulate himself from
society, but who is soon swept away by the social torrents he thought he
had carefully avoided. Communal realities ultimately overwhelm
Njoroge's individualistic or escapist tendencies. Njoroge's predicament
brings out the conflict between social commitment and the pursuit of
individualism in the African context, with the hopelessness of the
latter emphasized. About this conflict, Chidi Amuta has this to say:
Community ... is the prime absolute from which individual
experience derives and within which it acquires meaning and
significance in the African novel. This testifies to the
faithfulness of the African novel to the reality of
61
contemporary African experience. In spite of the advent of
Western education and urbanization, the primal levels of
social interaction are still the village, the extended
family, the clan etc, all of whigh presuppose the primacy of
community over individual whims.
Peter Nazareth points out Ngugi's committed stand and even-handed
treatment of material in this novel. Nazareth believes Ngugi's
commitment and advocacy of Mau Mau may be clouded to some critics
because of the writer's impartial portrayal of individual characters,
both African and European:
Weep Not, Child is not a partial novel; it does not show Mr
Howlands as a fiend or caricature but as a human being
caught up in a situation not of his own creation, just like
Ngotho and Njoroge. Ngugi's concern is for the lives of
individuals, whether Gikuyu or European; he shows the effect
of the Mau Mau movement on individual lives instead of
making an abstract statement such as could be made in a
political speech or a history book. But what view toward
Mau Mau emerges from this novel? .. Ngugi shows that however
great the tragedy brought into the lives of individuals,
this tragedy was caused by the conflict between the forces
attempting to maintain an unjust system and the forces
attempting to win justice; therefore Mau Mau wa
7
necessary,
and in so far as it was necessary, it was good.
Njoroge remains a child throughout the novel, and even if there
are hints of rebuke, as the imperative tone in the title may suggest,
there is still more sympathy and consolation in the maternal voice
calling on the child to stop weeping and come home.
A Grain of Wheat
A Grain of Wheat,8Ngugi's most ambitious work up to now,
portrays a world in which the struggle for independence is largely
completed, for we are now on the eve of Uhuru. Having emerged from the
horrors of the Emergency, the villagers of Thabai, a microcosm of Kenya,
62
have reason to replace the vision of apocalyptic destruction described
in Weep Not, Child with a more positive view of the future. In spite of
the optimism and euphoria that Uhuru evokes in the people, it also
conjures up soul-searching moments of self-reappraisals, with the past
projected large and casting its shadow on everybody. The memory of the
horrors of the past seems too fresh to be forgotten, the experience so
traumatizing and intricately woven into people's lives that it can
hardly be separated from the present: dispossession, Emergency, Mau Mau
struggles, the Oath, detention camps, suffering, death, betrayals of all
sorts, become the dominant motifs of A Grain of Wheat.
All the characters are portrayed as weighed down by the past.
Mugo is withdrawn and tortured by guilt, having committed treachery that
no one knows about. Githogo's mother is demented by grief, since her
only son was killed in the indiscriminate repression against Mau Mau
guerillas. Thompson, the notorious white district officer of Rira, is
nervous and disillusioned, ready to leave the country before it reaches
independence. Mumbi lives estranged from her husband, Gikonyo, having
apparently been unfaithful to him during his detention. A Grain of
Wheat becomes gradually a panoramic human drama of all races, with its
actors either faithful to or betrayers of oaths and causes, struggling
among themselves or against inborn contradictory forces. It is complex
and unorthodox in narrative technique, theme, and its exploration of the
human condition.
Initially, there is optimism about the coming Uhuru, but this
optimism is carefully tempered with a wary view that presents Uhuru only
63
as a potential and not to be taken in its final fulfilled state. The
epigraph of the novel introduces this potential in Biblical terms: Thou
fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. And that
which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body shall be, but bare grain,
it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain [I Corinthians 15:35].
The chapter in the Bible from which this quote is taken is St. Paul's
attempt to answer the Corinthians who had questioned the logic of the
resurrection of the body at the Second Coming. St. Paul speaks of the
fulfilment of the miraculous quality of that small particle of vegetable
substance which contains within itself the potential for development
into a complex system. Before unfolding into a plant that bears flowers
and fruit, the grain must die, otherwise it remains a single grain. In
Christian terms, the main emphasis is on the fulfilment of the seed's
potential, which materializes only through God's grace and the
Christian's readiness to play his part, that is, bear his or her own
cross. Unless both sides play their respective roles, the seed
accepting its death and the land nurtures, the seed will remain an
unfulfilled potential.
The theme of the development of the seed is clearly stated by the
narrator: "Waiyaki's blood contained within it a seed, a grain, which
gave birth to a political party whose main strength thereafter sprang
from a bond with the soil" [GW, p. 12]. The parallel between the Gikuyu
attachment to the land and the nourishment which the seed draws from the
soil is clear. The people here represent the land that nurtured the
grain of Waiyaki's patriotism and made it possible for it to develop
64
into a successful struggle for independence. But the work of the people
is far from over, for on the eve of independence, these same people must
now be ready to nourish the new seed into true freedom and nationhood
(just as it is they who have sustained the initial growth). And for
this, a new sense of commitment and sacrifice is expected, of reciprocal
give-and-take affair on a national scale, so that one generation draws
its sustainance from the previous one while preparing the ground for the
coming generation. Kihika, the charismatic Mau Mau leader, summarizes:
"In Kenya we want a death which can change things, that is to say, we
want a true sacrifice. But first we have to be ready to carry the
cross. I die for you, you die for me, we become a sacrifice for one
another. So I can say that you ... are Christ, I am Christ" [GW, p. 95].
While the people are implicitly asked to make new sacrifices to
realize the promise of Uhuru, the crucial question at this stage is
whether the people are actually reaping the benefits of Uhuru. In
answer to this question, Ngugi projects the point of view, not of the
new rulers, but of the peasants, the people who caused things to happen.
There is a hint that the peasants are already becoming disappointed with
the turn of events, even if dissatisfaction is not yet endemic. They
suffered in order to bring about the welfare of all, but with the first
signs of Uhuru, ministers have already lost interest in the people. The
M.P. of Thabai does not go home to celebrate Uhuru with the members of
his constituency, but stays in Nairobi. Gikonyo and his friends work
hard to raise money to buy a farm previously owned by a white settler,
but when they finally get the money, they realize that their M.P. has
65
overtaken them and bought the land for himself. As the unfulfilled
promises keep piling up, the people's awareness of being trapped in a
vicious circle increases until they "realize that blackness is not all."
Under colonialism you were rich because you were white, but now you are
white because you are rich.
Ngugi is intensely concerned with the necessity for the African to
be committed to the national cause, and the possibility that he or she
might betray this cause. In this novel, as in the two previous ones,
the symbol of commitment to the national cause is the taking of an oath.
This, Ngugi explains, "was not a simple avowal to attend a Sunday
afternoon picnic; it was a commitment to sabotage the colonial machine
and to kill if necessary. The oath, especially in its second and third
rounds, was tough and strong: to have taken it was a measure of one's
total commitment to the group and to the African cause" [Homecoming, p.
28]. The whole novel hinges on this important issue, principally in the
betrayal of Kihika, the Mau Mau leader, by Mugo, an uncommitted
individual. Ngugi's treatment of Mugo's treachery is a masterpiece in
the psychology of betrayal.
At the centre of the theme of betrayal is Mugo, the selfish man,
who wants to live in complete solitude, in his little world of peace and
tranquility. While his countrymen are engaged in bloody struggles to
rid their land of the white man's repressive and exploitative rule, Mugo
convinces himself that aloofness and non-involvement are the safest
policies. This conviction is further strengthened by his belief that
"if you don't traffic with evil, then evil ought not to touch you; if
66
you leave people alone, then they ought to leave you alone" [GW, p.
194] .
Mugo's withdrawal originates in his childhood experiences. His
parents died when he was young, there were no responsible close family
members, and he was raised by an old, filthy, drunken aunt who ill-
treated him. Raised in squalor, poverty, loneliness, and in a total
lack of tenderness, Mugo grows up firmly determined to succeed and break
out of this hellish situation. He believes that noncommitment to the
national cause will be his key to success. As a result, he develops a
sense of isolation so keen that he refuses to encounter people, avoiding
them by choosing an unused path across the fields toward Rungei, where
he has his hut.
Unfortunately, he is not to maintain this state for long, before
the external world, represented by Kihika, comes to disturb his peace.
Kihika, leader of the freedom fighters, had attacked and destroyed a
military garrison at Mahee. He has even killed the notorious District
Officer, Robson, and is being desperately sought by the local
authorities. At this point he takes refuge in Mugo's hut. In addition
to endangering Mugo's life by his mere presence, Kihika asks Mugo to
head a Mau Mau underground cell in the village and arranges a rendez-
vous in Kigenie Forest to discuss the matter.
Mugo's carefully protected, peaceful life is about to be
shattered. He is bitter and frustrated. However, he comes to the
conclusion that Kihika is trying to destroy him out of jealousy:
Why should Kihika drag me into a struggle and problems I
have not created? Why? He is not satisfied with butchering
67
men and women and children. He must call on me to bathe in
the blood. I am not his brother ... I have not done harm to
anybody. I only looked after my little shamba and crops.
And now I must spend my life in prison because of the folly
of one man IGW, pp. 194]!
To preserve the tranquility Kihika's intrusion threatens to
destroy, Mugo decides to betray the Mau Mau leader by revealing the
planned meeting: "For a week, he had wrestled with demons, alone in an
endless nightmare. This confession was his first contact with another
man. He felt deep gratitude to the white man ... who has lifted his
burden from his heart, who has extricated him from his nightmare" [GW,
p. 199]. His relief is short-lived and illusory, for another nightmare
begins as he is cast into a maelstrom of guilt engendered both by the
betrayal and a shocking discovery of the true nature of the white man.
The latter is skeptical and contemptuous of Mugo, and has him imprisoned
with the threat of having him hanged in case his information proved
false. Mugo is released after Kihika's arrest and execution. He
withdraws into his initial solitary state, but now it is a solitude of
suffering, the state in which we find him at the beginning of the novel,
with his tormented mind incapable of finding relief even in sleep:
Mugo felt nervous. He was lying on his back and looking at
the roof. Sooty locks hung from the fern and grass thatch
and all pointed at his heart. A clear drop of water was
delicately suspended above him. The drop fattened and grew
dirtier as it absorbed grains of soot. Then it started
drawing towards him. He tried to shut his eyes. They would
not close. He tried to move his head: it was firmly chained
to the bed-frame. The drop grew larger and larger as it
drew closer and closer to his eyes. He wanted to cover them
with his palms; but his hands, his feet, everything refused
to obey his will. In despair, Mugo gathered himself for a
final heave and woke up [GW, p. 1].
68
All this while, Mugo is considered a hero by the villagers. He is
known to have sheltered Kihika and is thought to have backed him in
radical nationalism. Moreover, Mugo is known to have saved a pregnant
woman (actually Kihika's intended wife) from the wrath of a homeguard.
This has resulted in his imprisonment and torture. In detention, Mugo
is admired for his courage; he is believed never to have betrayed the
Oath (which in fact he has never taken). The people praise and respect
Mugo, and want him to deliver a speech on Uhuru Day to honor those who
suffered or died fighting for the national cause--martyrs like Kihika.
Though Mugo knows he is not a hero, people think he is; and the
more he rejects the idea of speaking for them, the more people insist
that he lead them on the occasion of the great celebration. They praise
his humility, his selflessness and his courage. They send Mumbi, who
ironically is Kihika's sister, to try and convince the shy hero to heed
the people's call and speak for them on Uhuru day. By a strange
conjunction of events Mugo finds himself with the trust of the entire
community and particularly with the confidence of Mumbi and of her
husband. Gikonyo had previously visited Mugo not only to praise their
hero's courage during their detention, but also to reveal to Mugo that
he, Gikonyo had betrayed the Oath because of the love he had for his
wife, Mumbi. But Gikonyo is presently estranged from Mumbi and sick at
heart because he returned from detention to find his wife with the child
of Karanja, the Homeguard and his former friend and rival.
Mugo's meeting with Mumbi constitutes ones of the dramatic events
that ultimately lead him to his public confession at the end: Mumbi
69
resembles her brother and meeting her is like meeting Kihika from the
dead. Mumbi also informs the shy hero of the reason behind her
estrangement from her husband. In an attempt to bring their hero to
accept his public responsility and lead the celebration, Mumbi manages
to hold him in her mystical hypnotic power. To her horror and in a
manner reminiscent of a drugged individual, Mugo confesses:
I strangled him- I strangled him
It is not true- Wake up, Mugo- Kihika was hanged- listen and
stop shaking so. I saw him hang from a tree.
I did it! I did it! Ha! ha! Ha! That is what you wanted to
know. And I will do it again- to you- tonight [GW, p. 184].
Though Mumbi now knows, she does not reveal his treachery. Her
ability to forgive is further demonstrated by the letter she sends to
Karanja, the man generally believed to have betrayed Kihika, warning him
to leave town to avoid punishment as a traitor, previous to her meeting
with Mugo.
Mugo's secret confession to Mumbi has apparently lightened his
guilty conscience, and he is almost ready to yield to popular demand
when he learns that on this occasion he will have to denounce Karanja,
the Homeguard, as the one who betrayed Kihika; that is, Mugo is asked to
betray twice and, ironically enough, at the market place, where Kihika
was hanged. His torment becomes acute, and he decides to confess
publicly. When General R., who has pledged to punish his friend's
traitor personally, calls on him to come forward, Mugo steps forward
instead and confesses: "You asked for Judas ... You asked for the man who
led Kihika to this tree, here. That man stands before you, now. Kihika
came to me by night. He put his life into my hands, and I sold it to
70
the white man. And this thing has eaten into my life all these years"
[GW, p. 223].
Filled with consternation, people "rose and started talking,
moving away in different directions as if the meeting [had] ended with
Mugo's confessions ... General R. and a few other elders remained behind
to complete the sacrifice before the storm" [GW, p. 223]. The people
also resign responsibility and abandon their leader when he most needs
them in The River Between, where Waiyaki becomes the scapegoat for the
conflict in society and is left in the hands of the vindictive elders to
decide his fate. In both novels the people shirk their responsibility:
"
As if the burden of judging their Teacher were removed from
them. They went away quickly, glad that he was hidden by
the darkness. For they did not want to look at the Teacher
and they did not want to read their guilt in one another's
faces. Neither did they want to speak to one another, for
they knew full well what they had done to Waiyaki and yet
they did not want to know" [RB, p. 152].
Mugo's public confession redeems his soul for, "as soon as the
first words were out, Mugo felt light. A load of many years was lifted
from his shoulders. He was free, sure, confident" [GW, p. 235]. His
confession also has a positive impact on the other characters, showing
them the path to follow. Though initially a Judas figure, Mugo
progresses beyond Judas and becomes a redeemer, a Christ figure.
The complex lives of Ngugi's characters in A Grain of Wheat
parallel the intricate way the story is handled; Ngugi experiments with
narrative forms. In this novel, Ngugi makes brilliant use of the
flashback technique, in which characters live in the present and past at
the same time. The constant use of this technique deliberately blurs
71
the distinction between the past and the present, so that the reader
shares the characters' experience of losing one's way and finding one's
self in a tangled mesh. With such a roaming perspective, the novelist
deliberately undermines or moves away from "the protagonist as messiah"
outlook that his characters have toward Mugo and that he (Ngugi) has had
in his previous two novels. For Ngugi the central issue is much less
the existence of treachery as it is about the messianic potential
sleeping in every individual.
From the opening of the novel, the action takes the reader some
years back to the events surrounding the Emergency in Kenya. It is not
an unbroken retrospective, for now and then we are back preparing for
the Uhuru festivities, so that the interlocking of then and now is
maintained throughout the novel. Even at the end, we are still looking
at the present in the past.
The effect of this narrative technique is not only to give all the
major characters a parallel development, a fullness of life that draws
freely on both the present and the past, but also to ensure that A Grain
of Wheat has a solidity of plot that links it to the previous novels.
In this sense, the novel becomes a distant echo of The River Between,
with its story tracing the divisions of the tribe under the influence of
Christianity and ending with the rejection and probable death of
Waiyaki, the prophesied savior of the tribe. It even looks forward into
the future, hinting at the existing cancer in the seed of Uhuru.
An analysis of A Grain of Wheat must come to grips with the
complexity with which the novel is constructed: its title is a mine of
72
meaning that radiates throughout the novel; its narrative technique,
though intricately woven, "strings" all the characters, events and
issues together; its themes, apart from concern with the people's new
aspirations and with their physical well-being, are also preoccupied
with their hidden lives; its characters are undermined by problems
arising from their present and past experiences, both collective and
individual. To limit ourselves to these matters, important though they
are, would be to miss part of the issue at stake. All the attitudes
described are stages that the people have to pass through for the sake
of the ultimate objective, Uhuru, the historical change or potential
capable of transforming the whole community. Though he does not provide
a concrete program for the realization of this goal, Ngugi enables the
reader to "have that positive attitude of mind that is not only aware of
the problems, but desires a solution" [Homecoming, p. 25]. He shows
that the past must not, or cannot, be avoided; rather, it must be viewed
critically and the problems tackled; and above all, a kind of Kihika-
type commitment and sacrifice--you die for me, I die for you--is needed.
In A Grain of Wheat, Ngugi is concerned with the fate of those who made
Uhuru possible in Kenya. The social intentions of the novel are clear
not only in the thematic focus on the traumatic moments of a people's
history, but also in the choice of locale and style, and in the
multiplicity of central chacacters. This commitment is maintained and
even intensified in Ngugi's next novel, Petals of Blood.
73
Petals of Blood
In Petals of Blood,9Ngugi's social intentions are forcefully
reiterated through the convergence of characterization, setting, and
theme. At the same time, this novel marks Ngugi's further commitment to
the cause of the dispossessed; shows his social visions articulated in
more coherent terms; and marks the height of his evolution from critical
realism to revolutionary politics.
In this novel, the notion of commitment to a cause (be it personal
or national, but particularly national) enacts the drama of which the
major characters are transformations. Here, Ngugi very clearly
demonstrates his belief that the highest human act is through commitment
to improve human life, the positive transformation of the African. In
effect, he portrays several versions of this ethic of commitment as the
underlying factor motivating the action of the novel and containing, in
a way, the motifs that constitute the ideological framework of the book:
commitment is life-giving, commitment to improve life is noble.
The character overtly concerned with this theme of commitment is
Godfrey Munira. Munira is portrayed at the outset as an uncommitted,
alienated individual, who chooses not to choose, and thus adopts the
position of the "neutral" onlooker on the margins of society. Munira's
character is a complex version of Mugo's from the previous novel. Like
Mugo, Munira's initial anti-social stand stems partly from childhood
confusion and a sense of loss, but unlike Mugo, whose withdrawal from
society had apparent roots in his wretched background, Munira's
disengagement is based on no obvious social hardships. Born into
74
affluence and educated at the country's only secondary school, Munira
vaguely senses that something is amiss in his life; he is apparently
both attracted to and repelled by the material success and hypocritical
religiosity in a family run by too possessive a father:
He had always thought of striking out on his own but he
had remained circling around his father's property without
at the same time being fully part of it. This was unlike
his more successful brothers. The one following him had
even gone to England and returned to a successful career
with the banks. The other had just finished Makerere and
was PRO with an oil company. Yet another was in Makerere
doing medicine. The first two sisters had successfully
completed their high school: one was in England training as
a nurse: the other was at Godard College, Vermont, D.S.A,
taking a B.A. in Business Administration. His father
Ezekieli ... was a wealthy landowner and a repected elder in
the hierarchy of the Presbytarian Church. He was tall and
mean in his austere holiness. He believed that children
should be brought up on boiled maize grains sprinkled with a
few beans and on tea with only tiny drops of milk and no
sugar, but all crowned with the words of God and prayers
[PB, pp. 13-14].
Munira's passive revolt also takes the form of estrangement from
his wife, who has become subservient to his father's religion: "She
could have been beautiful but too much righteous living and Bible-
reading and daily prayers had drained her of all sensuality and what
remained now was the cold incandescence of the spirit" [po 16]. Her
prayers before and after making love remind him of the religious farce
staged in his family.
Even as a boy, Munira identifies more closely with the farmhands
working for his father, and can experience a "slight trembling of the
heart" while praying with them, a predisposition which also points to
the hypocrisy prevalent in his own father's house:
75
But Munira, even as a boy, was quick to notice that away from his
father's house, in their quarters down the farm, the workers, even
as they praised the Lord, were less stilted, were more free and
seemed to praise and sing to the Lord with greater conviction and
more holiness. He felt a little awed by their total conviction and
by their belief in a literal heaven to come. It was one of their
meetings that Munira once ... had felt a slight trembling of the
heart and a consciousness of the enormity of the sin he had earlier
committed, his very first, with Amina, a bad woman, at
Kimirishu ... this added to his consciousness of guilt [PB, p. 14-
15] .
When we meet him, Munira's first notable act is to ask for his
transfer to Ilmorog, an abandoned, wretched homestead where he hopes to
escape from his guilt-ridden life of gestation. Once in Ilmorog, to
avoid involvement, Munira adopts a rigid work schedule: "classes all
day; a walk to the ridge; then a stroll to Abdulla's place [a small
bar]" [PB, p. 19]. He rarely ventures back home and, when he does,
hardly ever stays more than a night, suddenly feeling his new sense of a
being without involvement threatened by their inquiries [PB, p. 20].
From such a position of "neutrality" he can only derive vicarious
pleasure watching people and the seasons, as if in a dream:
He was the feudal head of a big house or a big mbari lord
surveying his estate, but without the lord's pain of working
losses and gains, the goats lost and the young goats born.
When the rains had come and seeds sprouted and then, in
June, flowers come, he felt as if the whole of Ilmorog had
put on a vast floral-patterned cloth to greet its lord and
master [PB, p. 21].
Munira is unable to maintain these "easeful dreams" for long.
Soon, even the teaching profession fails to protect him from a reality
that constantly presents alternating series of commitments and
rejections. Once, on a nature study course with his pupils, Munira
realizes that only a thin line separates an apparently innocent
76
observation of nature and its possible political implications or
interpretations. In front of a worm-eaten flower "with petals of
blood," actually "a solitary beanflower in a field dominated by white,
blue and violet flowers," Munira attempts to explain the phenomenon away
by saying that the students should refer to the color as red instead of
blood, that such worm-eaten flowers cannot bear fruit, and that a flower
can also become this color if it is prevented from reaching the light.
But the pupils continue to question him: "Why did things eat each other?
Why can't the eaten eat back? Why did God allow this and that to
happen?" Confronted with these questions, the unconunitted Munira seeks
refuge within the four walls of his classroom, swearing never to venture
out with the children again:
Man ... law... God ... nature: he had never thought deeply about
these things, and he swore that he would never take the
children to the fields. Enclosed in the four walls he was
the master, aloof, dispensing knowledge to a concentration
of faces looking up to him. Then he could avoid being drawn
in ... But out in the fields, outside the walls, he felt
insecure [PB, p. 22].
Behind Munira's initial position of total disengagement from both
family and society, and behind his illusion that he can escape from both
the collective and the individual past by denying their existence, we
can see some form of awareness, his vague sense that something is amiss,
his passive groping for something more, yet something he fears to find.
His vague awareness appears both in this quote and in the previous one
describing his expiatory spiritual "trance" while worshipping with his
father's workers. Though his family background has something to do with
his alienation, Munira's problem is more social than familial, general
77
than personal. Such a reading corresponds to Ngugi's apparent attempt
to pinpoint, in his treatment of commitment or the lack of it, some of
the major obstacles to the full growth and social integration of
sensitive Africans.
In Petals of Blood, the theme of commitment reflects the
prevailing images of disintegration, decay, and despair: the image of
crude mercantilism and callous exploitation of the Kenyan peasantry by
the national bourgeoisie allied to international forces. A general
situation of malaise is thus created that inspires not commitment but
alienation and apathy in the highly sensitive.
Despite Munira's insistence on his neutrality as he argues that he
is not his brother's keeper [PB, p. 49], the social malaise underlying
his attitude is gradually brought into the open during and after the
Emergency Journey to the city. Munira, who takes part in this great
trek to avoid being left behind, actually participates not only in the
strong communal bond spontaneously created between the members of the
delegation, but also shares in the collective suffering that the
delegation experiences at the hands of both nature and the callous city
dwellers. It is this experience that starts Munira along the path of
full awareness:
It was the journey, Munira was later to write, it was the
exodus across the plains to the Big Big City that started me
on that slow, almost ten-year, inward journey to a position
where I can now see that man's estate is rotten at heart.
Even now, so many years after the event, he wrote, I can
once again feel the dryness of the skin, the blazing sun,
the dying animals that provided us with the meat, and above
us, soaring in the clear sky, the hawks and vultures which,
satiated with meat of dead antelopes .... waited for time and
78
sun to deliver them human skins and blood. The journey
toward the kingdom of knowledge ... [PB, pp. 117-118].
The Ilmorog delegation finds the typical inhospitality or
indifference of nature portrayed here less painful than the cold,
calculated cruelty of the people of the city. While rural inhabitants
are threatened by the lack of water, hospitals, and strong hands to till
the land (as a result of rural exodus, lack of food and appropriate
conditions), city people "were drinking and laughing and eating and
making love out of excess of fulness" [PB, p. 112].
Besides the exploitative outlook of the big city and its
indifference to rural needs, the delegation encounters a degree of
callousness and inhumanity that borders on sadism. Once in Nairobi, the
delegation passes through "Blue Hills," the place of residence of the
blue-bloods, the rich and over-privileged elite. Here they meet Kimeria
under his assumed name of Hawkins, now a typical representative of the
African elite, whose cruelty is proverbial, for he is said to have once
locked up "a man who had called to simply ask directions for a whole
week with only water for food" [PB, p. 160]. Even Hawkins' name has a
predatory suggestion. The delegation are equally poorly treated by a
household of foreign priests who deny them food but offer them prayer,
and who have come from Christian lands eager to civilize Africa but
whose own faith and civilization prompt them to treat their dogs with
more respect than they show for the Africans.
At the heart of this darkness, as it were, they begin to
understand the cynical and diabolic character of Nderi Wa Riera, their
79
M.P. First, they must wait for a day because Riera is out of town and
has gone to Mombasa "for a business inspection and on-the-spot
investigation of two tourist resorts which had been mentioned in a
foreign newspaper as 'special places where even an ageing European could
buy an authentic African virgin girl of fourteen to fifteen for the
price of a ticket to a cinema show'" [PB, p. 175]. Despite the proposed
'inspection,' the implication here is that such places of prostitution
do indeed exist, undoubtedly owned by people like Riera.
When Riera is later informed that the Ilmorog delegation has come
to Nairobi to see him, he automatically sees in this desperate act on
the peasants' part "a plot to smear his good name." Instead of
considering their problem seriously, he lectures them on the virtues of
family planning and self help:
Now, I want you to go back to Ilmorog. Get yourselves
together, subscribe money. You can even sell some of the
cows and goats instead of letting them die. Dive deep into
your pockets ... Get also a group of singers and dancers--
those who know traditional songs ... Our culture, our African
culture and spiritual values, should form the true
foundation for this nation [PB, p. 182].
Outraged by their representative's attempt to shirk his
responsibility to help them and by his intention to get them to accept
their fate passively, the peasants stone Riera and are arrested. They
gradually become aware that Riera's behavior is predictable in a leader
of "a society in which a black few, allied to other interests from
Europe, would continue the colonial game of robbing others of their
sweat, denying them the right to grow to full flowers in air and
sunlight" [PB, p. 294].
80
In such a society, noncommitment generally becomes a form of
rebellion without a clear program, of rejecting what is while lacking a
vision of what should be. In effect, this is the attitude of the major
characters in Petals of Blood, particularly Munira. The turning point
in Munira's life from indifference to a real awareness and commitment
starts many years after the historic journey that ultimately brings
development and change to Ilmorog. As Munira points out in his "mixture
of an autobiographical confessional and some kind of prison notes," this
change is for the worse: "They went on a journey to the city to save
Ilmorog from the drought [but] brought back spiritual drought from the
city" [PB, p. 195]. In conjunction with this growing awareness, what
Munira hears from Karega about the generalized situation of oppression
and exploitation throughout the country finally convinces him of the
"overwhelming need and necessity for higher laws, pure, eternal,
absolute, unchanging" [PB, p. 296]. His objection to the social
rottenness is not political, but religious, with the aspiration to
justice transfered from the secular to a different dimension.
From this moment onward, Munira is committed to the vision of a
new world to replace the present corrupt one. In effect, under the
pressures of full awareness, Munira drifts into irrationality and
becomes a fanatic, with all the fanatic's destructive potential. He now
sees reality only through the prism of religion, is ready to give unto
Caesar what is Caesar's, rebukes himself for having been an outsider,
and decides to end this "accident by another accident" [PB, p. 298]. He
81
comes to conceive the world as only a stepping stone for the heaven-
bound pilgrim.
Convinced that the world is corrupt through and through, Munira
takes it upon himself to bring others "to see the light," "to discover
this new world," and, by so doing, to save people from "conunitting the
unforgivable sin of pride. Of thinking that ... workers could change the
evil ... could change this world ... contemplating that man unaided by God
through Christ could change himself, could change the world, could
improve on it" [PB, pp. 299-300]. Thus Munira trails Karega and Abdulla
to prevent their having contact with Wanja, who has become, in his eyes,
the devil incarnate, the Jezebel, intent on men's souls:
From nowhere, a voice spoke to him: She is Jezebel, Karega
will never escape from her embrace of evil. In the dark,
the message was clear: Karega had to be saved from
her ... save him... the voice insisted. Munira knew that he
would obey the voice. Christ, after all, had beaten the
traders who had been spoiling God's temple. What was
important was not just passive obedience to the law but
active obedience to the universal law of God. It was a
tremendous revelation [PB, p. 332].
In a final act of conunitment, Munira sets fire to Wanja's brothel:
He walked to Wanja's place. It was not he, Munira. He was
doing this only in active obedience to the law. It was
enjoined on him to burn down the whorehouse--which mocked
God's work on earth. He poured petrol on all the doors and
lit it up. He walked away toward Ilmorog Hill. He stood on
the Hill and watched the whorehouse burn, the tongues of
flames from the four corners forming petals of blood, making
a twilight of the dark sky. He, Munira, had willed and
acted, and he felt, as he knelt down to pray, that he was no
longer an outsider, for he had finally affirmed his oneness
with the law [PB, pp. 332-333].
83
about the true nature of neo-colonial society. Their attitude to the
notion of commitment is quite the opposite of Munira's.
As regards commitment, the character of Karega more closely
reflects Ngugi's position. Munira's revolt and fanaticism do not seem
to be predicted by his affluent background; the case of Karega is
different. He is the prototype of the revolutionary, according to
Inspector Godfrey: he is from a very poor background, from a family of
which his mother is the sole support. They are among the numerous
squatters living on meager wages on Munira's father's property. Before
the story begins, Karega has been ejected from Siriana for taking part
in a strike and has never had the opportunity to attend university. As
in Munira's case, the false values prevalent in society are at the root
of his detachment and indifference. However, he is convinced from the
beginning that sacrificial commitment is required. When talking to the
uncommitted Munira about Mau Mau martyrdom to liberate the country, he
says of his own brother's death, "You mean his being hanged at
Githinguri? It was a collective sacrifice. A few had to die for our
freedom" [PB, p. 50]. Though a radical, Kihika-type commitment is
implicit in this quote, it takes Karega a long time to organize his
consciousness into a coherent social vision.
As with the other major characters of the novel, the turning point
in Karega's radical but passive rejection of neo-colonial society occurs
during and after the journey to the city, which convinces him of the
need for united action and organized struggle by the oppressed. The
journey also introduces him to the lawyer, the ideologue, the man with
84
"an inner light, an inner consciousness" [PB, p. 159], capable of
uncovering the political aspects of the peasants' plight. Karega learns
from him that the exploitation derives from the fact that their leaders
have chosen to minister to the "blind and deaf monster of capitalism;"
that neo-colonial education obscures "racism and other forms of
oppression" and is meant "to make us accept our inferiority so as to
accept their superiority and their rule over us." The lawyer describes
how his experience of America helped him transcend the narrow racial
view of oppression and exploitation and reach a perception of the
universal dimension of the problem:
Then I saw in the cities of America white people also
begging I saw white women selling their bodies for a few
dollars I worked alongside white and black workers in a
Detroit factory. We worked overtime to make a meager
living. I saw a lot of unemployment in Chicago and other
cities. I was confused. So I said: let me return to my
home, now that the black man has come to power. And
suddenly as if in a flash of lightning I saw that we were
serving the same monster-god as they were in America ... I saw
the same signs, the same symptons, and even the
sickness ... and I was so frightened ... I cried to myself: how
many Kimathis must die, how many motherless children must
weep, how long shall our people continue to sweat so that a
few, a given few, might keep a thousand dollars in the bank
of the one monster-god that for four hundred years had
ravished a continent? And now I saw in the clear light of
day the role that the Fraudshams of the colonial world
played to create all of us black zombies dancing pornography
in Blue Hills while our people are dying of hunger .. [PB, pp.
165-166] .
Later, as Karega wants to learn more about the foundations of
exploitation, the lawyer sends him a number of books, cautioning him
that the critical issue is choice: "You serve the people who struggle;
or you serve those who rob the people. In a situation of the robber and
85
the robbed, in a situation... there can be no neutral history and
politics. If you would learn, look about you: choose your side" [PB, p.
200] .
Karega learns the theoretical aspects of class struggle from the
lawyer, but he comes to believe that fighting the system from within, as
the lawyer has been doing, is bound to fail:
He was putting too much faith in trying to make people see
the wrong and repent ... he was very sincere, you
understand ... but he had too much faith in the very shrines
created by what he called the monster and its angels ... :
that which is created by men can also be changed by men. He
could not understand me and I could not understand him. But
he had opened my eyes and I was grateful [PB, p. 288].
As his conviction grows that "you can't serve the interests of
capital and of labor at the same time," Karega's Marxist ideology and
phraseology become more pronounced. He becomes the champion of
proletarian struggle and wants nothing for himself, having submerged his
own interests in the general interest. He takes it upon himself to
organize workers wherever and whenever he gets a job, believing that
unity is the key to workers' power. Unlike Munira, who acts out his
radicalism by destroying the three business tycoons in the brothel fire,
Karega makes it clear to the investigating Inspector Godfrey that he is
not concerned with eliminating individuals: "I don't believe in the
elimination of individuals. There are many Kimerias and Chuis in the
country. They are the products of a system, just as workers are
products of a system. It's the system that needs to be changed... and
only the workers of Kenya and the peasants can do that" [PB, p. 308].
86
Karega becomes the herald of change and new possibilities. His
political awareness leads him to conclude that no potent or lasting
change will be possible unless people are roused from their present
alienation by the vision of an attainable society more inviting than
that in which they now live. He outlines the main features of this new
world from the standpoint of Marxist class struggle:
The true lesson of history was this: that the so called
victims, the poor, the downtrodden, the masses, had always
struggled with spears and arrows, with their hands and songs
of courage and hope, to end their oppression and
exploitation: that they would continue struggling until a
human kingdom came: a world in which goodness and beauty and
strength and courage would be seen not in how cunning one
can be, not in how much power to oppress one possessed, but
only in one's contribution in creating a more humane world
in which the inherited inventive genius of man in culture
and science from all ages and climes would not be the
monopoly of a few, but for the use of all, so that all
flowers in all their different colours would ripen and bear
fruits and seeds .... Choose brothers and sisters in sweat, in
toil, in struggle, and stand by one another and strive for
that kingdom [PB, p. 303].
This vision of a new world in response to the situations of
exploiter and exploited, oppressor and oppressed, dominating and
dominated, reappears in Ngugi's Barrel of a Pen:
The calls for a total transformation of the systems of
inequality and oppression in every nation and between
nations. Modern industry, science and technology, were they
not directed toward maintaining inequalities (imagine the
billions spent on nuclear and conventionatoarms!), could
transform the lives of millions on earth.
To the characters of Petals of Blood, commitment to a cause
becomes a life-giving spirit that lights fires within them, while the
effect of a lack of commitment is debilitating and anemic. This is
brought out in the cases of Wanja and Abdulla. Wanja, the virtual
87
plaque tournante of the novel, is Ngugi's naturalistic rendering of the
African woman in the neo-colonial context, but also his Hemingwayesque
version of the Lady Brett character in The Sun Also Rises. However
Wanja's predicament is more acute than Lady Brett's, because it is
caused not by the generalized demoralization of wartime but by a neo-
colonial and male-dominated environment. Wanja herself describes her
frustration as an African woman thus: "Boys were always more confident
about the future than us girls. They seemed to know what they wanted to
become later in life: whereas with us girls the future seemed vague ... It
was as if we knew that no matter what efforts we put into our studies,
our road led to the kitchen and to the bedroom" [PB, p. 37]. This
despairing view of her prospects, combined with her father's strong
opposition to her dating a poor classmate, drive Wanja into the arms of
her rich seducer, Kimeria. Her pregnancy and prompt subsequent
abandonment by Kimeria send her down the road of prostitution, though
she is determined to avenge herself one day.
The debilitating life of sex and alcohol gradually undermines
Wanja's personal commitment. A series of unsuccessful attempts to start
afresh (first with a city dweller, who runs away after a case of arson
at her house; then with Munira, who proves as uncommitted in love as he
is in life; and, lastly, with Karega, who is unjustly dismissed from his
teaching job and forced to leave Ilmorog) tempt her give up the fight.
However, her keen awareness of enormous social evil and injustice
confirms her initial pessimistic view of her woman's lot, and she comes
88
to a Darwinian view of human society as a jungle. To escape being the
constant prey of the jungle forces, she chooses to join the predators:
Kimeria, who made his fortune as a Home Guard transporting
bodies of Mau Mau killed by the British, was
prospering ... Kimeria, who had ruined my life and humiliated
me by making me sleep with him during our journey to the
city... this same Kimeria was one of those who would benefit
from the economic progress of Ilmorog. Why? Why? I asked
myself ... Had he not sinned as much as me? That's how one
night I fully realized the law. Eat or you are eaten... How
true, I have found it. I decided to act, and I quickly
built this house I have hired young girls ... they let me
trade their bodies what is the difference whether you are
sweating it out on a plantation, in a factory or lying on
your back, anyway? .. Me too! I have not spared myself ... It
has been the only way I can get my own back on Chui, Mzigo,
and Kimeria ... I go with all of them now I only receive
them by appointment ... look at Abdulla reduced to a fruit
seller ... oranges ... sheepskins ... No, I will never return to
the herd of victims [PB, pp. 293-294].
Wanja's keen insight into the reality of neo-colonial Kenya
actually reveals that there is no difference where the worker is
exploited, on the plantation, in a factory or sexually used as a
prostitute. Here is a prostitute pointing a finger at general
prostitution! As F.E.M.K. Senkoro points out, Ngugi does not limit
himself to the naturalistic rendering of the prostitute alone. Wanja is
portrayed both as "a prey but also as a symbol, a character who is able
to scrutinize and penetrate" the neo-colonial world.
ll
Though Wanja's brothel flourishes and gains a nationwide
reputation for its offerings, her life lacks coherence and fulfilment.
What saves her at the end is her public, Mugo-type confession of the
crime of infanticide she committed when she killed Kimeria's child (an
act which has a great impact on her when she later seems to have become
89
barren and is unable to have another child), and her decision to
reactivate her initial plan for vengeance. She does this only minutes
before the flames sweep through the house to destroy Mzigo and Chui.
She kills Kimeria with her own hands, and achieves a kind of redemption
when she finds herself pregnant with Abdulla's child. At the end of the
story, "she felt a tremendous calm, a kind of inner assurance of the
possibilities of a new kind of power" [PB, p. 338].
Abdulla's story, though brief, actually spans all the themes of
the previous novels: the alienation of Africans from their land and
culture; their reaction to this loss in the form of Mau Mau resistance
and warfare; the liberation of the homeland and the accession to
independence, with all its potential; and the betrayal or destruction of
this potential by former nationalist leaders. Abdulla is both a relic
of the past and the incarnation of a present of frustrated dreams. He
is a living monument to what commitment to the national cause involves,
having lost all his family, his land and one leg in the struggle. He is
also a bitter reminder that those who enjoy the fruits of independence
are not those who fought for it.
Abdulla is presently "dying the death of the spirit," less from
bitterness at the ingratitude of society than from the feeling that he
has not lived up to a personal pledge taken several years before. His
life lacks coherence and fulfilment not only because of social
injustice, but also because he has failed in, or fled from, his
commitment to avenge both himself and his comrade-in-arms, Nding'uri.
90
He knows that Kimeria, who betrayed them to the colonial police, is now
prosperous, handling millions, that is, "eating the fruits of Uhuru."
It is only when Abdulla recognizes his cowardice and confirms his
determination to reactivate his pledge that "blood started flowing in
[his] veins" again [PB, p. 255]. His is no longer a national cause but
a personal one, whose fulfilment becomes all the more urgent at the end,
when he realizes that the same Kimeria is now undermining the love
affair that he, Abdulla, has so patiently and painstakingly built with
Wanja, the vision of his new world: "Then disaster had once again come
into his life just when success and victory seemed so near, within his
path" [PB, p. 311]. Abdulla makes detailed plans for eliminating
Kimeria, only to be deprived of the pleasure of their execution by
Munira's untimely fire. However, he arrives in time to drag Wanja out
of the burning brothel.
The major characters we have considered so far are sufficiently
alienated to challenge the established unjust social order and, to some
extent, to try to arouse the less committed members of society to an
awareness of their plight. There is also a conformist group, determined
to maintain the unjust neo-colonial system in place: the national
bourgeoisie represented here by the M.P., the hypocritical priests, the
three murdered men and other people of this kind. These are the "fit"
elements, who are quite at ease in the unjust, sick social fabric, just
as some species of fish are in polluted streams. Their criteria for
validity range from callousness, selfishness, and injustice, to lust for
wealth, power and worldly pleasures.
91
In his rather caricatured portrayal of this group, Ngugi tends to
present them in broad generalities, without allowing much individual
growth (unlike his portrayal of the former group), apart from the kind
of commitment to false social values predators display in their
relations to their victims. Though he presents them as drawn or
hypnotized by a force beyond their control (something that could make
them rather victims than victimizers), Ngugi also illustrates, mainly
through the character of the lawyer, that the issue at stake is choice,
that is, an act of the will.
Apart from the lawyer, who chooses to side with and defend the
oppressed instead of serving the "molten god," the notion of choice is
also brought out by Wanja after Karega has decided to break with her
because he claims she has chosen the wrong side and way of fighting.
This brings her face to face with the enormity of her acts, so that she
perceives the fallacy of her belief that she is unable to act otherwise
[PB, p. 328].
Karega's rejection of Wanja on ideological grounds may also remind
us of Remi's rejection of his wife in The Black Hermit,12 Ngugi's first
attempt at drama. Remi, after running to the city because he felt
stifled by both his family and village, comes back with the illusion
that he has found the antidote to the problems of the day: he advocates
education to free the individual from his tribal allegiance [po 64],
refuses to harken to, or be led by, "woman, priest or tribe", as he
swears to trample all such influences. But Remi is a callow and
superficial character, who only succeeds in destroying the person he
92
loves, his wife, Toni. After she had committed suicide because of his
rejection, Remi can only cry out in vain: "I came back to break tribe
and custom,/Instead, I have broken you and me" [po 76]. In Petals of
Blood, Wanja survives not because Karega is more understanding than
Remi, but because her difficult experience of life has made her
stronger.
As if conscious that they have committed themselves wrongly, the
conformist characters behave or speak in a language that attempts to use
nationalism to camouflage their more sinister causes, but with little
success, since their feline claws and fangs stand out too sharply to be
hidden under an assumed sheepskin. They call themselves men of the
people, freedom fighters. Kimeria exemplifies such attempts to distort
reality when he talks to the Ilmorog delegation about himself and his
kind:
The Honorable member of Ilmorog? Mr Nderi wa Riera? I know
him. A friend of mine. You see how things change ... Now, Mr
Nderi wa Riera. We used to have our little differences.
He was what you might call a, eh, a freedom fighter, that
is, he was a member of the party and was taken to detention.
And I was, well, shall we say we didn't see eye to eye?
Now, we are friends. Why? Because we all realize that
whether we were on that side of the fence, we were all
fighting for the same ends. Not so? We were all freedom
fighters. Anyway, Mr Nderi and I, we are quite good
friends. We have one or two businesses together [PB, p.
153]. -
Kimeria only succeeds in betraying the unbridled "greed and
accumulation" characteristic of his group, which his populist rhetoric
is meant to conceal.
93
Ngugi maintains that this picture of the Kenyan bourgeoisie, far
from being merely caricatural,
accurately describes the infantile imitative mentality, the
crass world outlook which like robes sits uneasily on them,
and the total lack of any originality in the neo-colonial
ruling class. Their vision of society, be it economic,
political or cultural, is derived from the only experience
they know and care to know--the colonial ... Their image of
progress, authority, management is derived from
colonalism.
Finally, we have the position advocated by Inspector Godfrey, the
impassioned servant of the law. This officer considers himself neutral,
committed only to "the service of truth and justice." He does not
really care whether
he had put his knowledge in the service of whatever power
that happened to be in the land, and he never took an
attitude. Thus he had served the colonial regime with the
same relentless unsparing energy that he did an independent
African government, and he would serve as faithfully
whatever would follow. He was neutral, and his awesome
power over politicians, professionals ... arose from his
neutrality in the service of the law [PB, pp. 43-44].
This blind, mechanical way of serving the law is also embodied in
Godfrey's concept of crime, something he considers as "a kind of jigsaw
puzzle" and believed "there was a law to it--a law of crime--a law of
criminal behaviour--and he believed that if you looked hard enough you
could see this law operating in even the small gestures. He was
interested in people; in their behaviour; in their words, gestures,
fantasies, gait: but only as a part of this jigsaw puzzle" [PB, p. 43].
Whatever Godfrey says about his neutrality, impartiality and good
94
will, what emerges from his commitment to enforce the unjust neo-
colonial law is that he becomes an instrument of tyranny and repression,
typical of what the police and the army have come to mean in Africa:
In these poor, underdeveloped countries, where the rule is
that the greatest wealth is surrounded by the greatest
poverty, the army and the police constitute the pillars of
the regime ... The strength of the police force and the power
of the army are proportionate to the stagnation in which the
rest of the nation is sunk. By dint of yearly loans,
concessions are snatched up by foreigners; scandals are
numerous, ministers grow rich, their wives doll themselves
up, the members of parliament feather their nests and there
is not a soul down to the simple policeman or the customs
officer.wholaoes not join the great procession of

Inspector Godfrey deplores the death of the three men, a loss
which, he feels, will take years to make up, given the stature of the
victims: "So wealthy. Millionaires. Imagine African Delameres" [PB, p.
192]. He is aware of "the subterranean currents of unrest in the
country" [PB, p. 42], but attributes them to the radicalism of union and
Communist agitators. He has more trust in Munira, the religious
fanatic; he is strongly biased against Karega and believes the latter is
the villain. He even has Abdulla tortured in an attempt to make him
denounce Karega as the arsonist and the principal trouble-maker in
society [PB, p. 320].
Alongside the aspects of commitment seen with Ngugi's characters,
we can discern the writer's own sensitivity to and concern for the
plight of Kenyans--the more he portrays their negative conditions of
life, the more he is drawn into the struggle to change these conditions.
Both in the subject matter and in the style of his fiction, Ngugi's
95
commitment on the side of the oppressed is continually reaffirmed. In
the latest stage of his commitment, Ngugi decides to write his next
novel, Devil on the Cross, in the Gikuyu language.
Devil on the Cross
1 h C
15 h . f . . . 1 d
In Devi on t e ross, t e 0 ate
around two major poles, the characters defending a national cause, on
the one hand, and the partisans of corruption and self-interest, on the
other. However, this schema appears too simplistic to describe so
complex a novel; it would have certainly proven inadequate for the
previous novel, Petals of Blood. For the first group the spectrum
ranges from nationalism, anti-imperialism, revolutionary commitment to
the passive uncommitted attitude that Wariinga, the female protagonist,
adopts at the beginning of the novel.
The notion of commitment remains the dynamic element that
motivates the characters; however, Ngugi's concern no longer revolves
around an overriding national cause, as he brings into focus the plight
of the most wretched victim of African society, the African woman. What
motivates the story in the first place is not the same official pretext
to investigate a murder, as was the case in the previous novel. Rather,
in this novel, we are informed in the prologue-like opening that the
motivating factor is public entreaties on the "Gicaandi Player," also
known as the "Prophet of Justice," to "cast light upon all that
happened, so that each may pass judgement only when he knows the whole
truth ... all that is hidden" [DC, p. 7].
96
As a story about Wariinga Jacinta, Devil on the Cross shows the
very intimate link between the quality of the individual and the
prevalent social milieu. By projecting the effect that social reality
has on the individual, the novel's intent is to bring out the extreme
weight with which reality presses on Wariinga, so that judgement of her
has to be atenuated if not dismissed entirely. The novel presents a
series of vignettes that portray Wariinga as a placid, fragile, simple
young woman preyed upon by unscrupulous, ruthless males. The Wariinga
we see at the beginning is at variance with Ngugi's previous female
characters. For example, she lacks Muthoni's assertiveness, Mwihaki's
instant commitment, Mumbi's mystical power, and Wanja's strength of
character and endurance. She is so sensitive that she loses
consciousness at least three times in the course of the novel (perhaps
Ngugi's way of projecting her feminity!), when careful consideration of
the situation would have been more suitable.
After being dismissed from her secretarial job for refusing the
advances of her lecherous boss, Wariinga decides to leave Nairobi for
Ilmorog because her dismissal has brought about an avalanche of other
mishaps: she is dropped by her boyfriend and is forcibly evicted by her
landlord's thugs. Numbed by events, she sleepwalks or actually loses
consciousness and would have been run over by passing cars if it had not
been for a stranger.
At this stage, Wariinga is a passive victim, whose waking senses
are entirely out of focus with the reality oppressing her. She
apparently perceives reality better sleeping than awake. For example,
97
while the stranger who has saved her is waiting for her to regain her
sense, Wariinga, in a monologue, babbles out the predicament of a poor
village girl in the hands of a male-dominated world. This story, which
is supposed to be characteristic of the plight of the African woman, not
only reflects Wariinga's own predicament but, like Wanja's, shows the
inevitable doom awaiting all the women. The most stunning aspect of
Kenyan society to her is her realization of the complete reversal of
values--irresponsibility, corruption and lasciviousness now constitute
the rule and virtue the exception. Wariinga vaguely awakens to the fact
that in such a rotten environment "the Modern Love Bar and Lodging has
become the main employment bureau for girls, and women's thighs are the
tables on which contracts are signed" [DC, p. 19].
Even before telling her story while still in a semi-conscious
state, Wariinga had lapsed into total unconsciouness and "was visited by
a nightmare that she used to have" as a student. In this nightmare, she
finds herself in a dark place, where she encounters a richly dressed
devil being dragged to a crucifix by a crowd dressed in rags. The devil
carried a walking stick like "a folded umbrella" and had on his head
"seven horns, seven trumpets for sounding infernal hymns of praise and
glory." He also had two mouths and a sagging stomach, "as if it were
about to give birth to all the evils of the world." The devil's pleas
for mercy fall on deaf ears, as the people say:
Now we know the secrets of all the robes that disguise your
cunning. You commit murder, then you don your robe of pity
and you go to wipe the tears of orphans and widows. You
steal food from people's store at midnight, then at dawn you
visit the victims wearing your robes of charity and you
offer them a calabash filled with the grain that you have
98
stolen. You encourage lasciviousness solely to gratify your
own appetites, then you put on robes of righteousness and
urge men to repent ... [DC, p. 13].
It becomes clear that Wariinga's dreams, nightmares, or half-
conscious states are directly related to, or spring from, the general
malaise prevalent in her society. However, Wariinga's attitude, at this
stage of her development, shows that she is lost in a self-pitying kind
of despair. It takes the stranger to point out the danger of such
despair and to link her plight with that of the nation as a whole.
"Despair," the stranger reminds her, "is the one sin that cannot be
forgiven. It is the sin for which we would never be forgiven by the
nation and generations to come" [DC, p. 27]. The stranger also gives
her a card inviting her to a Devil-sponsored Feast in Ilmorog, saying:
"If you would like to know more about the conditions that breed modern
Kareendis [the name she had given the protagonist as she told her own
story] go to the feast advertised on the card when you get to Ilmorog"
[DC, p. 28]. Here again, it is the stranger that gives direction and
meaning to Wariinga's initially hopeless journey of escape, when we
realize that she had actually been blindly heading on to the eye of the
storm, Ilmorog, the place chosen by the Devil for his feast.
The physical movement implied in the journey to Ilmorog not only
teaches her that escape is impossible but also broadens her perspective
by bringing her in contact with other Kenyans who, one way or the other,
are involved in what is happening in the country. She finds herself
with four other passengers in an old Model T Ford Matatu bound for
Ilmorog. The truck not only becomes a microcosm of Kenya, but its
99
passengers likewise reveal the struggle of interests going on in the
said society. The passengers defending a national cause are Muturi,
Gatuiria and Wangari, the other female. The advocates of self-interest
are the man in dark spectacles and Mwaura, the driver of the matatu.
The arguments and views that these travellers express not only
stigmatize the side that each has chosen in relation to the general
situation prevailing in the country, but are indirectly meant to win
over the passive Wariinga.
Wariinga and the other passengers learn that this strange feast,
after all, "is not a Devil's feast, and it has not been organized by
Satan;" rather, it has "been arranged by the Organization of Modern
Theft and Robbery in Ilmorog to commemorate a visit by foreign guests
from an organization of the thieves and robbers of the Western World ... ,
called the International Organization of the Thieves and Robbers" [DC,
p. 78].
Unlike that of Wariinga, the fate of Wangari, the other female
character, is meant to expose the general policy of victimization of
peasants by the system in place. Wangari is a woman whose farmland had
been taken from her because she could not make timely payment for a loan
she contracted to send her child to school. Having fled to the city in
the hope of finding some odd jobs, she is arrested for loitering and is
judged by a white man. Wangari's awareness of neo-colonialism and of
the frustration or betrayal of Mau Mau dreams are illustrated in her
defence speech:
Look at me properly. I am not a foreigner here like you.
And I am not a vagrant here in Kenya ... Kenya is our country.
100
We were born here. We were given this land by God, and we
redeemed it from the hands of our enemies with our blood.
Today you see us clothed in rags, but we, the peasants and
the workers, are the same people who were around at the time
of Kimaathi. Now, look at me closely again. I am not a
thief ... If you want to know who the real thieves and robbers
are, follow me and I will show you their lairs and caves in
Ilmorog. Give me a few policemen, and we'll go right now to
arrest the thieves and robbers who have always troubled us.
I don't know about Nairobi or other places, but in Ilmorog,
our Ilmorog, thieves and robbers don't even bother to hide
[DC, p. 44].
Wangagi's speech unsettles the white judge, who releases her but
finds no other reason than the explanation that she has offered to
cooperate with the police in rooting out theft and robbery in the
country.
Though Wangari's personal experience gives her first-hand
knowledge of the policy of expropriation of poor farmers and of rampant
poverty at the national level, she also lacks insight into the
underpinnings of her predicament. The journey also enables her to put
together the broken parts of her miserable life alongside those of her
fellow passengers. Unable to pay the transport fare, Wangari's journey
to Ilmorog is only made possible by the generosity of her fellow
passengers, who also save her from being dumped in the wilderness by
their insensitive driver.
Once in Ilmorog, Wangari also witnesses the scandalous feast and
is repelled by it. However, it is her ignorance of the implicit
complicity that the celebrants of corruption have with the local
authorities that makes Wangari have recourse to the local police. She
soon realizes her mistake when she is arrested by the same police she
101
has alerted, on the orders of the eminent thieves, for "spreading
rumours and hatred and planting seeds of conflict in a country that is
committed to peace and stability" [DC, p. 195].
As a partisan of the national cause, Muturi is presented as a
trade unionist, or to be more precise, he is a delegate from a secret
workers' organization in Nairobi [DC, p. 212]. He worked for the same
company that has dismissed Wariinga, but unlike Wariinga, Muturi lost
his job because of his union activities. Muturi also turns out to be
the mysterious person who saved Wariinga several years ago when, as a
desperate pregnant teenager, she had attempted to commit suicide by
standing before an on-coming train. Wariinga was saved from certain
death when Muturi intervened and carried her unconscious body from the
rails a fraction of a second before the train reached her.
had never known her savior!
Wariinga
Muturi is both the representative of labor unions and the symbol
of workers' power. As such, he has a keen awareness of labor problems
and a strong determination to stand up to the threat posed by the
exploitative forces: "I simply can't leave our earth to the Devil for
him to twirl this way and that as he fancies," he says. "The Devil's
feast? I'd like to go to challenge the Devil" [DC, p. 73].
During the journey to Ilmorog, Muturi reveals his awareness of
corruption and the exploitation of workers, and how he is repelled by
it. His view of human life is basically manichaean, for he sees social
conflicts as a struggle between good and evil vying for influence over
human beings. To him, human life becomes a battlefield, on which is
102
fought a continuous war between the antagonistic forces. In this war
without spectators our choice and the resolute action we take will show
the side we are defending [DC, p. 54].
Once in Ilmorog, he confirms his determination when he musters
workers to attack the thieves' den. Unfortunately, the ill-prepared
revolt is crushed in blood, many strikers including Muturi are arrested,
and the status quo is maintained.
Gatuiria is a university teacher with a research fellowship in
African culture. The object of his research is to compose a "truly
national music for our Kenya, music played by an orchestra made up of
the instruments of all the nationalities that make up the Kenyan nation
that we, the children of Kenya, can sing in one voice rooted in many
voices--harmony in polyphony?" [DC, p. 60]. Gatuiria is also aware of
what he calls the effect of cultural imperialism, that has deprived his
country of its national identity. His commitment to a national cause
has its meaning in his attempt to find "the roots of our culture in the
traditions of all the nationalities of Kenya" [DC, p. 59]. His feverish
search takes him to the rural area, where he meets an old man who
educates him in folk culture by telling him about the necessary social
relevance of folk tales. To illustrate his point, the old man tells
Gatuiria a series of stories, one of which deals with an unfortunate
peasant who has to carry a parasitic ogre. While the ogre, whose
blood-sucking nails are sunk in the peasant's neck and back, is gaining
weight, the peasant is near death. Though the latter visits a diviner
to help him find a solution to his predicament, he is hesitant to apply
103
the remedy, which consists in pouring boiling oil on the ogre's nails.
The lesson from this story is that "nothing good was ever born of
perfect conditions" [DC, p. 63]. The second story is Faustian, in the
sense that it concerns a man whose lust for worldly possessions makes
him sell his soul to the devil, but who is burnt at the stake by the
other villagers to rid the village of the diabolic influence of their
souless kinsman. Gatuiria's lack of fulfilment in his research has to
do with his skepticism about the existence of ogres, that is, he is
unconvinced about the applicability of these stories to society, and
unable to see them as more than expressions of fancy [DC, p. 67].
Gatuiria's estrangement from his family has its origin in his
rejection of his father's standard of values and because, like Munira
"his heart was always with the workers," his father's workers, that is
[DC, p. 133]. His father, who is a business tycoon, owns shops, farms
and countless import/export agencies, and intends to prepare his son to
take over his business holdings by sending him to specialize in business
administration in America. Despite his rejection, Gatuiria is sent to
America, where he spends fifteen years. To even up with his father
Gatuiria specializes in music instead of business and comes home with
the intention of repaying his father's expenses for his education. As a
foreign-trained artist, Gatuiria lacks the conviction and commitment
necessary for drawing the poetic essence from the socio-historical
reality of Kenyan society.
Like Wariinga, Gatuiria's awareness of the social malaise
increases with the development of events in Ilmorog, and he gradually
104
sees the virtue of courage, involvement and active struggle to oppose
social evil, just as he becomes aware of the existence of ogres in
society. Gatuiria and Wariinga take the resolute step toward active
commitment because of Muturi's call to stand actively on the side of
workers and to rid themselves of "the culture of fear" [DC, p. 205].
During this hectic day, Wariinga also undergoes a mysterious
experience in which she is involved in a dialogue with a "Voice,"
actually the Devil, who tempts her to try to win her over to his cause.
This experience, which is projected as a dream, underscores her previous
weaknesses: her lack of faith in herself and her paralysis as she fails
to realize that men cannot be both her predators and her saviors, but
that she has to do the fighting herself. Wariinga grows and learns from
the experience of the two days, for when we meet her two years later in
Nairobi, she has undergone a metamorphosis, and self-reliance is now her
motto.
The new Wariinga is a car mechanic, "our engineering hero who
specialized in motor vehicles and other combustion engines." She is
also "an expert at fitting and turning, at forging and welding." She
has totally shed the stereotypical image of the placid, submissive
African woman, only able to "cook, to make beds and to spread [her] legs
in the market of love" [DC, p. 218].
The new Wariinga has also freely consented to marry Gatuiria, her
close companion during and after the journey to the Devil's feast. The
latter's deep-seated misunderstanding with his corrupt father had made
him so estranged from his family that he had stayed away from home for
105
years. On the occasion of his coming marriage, Gatuiria decides to take
his prospective bride home. Unlike the journey to Ilmorog, which had
been instrumental in raising Wariinga's awareness, the present journey
to meet Gatuiria's parents ironically takes Wariinga back to her pre-
emancipated stage, for the moment she sets eyes on the old man, she
recognizes him as the one who impregnated her many years back, when she
was a teenage schoolgirl. To avoid a scandal and to work out an
agreement, the old man pretends that he wants to confer with his
daughter-in-law. Behind closed doors, he uses all his guile and then
goes to the extent of threatening to set a professional killer on her if
she turns down his offer of refraining from marrying Gatuiria, an act
which he considers as insulting to him. So sure is he about having
instilled fear in Wariinga that he does not notice when she brings out
the pistol from her handbag and shoots him.
The novel actually starts with this killing, at the point at which
Wariinga is supposedly arrested and awaits judgement. Though in the
last part of the novel Wariinga informs us that she has broken off from
her initial feeling of despair and of being socially conditioned by
rejecting her stereotypical roles assigned her by the corrupt, male-
dominated neo-colonial world, it is only when Wariinga personally
eliminates the old lecher that she really severs herself from her
initial passive acceptance of being preyed upon and takes her destiny in
her own hands.
Unlike the previous novel, where there is the apparent and perhaps
naive belief that birds of a feather flock together, in Devil on the
106
Cross, it becomes almost impossible to discern the partisans of a
national cause from the advocates of self-interest, for both become
journeying people. The fact that Mwaura, the driver of the matatu,
turns out to be a member of the "Devil's angels," the hooded thugs and
agents of private business that evicted Wariinga, is significant in the
sense that it points to the equally troubling fact that those running
the neo-colonial state represent foreign interests.
Mwaura is portrayed as a very sinister character devoid of
conscience or compassion for his fellow individuals. As a former Home
Guard, Maura is known to have belonged to a notorious killer squad and
used to earn five shillings for every Mau Mau sympathizer he killed. He
is believed to have recently killed a man because the latter owed him a
few shillings. Maura's insensivity and opportunism are brought out
during the journey, both through the threat he makes when Wangari is
unable to pay for the journey, and through the self-revealing speech he
gives in defense of the choice he has made in life:
Business is my temple, and money is my God. But if some
other God exists, that's all right ... I don't examine the
world too minutely ... If it leans this way, I lean with
it ... The earth is round, and it changes ... Caution is not a
sign of cowardice. I don't have many questions to ask.
Show me where the money is and I'll take you there [DC, p.
56]! --
The man in dark glasses, the other advocate of self-interest, is
an eminent intellectual as his full name--Mwireri wa Mukiraai, B.Sc
(Econ.) London; B. Comm. (Nairobi); M.Sc.Bus.Admn.(Harvard)--indicates.
This man who keeps mute during the major part of the journey to Ilmorog,
intervenes to rebuke the other passengers saying that their talk is
107
"rooted in communism... calculated to sadden our hearts and make us
restless." Unlike Mwaura, Mukiraai belongs to the inner circle of
corruption. He is the one who provides the information about the famous
feast being organized "by the Organization of Modern Theft and Robbery
in Ilmorog to commemorate a visit by foreign guests from an organization
of the thieves and robbers of the Western World ... , called the
International Organization of the Thieves and Robbers [DC, p. 78].
As a partisan of exploitation, Mwireri applauds theft, robbery and
cunning as a means of showing individual greatness over other
individuals; the same way as God/Satan is superior to his angels in the
Heavens: "Hell is structured in the same way. The king of Hell is not
the one who makes the fire, fetches the firewood and turns over the
burning bodies." Besides, he is highly convinced that "theft and
robbery are the measure of a country's progress. Because in order for
theft and robbery to flourish, there must be things to be stolen... It's
theft and robbery that have made possible the development of the Western
world" [DC, p. 79]. He has also placed his faith in "the democratic
principle that states that he who is able to grab should be allowed to
grab" [DC, p. 80].
To demonstrate his insight into theft at both national and
international levels, Mwireri tells the parable of the "Kingdom of
Earthly Wiles," which he likens "unto a ruler who foresaw that the day
will come when he would be thrown out of a certain country by the masses
and their guerilla freedom fighters" [DC, p. 82]. This wary ruler calls
his faithful servants, teaches them his earthly wiles, entrusts them
108
with his property to multiply and departs through the front door, but
promises to come back through the back door. In due time, the master
returns, receives both capital and profit from all his servants, except
one. The rebellious servant comes forward and throws down the initial
capital accusing the master in the following terms:
You, Lord and master ... I have discovered your tricks! I
have discovered your real name. Imperialist ... You reap
where you have never sown, you grab things over which you
have never shed any sweat ... why, just because you are the
owner of capital. And so I went and buried your money in
the ground to see if your money would yield anything without
being fertilized by my sweat. I will be a slave no
more ... If today I joined hands with all the others who have
opted to be masters over their own sweat, there would be no
limit to the wealth we could produce for our people and
country [DC, p. 84-85].
The servant's great insight both angers and unsettles the master.
He sees the hands of communists in the insightful analysis of his
servant and has him arrested before "he spreads these poisonous thoughts
to other workers and peasants, and teaches them the power of organized
unity" [DC, p. 85].
At this stage, the novel suddenly projects the tragi-comic
atmosphere of the much publicized feast, actually a competition in which
thieves struggle to outdo each other in cunning and mastery of their
trade. One small thief is dragged out kicking and screaming--a thief
who steals because of need fails to qualify for this particularly
important competition and the big shots find such an appearance a slur
on their international reputation. In the form of a compromise the
eminent thieves decide to concern themselves solely with the class
nature of their cause and not with
109
thinness or fatness, whiteness of blackness, tallness or
shortness. There is no bird of prey that is too small when
it comes to hunting ... Just look at our guests. Some are
fat; others are slim, some have red hair ... One comes from
Japan in Asia; others what makes them of one age-group,
one house, one clan is not thinness or fatness or
language. No, what binds them together ... as members of one
clan, is theft, which has permitted them to spread their
tentacles over the whole of the Earth ... Therefore we, their
local watchdogs, are also of one umbilical cord, one age-
group ... [DC, p. 97].
Each competitor is required to give his name (all happen to
males); his address; the number of his wives and mistresses; the type of
cars that he, his wives and mistresses drive; a brief account of his
career as a thief; a full description of how he intends to foster theft
in society; and then to say how their "clan" is to maintain and
strengthen ties with the "clan" of foreign thieves. Having laid down
these rules, the competition then starts with the testimonies of the
competitors.
In the first testimony, we are informed how the eminent thief has
gained prominence by discovering the equation hunger x thirst = famine
and famine among the masses = wealth for the cunning man. The second
testimony comes from a thief whose wealth has driven him to worship
carnal pleasures to the extent that he comes out with the happy
discovery that "cunt is not soap or salt that will dissolve after
usage." Another thief discovers that to protect the rich from dying and
allow them maximum pleasure, human spare parts like sexual organs should
be manufactured and the rich should each have more than one organ.
The most important moment in the competition is reached when the
man in dark spectacles in his testimony shows how his business ventures
110
have been torpedoed by foreign firms zealous to maintain a firmer
control over the national economy. Mwireri therefore calls for decisive
action to be taken and advocates national self-reliance in theft to
eliminate the link with their foreign masters. On hearing this
testimony, the leader of the foreign delegation is clearly alarmed and
voices his regret at Mwireri's chauvinism thus:
In coming here we thought that we were visiting people who
understood that all thieves and robbers of the world belong
to the same age-group, the same family, the same
nationality, and that they share the same ideology. We
believe in freedom, the freedom that allows one to rob and
to steal according to one's abilities. That is what we call
personal initiative and individual enterprise [DC, p. 175].
From the reassurance given to the foreign delegation, there is
also the ominous note that Mwireri has not only lost the argument but he
is going to lose his life, like the rebellious servant in his own fable.
The atmosphere of The Devil on the Cross is permissive to the extreme,
as theft, buffoonery, pimping, lewdness and lechery are erected into
virtues while the open celebration of corruption and vice point to the
depraved elements' mastery of the situation.
In general, it can be said that our examination of commitment
enables us to assess Ngugi's insight into the complexity of human
character and motivation. Ngugi's heterogenous collection of misfits,
revolutionaries, withdrawn or merely ideologically alienated men and
women, constitutes a barometer of African society.
111
Notes
1. Barrel of a Pen, p. 62.
2. Ibid., p. 28. Future reference to this work will be made directly
in the body of the thesis.
3. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, The River Between (London: Heinemann African
Writers Series 17, 1965). Future reference to this work will be from
the same edition preceded by the abbreviation RB. This will be done
directly in the body of the thesis.
4. Homecoming, pp. 31-32. Future reference to this work will be made
directly in the body of the thesis.
5. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Weep Not, Child (London: Heinemann African
Writers Series 17, 1964). Future reference to this work will be from
the same edition preceded by the abbreviation WNC. This will be done
directly in the body of the thesis.
6. Chidi Amuta, Towards a Sociology in African Literature (Oguta,
Nigeria: Zim Pan-African Publishers, 1986), p. 102.
7. Peter Nazareth, An African View of Literature (Illinois:
Northwestern University Press Evanston, 1974, p. 3.
8. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, A Grain of Wheat (London: Heinemann African
Writers Series 36, 1986). Future reference to this work will be from
the same edition preceded by the abbreviation GW. This will be done
directly in the body of the thesis.
9. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978).
Future reference to this work will be from the same edition preceded by
the abbreviation PB. This will be done directly in the body of the
thesis.
10. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Barrel of a Pen, pp. 73-74.
11. F.E.M.K. Senkoro, The Prostitute in African Literature (Dar Es
Salaam: Dar Es Salaam University Press, 1982), pp. 31-33.
12. The Black Hermit (Nairobi, London: Heinemann Educational African
Writers Series 51, 1968). Published under the author's earlier name,
James Ngugi.
13. Ibid., p. 20.
14. Ibid., p. 25.
112
15. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross, trans. from Gikuyu by the
author (London: Heinemann African Writers Series, 1983). Future
reference to this work will be from the same edition preceded by the
abbreviation DC. This will be done directly in the body of the thesis.
113
CHAPTER III
COMMITMENT AND STEINBECK'S FICTION OF THE THIRTIES
While considering the notion of commitment in Steinbeck's fiction,
it would have been quite logical and proper to expatiate on the American
literary background, to trace its major trends or features and
eventually indicate the place Steinbeck occupies in this general schema,
as I have done with Ngugi. Such a procedure would be far too ambitious
and beyond the scope of my thesis, which will essentially concentrate on
Steinbeck's fiction of the Depression era.
When we talk about American society, the characteristic self-
images are those of democracy, equality, and individualism--values
sometimes seen as in conflict, sometimes seen as complementary. The
American social condition of democracy and equality, according to the
nineteenth-century French observer Alexis de Tocqueville, has retained
the character of the founding fathers, who "have been allowed by their
circumstances, their origin, their intelligence, and especially by their
moral feeling, to establish and maintain the sovereignty of the
1
people."
Individualism, Tocqueville says, is derived from the feeling of
equality, maturity and self-reliance that leads the individual to break
114
out from society with his or her family or a smaller circle. Unlike
egotism, which "originates in blind instinct, individualism proceeds
from erroneous judgement more than from depraved feelings." However,
the distinction Tocqueville makes between the two is not hard-drawn, for
individualism not only "saps the virtues of public life," in the long
run, "it attacks and destroys all others [virtues], and at length [is]
absorbed in downright egotism.,,2
Tocqueville therefore perceives American individualism as a
manifestation and consequence of democracy and equality. He gives it a
socio-political but aristocratic frame of reference in the following:
As social conditions become more equal, the number of
persons increase who, although they are neither rich nor
powerful enough to exercise any influence over their
fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained sufficient
education and fortune to satisfy their own wants. They owe
nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they
acquire the habit of always considering themselves as
standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their own
destiny is in their hands. Thus not only does democracy
make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his
descendants, and separates his contemporaries, from him; it
throws him back forever upon himself alone, and threatens in
the end to
3
confine him entirely within the solitude of his
own heart.
The values of democracy, equality, and individualism also find
their expression in the liberal credo which constitutes the ideological
framework for American culture, despite the fact that the inherent
contradiction between the individualistic ideal and social reality is
never solved. Michel Terrier, in his book dealing with American writers
in the first half of the century, perceives both this paradox and the
fundamental political motivation of American literature, when he talks
115
about the basic inspiration of this literature as being political in the
largest sense of the word:
Its concern is with the fate of the individual in society,
as constituting the revealer of the realization, or non-
fulfilment of the promise of happiness and boundless
optimism made to the individual by the democratic ideal.
Implicitly or explicitly, every American literary work makes
reference to this ... What makes the inspiration thoroughly
democratic is the faith placed in the ample virtues of
man .... Besides, the duty of the writer cannot but be to
underline the gap that exists between the ideal and the
social reality. From this democratic ideal, somehow imposed
by America on her writers, springs the necessity of revolt
against the iniquities and frustration that a whole society
inevitably secretes. Ame
4
ican literature, therefore,
illustrates this paradox.
"This thoroughly democratic faith in the ample virtues of man," apart
from representing American individualism and love of freedom, perhaps
expresses a transcendental or mystical belief as well.
Unlike Terrier, Lionel Trilling stresses the dialectics of
American culture and the relative inherent contradictory nature of some
of her writers. He touches more on the characteristically American
cultural complexity, the dialectical nature of American culture and of
some of her writers:
Culture is not a flow, not even a confluence; the form of
its existence is a struggle, or at least a debate--it is
nothing if not dialectic. And in any culture there are
likely to be certain artists who contain a large part of the
dialectic within themselves, their meaning and power lying
in their contradictions, they contain within themselves, it
may be said, the very essence of the culture, and the sign
of this is that they do not submit to serve the ends of any
one ideological group or tendencys It is a significant
circumstance of American culture.
In the same breath, Trilling recognizes both the importance and
the invigorating nature of the social in literature, believes the
116
conscious realization of the social and class in literature "produces
intention, passion, thought, and ... substantiality. " On the other hand,
"the diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable in
many respects, seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our
ability to see people in their difference and specialness. ,,6
Having said this, Trilling notes that the particularity of
American society makes the writer with perceptiveness to social class
superior to the writer who lacks this vision for, unlike the European
social context where "the tension between a middle class and an
aristocracy ... brings manners into observable relief," the American
society does not reveal an easily perceptible class tension; rather, it
is the writer's keenness of sight that brings this social reality to
view:
Our class structure has been extraordinarily fluid; our
various upper classes have seldom been able or stable enough
to establish their culture as authoritative. With the
single exception of the Civil War, our political struggles
have not had the kind of cultural implications which catch
the imagination, and the extent to which this one conflict
has engaged the American mind suggests how profoundly
interesting conflict of culture may be ... For the rest, the
opposition between rural and urban ideals has always been
factitious; and despite a brief attempt to insist on the
opposite view, the conflict of capital and labor is at
present a contest for the possession of the goods of a
single way of life, and not a cultural struggle. Our most
fervent interest in manners has been linguistic, and our
pleasure in drawing distinctions between a presumably normal
way of speech and an 'accent' or a 'dialect' may su
7
gest how
simple is our national notion of social difference.
To a great extent, the ambivalence of the American writer spoken
of by Trilling is applicable to Steinbeck. In a similar vein, Richard
117
H. Pells' description of the American intellectual in the thirties
points out the same characteristically American ambivalence:
Intellectuals in the thirties were both radical and
conservative, ideologically sophisticated and hostile to
social theory, artistically experimental but also hungry for
popular acceptance, at once critical and supportive of
American ideals. In the end, however, these contradictions
were by no means unique to the depression experience; they
are at the very center of the American intelletual's
continuing ambivalence toward his native land.
Furthermore, in a remark about the inability of writers in the
thirties to assimililate their contradictory influences and tendencies--
the "amounts of journalistic detail, social criticism and surreal
prophecy"--Pells concludes that the novels of these writers "in the end
were more disturbing than radical, more psychologically complex than
politically coherent. ,,9
Perhaps, Steinbeck's works, more than the works of any other
writer of the depression, reflect this complexity and lack of political
coherence. In his letters, Steinbeck manifestly attempts to steer clear
from embracing ideologies that may prove limiting to his view of human
life. As early as 1930, Steinbeck finds modern sanity and religion a
delusionlOand, by the end of that decade, he sees the general confusion
that probably was at the origin of the Second World War, and refuses to
take part in the muddle:
There are things in the side pool easier to understand than
Stalinist, Hitlerite, Democrat, capitalist, and voodoo. So
I am going to those things which are relatively more lasting
to find a new basic picture. I have too a conviction that a
new world is growing under the old, the way a new finger
grows under a bruised one ... I think the same thing is
happening now. Communist, Fascist, Democrat may find the
real origin of the future lies on the microscope plates of
obscure young men, who, puzzled with order and disorder ... ,
118
build gradually a picture which will seep down until it is
the fibre of the future [Life in Letters, pp. 193-194].
Apart from bringing out Steinbeck's rejection of ideologies, the
above quote also illustrates his strong belief in science, though he
omits any indication of how the solution of world problems could be
brought about outside socio-political struggles or confusion. It is
also this scientific vein in him that informs Steinbeck's perspective on
literature and gives direction to most of his writings.
According to Owens, Steinbeck contracted his philosophic approach
to life, his teleological and non-teleological thinking, mainly from his
collaboration with a fellow scientist, Ed Ricketts, whom he met in
1930.
ll
As Owens defines it, "non-teleological thinking concerns itself
primarily not with what should be, or could be, or might be, but rather
with what actually 'is.' Teleological thinking, on the other hand,
results from acting upon partial evidence, which is all we can see of
the 'overall' pattern. It is a .. . belief in cause-and-effect
relationsip, the kind of relationship that underlies all supplications
12
to all gods."
Non-teleological thinking perhaps corresponds to Lukacs' notion of
"exterior" fidelity to reality, whereas teleological thinking would
translate the interior perspective. It would however be wrong to see
Steinbeck's engaged works, ranging from In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and
Men and The Grapes of Wrath, as being informed only by one of the above
mentioned perspectives, for both often co-exist in the same work.
Besides, as in the above quote, Steinbeck's belief in the perfectibility
119
of humankind and his conviction that a new world is growing under the
old, both of which are seen outside socio-political struggles, leads to
a somewhat mystical and romantic strain in his works, which becomes all
the more important when we are aware of the living meaning he gives to
nature. This is to say that Steinbeck's fiction is syncretic and
contains a multitude of currents, among which the most important is the
realistic one.
In his defense of what he termed "engaged" literature, Jean-Paul
Sartre points out that the moral duty of the prose writer is to
illuminate the historical period in which he or she lives and to
influence it. Apart from this moral obligation, for the prose writer
whose art is meaning oriented, commitment is inevitable. If people are
defined by their actions, and if choice is implicit in every action
(abstaining from choosing being itself a choice), then the act of
writing is necessarily part of this general schema of engagement.
In the Sartrian perspective, therefore, the relevant question is
not whether the writer is committed, but to what cause. Is the writer a
"clerk" in the medieval sense of the word, that is, a mere recorder of
events, the effect of whose work will be the maintenance of the status
quo? Or is he or she a partisan in the struggle of the oppressed,
working to change their oppressed condition? Sartre subscribes to the
latter form of commitment, whereby the writer works to change the
prevailing condition of oppression, or helps to initiate an evolution
that ultimately leads to such a change.
13
120
It would be wrong to assert categorically that all of Steinbeck's
fiction is engaged, that is, taking side against oppression and working
to bring about a better condition of life. Yet, in his apparently non-
engaged fiction like The Pastures of Heaven, Steinbeck shows that he
avoids being merely a chronicler of events: his deep feeling for simple
people, for most part ordinary farmers and their families, people of the
working class, leaves no doubt about his concern for their condition in
society. And it is important to note that even behind the writer's
methodology or narrative standpoint can be discerned his/her basic
attitude to his/her subject.
If Steinbeck's sympathy for and engagement on the side of the poor
derive in large part from his conscious choice, it may also have been
caused by a warm-hearted predisposition whose roots are to be found in
the grinding poverty that Steinbeck himself knew in his youth. Though a
writer's social origin may play only a minor role in determining his/her
class allegiance and ideology, since writers, like other people from all
walks of life, have often put themselves at the service of another
class, the fact remains that Steinbeck's allegiance to the poor also
derives from his personal experience of what it meant to be poor in
America.
Recalling his youth, Steinbeck wrote how desperately poor his
family was. He described the odd jobs he had to do to keep body and
soul together: "I am poor, dreadfully poor. I have to feed someone else
before I can eat myself. I must live in an atmosphere of dirty dishes
121
and waitresses ... if I wish to know about things like psychology and
logic" [Life in Letters, p. 5].
In 1935, he wrote about the hate and the fear he had felt because
of his extreme poverty in New York: "I guess I hate New York, because I
had a thin, lonely, hungry time of it there. And I remember too well
the cockroaches under my washbasin and the impossibility of getting a
job. I was scared thoroughly. And I can't forget the scare" [Life in
Letters, p. 9]. He also recalled how, out of funds and discouraged by
his inability to sell the stories he had been writing, he returned to
the West Coast, working his way on a freighter, as he had done when
going East.
Even as a writer, Steinbeck did not know success the easy way. To
earn his living as a writer, Steinbeck soon realized that he had to
sacrifice his artistic integrity and meet the demands of the public: "It
is quite obvious that people do not want to buy the things I have been
writing. Therefore, to make the money I need, I must write the things
they want to read. In other words, I must sacrifice artistic integrity
for a little while to personal integrity" [Life in Letters, p. 32].
With the publication of The Pastures of Heaven, Steinbeck regained
his artistic integrity and began drawing directly on his experience, and
he is at his best when he does this. In his engaged fiction, lived
experience constitutes the substructure on which values, ideas, and
judgements are based. The more he drew on his own experience, the
greater grew his involvement and the need to further identify himself
with the underdogs. For example, after writing In Dubious Battle, he
122
found it necessary to include a statement that all the persons, places
and events were fictitious because "it had all happened and I don't want
anybody hurt because of my retelling" [Life in Letters, p. 99]; and the
information on the communists came from "Irish and Italian communists
whose training was on the field, not in the drawing room" [Life in
Letters, p. 110]. Like George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck
worked as a "ranch hand near King City which later became the setting"
for the novel [Life in Letters, p. 5].
During the summer of 1936, Steinbeck's involvement with the lives
of migrant workers deepened after he visited the Gridley Migrant Camp
north of Sacramento. During that visit, he replied to a letter in the
following terms: "I have to write this sitting in a ditch. I'll be home
in two or three weeks. I'm not working--may go south ... migrants are
going south now and I'll probably go along" [Life in Letters, p. 129].
His concern with the plight of the migrant workers led him to refuse
payment while reporting for Fortune and Life magazines. Instead, he
asked these magazines to "put up the money for the help of some of these
people," adding:
I'm sorry but I simply can't make money on these
people ... The suffering is too great for me to cash in on it.
I hope it doesn't sound either quixotic or martyrish to you.
A short trip into the fields where the water is a foot deep
in the tents and the children are up on the beds and there
is no food and no fire, and the county has taken off all the
nurses because 'the problem is so great that we can't do
anything about it.' So they do nothing .... But you see what
I mean. It is the most heartbreaking thing in the world
[Life in Letters, p. 161].
123
To Steinbeck, material reality is infused with moral perceptions
about the social world. His feeling for what is happening in society
and in the world around him has led him to the view of the novelist as
"a rearranger of nature so that it makes an understandable pattern,
and ... also a teacher, but ... primarily a man and subject to all of man's
faults and virtues, fears and braveries" [Life in Letters, p. 554].
Furthermore, Steinbeck believes writing is self-expressive because,
consciously or unconsciously, the writer identifies with the moral
center of his/her work and also with the central character:
In this character he puts not only what he thinks he is but
what he hopes to be. We can call this spokesman the self-
character. You will find one in everyone of my books and
in the novels of everyone I can remember ... I suppose my own
symbol character has my dream wish of wisdom and acceptance"
[Life in Letters, p. 553].
In his early works, Steinbeck's concern is basically ecological
and human: the love of and service to human beings; the intricate,
almost, mystical relationship between people, and human beings and
nature; and an overriding interest in ordinary people that makes him see
the illusory nature of their lives--materialism, possessiveness,
superstition, ignorance, and mainly their belief in the possibility of
happiness--as constantly alienating human beings from both themselves
and nature and leading to frustrations of all kinds. At this stage,
Steinbeck displays motifs which R.W.B. Lewis describes as "a
celebrational sense in life, a sense of promise and possibility and of
as yet unspoiled novelty in man and in his habitation, a mystical
sympathy both for the individual and for ... the 'en-masse. ,,,14
124
The Pastures of Heaven
In a letter to Mavis McIntosh, Steinbeck explains at length the
particular interest he has in The Pastures of Heaven,lSincluding the
setting, the technique and the characters developed in the book:
The present work [that is, The Pastures of Heaven] interests
me and perhaps falls in the 'aspects' theme you mentioned
[aspects of American life category.] There is, about twelve
miles from Monterey, a valley in the hills called Corral de
Tierra. Because I am using its people, I have named it
Pasturas del Cielo. The valley was for years known as the
happy valley because of the unique harmony which existed
among its twenty families. About ten years ago a new family
moved in on one of the ranches. They were ordinary people,
ill-educated but honest and as kindly as any. In fact, in
their whole history, I cannot find that they committed a
real malicious act nor an act which was not dictated by
honorable expediency or out-and-out altruism. But about the
Morans there was a flavor of evil. Everyone they came in
contact with was injured. Every place they went dissension
spring up. There have been two murders, a suicide, many
quarrels and a great deal of unhappiness in the Pastures of
Heaven, and all of these things can be traced directly to
the influence of the Morans. So much is true.
I am using the following method. The manuscript is made up
of stories, each one complete in itself, having its rise,
climax, and end. Each story deals with a family or an
individual. They are tied together only by the common
locality and by the contact with the Morans [Life in
Letters, pp. 42-43].
The Pastures of Heaven shows a clearly Andersonian plot structure:
the series of stories are unified by the self-contained locale in which
they occur and by contact with the Munroes, probably Steinbeck's
equivalent of George, in Winesburg, Ohio. But unlike Anderson, who is
satisfied with exploring the supposedly unalterable neuroses of his
characters, Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven not only throws light on
the crippling illusions that prevent the ordinary individual from
realizing his/her potential but also shows how, in certain cases, an
125
appropriate dose of realism can prove beneficial. All these stories
take place in a mystical and overpoweringly beautiful background that,
most often, is initially believed to be the major influence behind the
mind's wandering away from reality.
The tone of The Pastures of Heaven, beginning with the title, is
ironic because of the implied contrast between the beauty of the land
and the frustrations in the lives of the inhabitants. Our first view of
the beautiful, green valley, "Las Pasturas del Cielo," is from above,
through the eyes of a Spanish corporal, "some time around 1776." He is
out rounding up Indian slaves who have escaped from the task of building
a Catholic Mission. After he has recaptured them, the Corporal
scrambles up a ridge in pursuit of a small deer and discovers the
breathtaking beauty of the pastures of heaven--"a long valley floored
with green pasturage on which a herd of deer browsed. Perfect live oaks
grew in the meadow of the lovely place, and the hills hugged it
jealously against the fog and the wind [TPH, p. 2]. Before this
magnificent sight, the Spanish Corporal is greatly moved, falls to his
knees and, in his eyes, the beautiful valley is metamorphosed into the
Promised Land:
The disciplinarian Corporal felt weak in the face of so
serene a beauty. He who had whipped brown backs to tatters,
he whose rapacious manhood was building a new race for
California, this bearded savage, bearer of civilization,
slipped from his saddle and took off his steel helmet.
"Holy Mother," he whispered, "here are the green pastures of
heaven to which our Lord leadeth us" [TPH, p. 2].
The corporal dreams of returning to the valley "with sentimental
wishfulness to a little time of peace before he died, to an adobe house
126
beside a stream, and cattle nuzzling the walls at night." Ironically,
the corporal's dream never materializes as he dies from the pox he
contracted with an Indian woman. Commenting on the corporal's death,
Owens argues that "his dream is the first illusory dream in a book of
illusory dreams." He sees in both the illusory nature of the corporal's
dream and the contradiction represented in this brutal and religious
man, an allusion to the "very foundations of America's ideas about
itself. ,,160wens also argues about the purely ironic use Steinbeck makes
of the Munroe family (the fictional name for the Morans)--the supposed
agents of the valley's curse.
In the second chapter of the book, it is around 1928 and the
valley is now inhabited by twenty farm families. We meet the Munroes,
the occupants of the "Battle" farm, which, because of the bad luck of
its previous residents, is still believed by many to be cursed: the life
of its former inhabitants, old, "pleasureless and dorn" George Battle
with his epileptic wife Myrtle and their son John, whose life "was
devoted to a struggle with devils," sets a strong negative precedent,
which Bert Munroe considers with some humor.
The Munroe family includes Bert Munroe, his wife, their daughter
Mae and two sons, Jimmie and Manfred. Bert Munroe has come to the
Pastures of Heaven because of supposedly superstitious reasons:
He was tired of battling with a force which invariably
defeated him. He had engaged in many enterprises and
everyone had failed, not through any shortcoming on Bert's
part, but through mishaps, which, if taken alone, were
accidents. Bert saw all the accidents together and they
seemed to him the acts of a fate malignant to his success.
Bert was only fifty-five, but wanted to rest; he was all
convinced that a curse rested upon him [TPH, pp. 20-21].
127
Though Bert Munroe's initial reason for coming to the Pastures is
principally escapist in nature, once there Bert Munroe apparently looks
at life with more realism, at least more than the other inhabitants do.
For example, hearing that the farm has had spells of bad luck, Bert
hopes and suggests to his neighbors that his curse and the farm's curse
"got to fighting and killed each other off." To Bert's newfound
optimistic view, a neighbor ripostes: "Maybe your curse and the farm's
curse has mated and gone into a gopher hole like a pair of rattle
snakes. Maybe there'll be a lot of baby curses crawling around the
Pastures the first thing we know" [TPH, p. 25]. This comment turns out
to be the most appropriate prophecy of life in the happy valley.
However, what is ironic in the whole situation is that Munroe's contact
generally highlights the inherent curses or illusions of the
inhabitants, sometimes enabling them to make a fresh start, and that
Munroe himself has apparently come to terms with his own curses. The
imagery in the above quote brings out S\einbeck's characters' closeness
to the land with its fauna, as well as their constant sense of
apprehension. Also important is the humor that bathes the whole vision.
The third episode involves Edward "Shark" Wicks, his submissive
wife, Katherine, and their pretty but dull-witted fourteen-year old
daughter, Alice. In this story, Steinbeck deals with the theme of
pretence, of appearance and reality--Edward "Shark" Wick's fall from his
position of imagined wealth. Steinbeck also deals with the mystery and
unfathomable power of human relationship. Edward "Shark" Wicks is a
farmer who, disatisfied with the subsistence nature of his life,
128
convinces himself that he is an all-knowing individual capable of
building a large fortune by dodging the erratic instability of the stock
market. Shark manages to convince other people of his illusory wealth
by constantly hinting at his savings:
He liked to pretend that he was laying away money in
securities. At schoolboard meetings he asked the advice of
the other members about various bonds, and in this way
managed to give them the impression that his savings were
considerable ... "Shark?" they said, "Oh, I guess he was worth
around twenty thousand, maybe more. He's nobody's
fool' ... [though] Shark had never had more than five hundred
dollars at one time in his life ... [his] greatest pleasure
came from being considered a wealthy man ... He enjoyed it so
much that the wealth itself became real to him. Setting his
imaginary fortune at fifty thousand dollars, he kept a
ledger in which he calculated his interest and entered
records of his various investments. These manupulations
were the first joys of his life [TPH, pp. 26-27].
As a husband and father, Shark is loveless, having devoted his
life to the service of his illusory wealth. He "governs" his wife as he
would a horse: he "never talked to her as to a human, never spoke of his
hopes or thoughts or failures, of his paper wealth nor of the peach
crop" [TPH, p. 27]. He does not even display fatherly love towards his
daughter, except in the form of a possessiveness that borders on incest.
The more Shark thinks about the eventuality of his daughter's marriage,
the more he hates the idea, for "he regarded her marriage with no less
repugnance than her seduction... He did not love her as a father loves a
child. Rather he hoarded her and gloated over the possession of a fine,
unique thing" [TPH, p. 36].
His obsession with preserving his daughter's chastity comes to a
head when he is told that Alice is seen kissing Jimrnie Munroe. Beside
129
himself, Shark grabs his rifle and heads for the Munroe house. Arrested
for threatening Munroe, he is thought to be a rich man, a high fine is
demanded from him, and the lie that constitutes his life is exposed.
It is at this time that his placid wife unexpectedly undergoes a
metamorphosis, similar to that in the last lines of The Grapes of Wrath,
where the recently bereaved Rose of Sharon agrees to save an old man by
breast-feeding him. Shark's Katherine suddenly becomes a powerful
goddess capable of blotting out her husband's humiliation by restoring
his faith in himself. All this occurs in a single moment of revelation:
Suddenly the genius in Katherine became power and the power
gushed in her body and flooded her. In a moment she knew
what she was and what she could do. She was exultantly
happy and very beautiful ... How do you know you can't make
money? I think you can. I know you can. She had known she
could do this. As she sat there the knowledge of her power
had been born in her, and she knew that all her life was
directed at this one moment. In this moment she was a
goddess, a singer of destiny. It did not surprise her when
his body gradually stiffened ... He looked at Katherine and
saw how beautiful she was in this moment, and as he looked,
her genius passed into him [TPH, p. 55].
Katherine's embrace fills her husband with her power and genius,
making it possible for him to regain his courage at a time he most
needed it or, in Steinbeck's words, restores his capacity "for gallantry
in defeat, for courage, compassion and love," something that can only be
found behind the mystery of human relationship, something Shark had
foresaken in his fascination with wealth, illusory wealth.
Shark's fall, we must point out, is due less to Jimmie's
precocious behavior with Alice than to the fragile illusory basis on
which Shark had built his life in the first place. Furthermore, Shark's
130
fall lands him in a better position at the end of the story, as he is
now given the opportunity not only to make real money but to appreciate
his wife's love and to make amends for his initial heedlessness of human
ties.
The fourth story is about Tularecito, a mentally retarded,
abandoned child that Franklin Gomez takes into his house. The child's
"flat face, together with his peculiar body" earns him his name,
Tularecito, or Little Frog. Tularecito's origin remains a mystery, just
as his physique and manners are strange. Though his brain is said to
have stopped developing after he was five, Tularecito at six is as
strong as a man and is a gifted farmer and carver:
At six Tularecito could do the work of a grown man. The
long fingers of his hands were more dexterious and stronger
than most men's fingers ... He had planting hands, tender
fingers that never injured a young plant nor bruised the
surfaces of a grafting limb. His merciless fingers could
wring the neck from a turkey gobbler without effort. Also
Tularecito had an amusing gift. With his thumbnail he could
carve remarkably correct animals from sandstone [TPH, p.
60] .
Apart from his deformity, Tularecito cannot stand the destruction
of his handiworks, "he became furious and attacked the desecrator
murderously." Miss Martin, the teacher, learns this to her cost, when
she unknowingly has Tularectio's drawings rubbed off the board. The
incident with Tularecito is apparently the reason behind her resignation
at the end of the school year.
Because of his difference, Tularecito becomes an alien and outcast
both to the young and old inhabitants of the Pastures. He cannot mingle
131
with children because of the strength of his body, while men and women
feel uncomfortable and uneasy because of his "ancient and dry eyes."
The pressure of the discrimination exerted on Tularecito is such
that his difference becomes tangible to himself and he ends up not only
believing in the existence of gnomes, fairies and the like, but also
decides to go back home to his folks in the other world.
The fact that Tularecito "finds" his people in Bert Munroe's
orchard, where "the trees were thick with leaves, and the land finely
cultivated," is ironic. Tularecito's anger at seeing his handiworks
wrecked makes him knock Bert cold, when the latter tries to fill up the
trench that Tularecito had dug at the foot of a birch tree, in search of
his people. The retarded child/man is taken to the asylum for the
criminally insane at Napa. Tularecito's gentleness, sensitivity and
craftmanship are simply outweighed by his physical deformity as he is
rejected by human society in what turns out to be a parody of social
normality.
The next episode completes the previous one in that it hints at
the nature of relationship between the apparently normal and abnormal
members of society. Unlike the rejection of Tularecito in the previous
story, here Helen Van Deventer shows an obsessive need to "sacrifice"
herself for both her insane daughter and the memory of her dead husband.
Helen Van Deventer is a beautiful widow "with tragic eyes," who,
with her demented daughter, Hilda, moves to the Pastures in retreat from
the outside world. Bert Munroe pays a courtesy call at the newcomers'
place, but cannot see Helen, whose life had taken a dramatic turn ever
132
since the accidental death of her husband and the unfortunate birth of
her demented daughter. After Bert's visit, the demented Hilda, who had
seen the visitor from the window of her baricaded room, babbles about
having found a suitor with whom she will elope. The episode ends with
the accidental shooting of the daughter by the mother, out of
nervousness and hysteria over her daughter's poor mental state and
especially from her own stubbornness in keeping her daughter at home
despite the fact that there are no signs that she is improving. Helen's
almost sadistic illusions lead her to stoicism and to a posture of
placid endurance in this story: "we take what is given us. I can
endure. I am sure of that, and I am proud of it. No amount of tragedy
can break down my endurance" [TPH, p. 81]. She fails to see that
sending her daughter to the appropriate place for care, as Dr Phillis
had advised her to do, de tracks nothing from her love for Hilda, except
perhaps her pride and perverse happiness.
Episode six concerns Junius Maltby and his son, Robbie. Junius
has been an accountant in San Francisco, but ill-health has driven him
to the Pastures, where he is first a boarder and then the husband of the
widow Quaker. First Mrs. Quaker's two sons die; then, after giving
birth to Robbie, she dies too, leaving Junius, Robbie and a hired hand
on the Quaker farm.
Once Maltby finds himself in the Pastures, he turns out to be a
very odd individual because of the illusions he had brought with him.
Even though the atmosphere of the happy valley is prescribed for Junius
as a remedy for his delicate lungs, Maltby certainly had the illusion
133
that the Pastures were a paradise where the notion of work was foreign.
To Maltby, the beautiful environment and balmy climate of the valley
become "a nice symbolic substitute for death" [TPH, p. 105]. Maltby
leads a life of indolence that consequently bring about his family's
poverty. This poverty is described as sitting "cross-legged on the farm
and the Maltbys were ragged." Maltby's laziness may also have caused
the deaths of his overworked wife and undernourished foster children.
That Maltby is dangerously lost in his illusions becomes clear when,
instead of finding the appropriate remedies for his stricken children,
he either stayed out "dangling his feet in the stream," or talked
nonsense to them, "explaning the beauty of diamond[s] . .,and the
symbolism of the swastlika," or read them Treasure Island.
As a result of Maltby's irresponsibility and laziness, the other
inhabitants of the valley hate him "with the loathing busy people had
for lazy ones." However, so clumsy and ignorant of rustic life is
Maltby that he sometimes becomes the source of fun in the valley. For
example, when buying a goat, whose milk is intended for the orphaned
Robbie, Maltby forgets to notice whether the goat was male or female.
Once home, Maltby engages in the following conversation with the owner:
"Is this a normal goat?"
"Sure," said the owner.
"But shouldn't there be a bag or something immediately
between the hind legs?--for the milk, I mean."
The people of the valley roared about that. Later, when a
new and better goat was provided, Junius fiddled with it for
two days and could not draw a drop of milk. He wanted to
return this goat as defective until the owner showed him how
to milk it. Some people claimed that he held the baby under
the goat and let it suck ... but this was untrue [TPH, p.
110] . ---
134
Because of Maltby's ignorance about how children are treated,
Robbie "grew up gravely," that is, without childhood. At five he speaks
like a grownup and plays the games that children would normally not
play. Even worse, the child's perspective on the world around him comes
to reflect the same myopic views of his father, for his life, like his
father's, "was gloriously happy, as unreal, as romantic and as
unimportant as his thinking" [TPH, p. 116].
Robbie's illusory life and his lack of awareness of their low
social status are shattered when he is sent to school at the insistence
of the community, and more importantly, when Mrs Munroe buys clothes for
him:
The shirts and the new overalls lay open before him, and he
stared at them uncomprehendingly. Suddenly he seemed to
realize what they were. His face flushed warmly. For a
moment he looked about nervously like a trapped animal, and
then he bolted through the door, leaving the little heap of
clothing behind him. The school board heard two steps on
the porch, and Robbie was gone [TPH, p. 136].
Robbie did not know he was poor until the moment Mrs Munroe made
her charitable gesture. The next moment we meet Robbie, he and his
father are fleeing from the Pastures to San Fransisco. Maltby explains
the reason behind their flight to the sympathetic teacher, Miss Morgan,
who had opposed the charitable gesture in the first place: "You see ... 1
didn't know I was doing an injury to the boy, here. I hadn't thought
about it. You can see that he shouldn't be brought up in poverty. You
can see that, can't you? I didn't know what people were saying about
us" [TPH, p. 139].
135
The story about the Lopez sisters brings out the contradiction
between the immoral lives the two sisters lead and the illusion of
sanctity they give to their acts. After starting an unsuccessful small
business of selling tortillas in the Pastures, Rosa's feeling of
gratitude makes her give herself to her best customer of the day. Maria
agrees with her sister's behavior, which she sees as a small misdemeanor
that the Virgin Mary would forgive and she decides to do the same too:
That day marked the turning point of the affairs of the
Lopez sisters. It is true that business did not flourish,
but from then on, they sold enough of their 'Spanish
Cookings' to keep food in the kitchen ... They remained
persistently religious. When either of them had sinned she
went directly to the little porcelain Virgin, now
conveniently placed in the hall to be accessible from both
bedrooms, and prayed for forgiveness. Sins were not allowed
to pile up [TPH, pp. 145-146].
In conformity with the illusion of piety that surround their
immoral behavior, the two sisters refuse to take money for their sexual
tips. Maria is even sorely offended when a "small" customer offers her
"the money of shame." She sees this gesture as an insult both to
herself and to her noble ancestry:
It is an insult to me ... You do not know, perhaps, that
General Vallejo is nearly our ancestor, so close as that we
are related... What would General Vallejo say if he heard?
Do you think his hand could stay from his sword to hear you
insult two ladies so nearly in his family? .. You say to us,
'You are shameful women [TPH, p. l48]!
Rumors eventually start spreading about the immorality of the
Lopez sisters, and the womenfolk of the valley start looking at the two
sisters with scorn, occasionally giving them the cold shoulder.
However, it is through Bert Munroe that the sisters' illusions are
136
shattered: When Maria gives a ride to Allen Hueneker, a man who both
looked and walked like an ape, Bert sees this as worthy of a joke and
intends to "tell old lady Hueneker we saw her old man running off with
Maria Lopez" [TPH, p. 154].
At the end of story, the two sisters' restaurant/brothel is closed
down by the Sheriff and Rosa and Maria prepare to leave the Pastures.
Though it is Bert's joke that is at the origin of the sisters'
frustration, it must be noted that they were victims of their own
dangerous illusions, illusions which cannot stand the reality of a joke.
The Characters in The Pastures of Heaven are totally immersed in
the illusions they have of the world, which generally lead to
frustrations when a little reality is allowed. The characters of Molly
Morgan and Pat Humbert also project this refusal to face reality.
Molly Morgan's obsessive love of the romantic is the basis of her
refusal to see her father's irresponsibility in abandoning his family.
Instead, she clings nostalgically to the idea of his coming home.
Similarly, she refuses to hear stories about Bert Munroe's drunken farm
hand, but is ready to have an "adventure" travelling to an abandoned
cabin that might be the drunken man's dwelling place. Like the Maltbys
she adored, she leaves the Pastures of heaven as she is oppressed by the
reality from which she is trying to hide.
As for Pat Humbert, when he overhears Mae Munroe's admiration for
the house that he had always considered as a haunting symbol of his
parents' authoritative rule over him, his vision of the house not only
changes and he is caught up in a romantic dream-life with Mae. So real
137
do his illusions become that he forsakes human company, furnishes the
house with the most expensive furniture he can afford, and wearies
himself opening and closing the door for the imaginary Mae. In the end,
when he makes the decisive step to ask the real Mae out, it so happens
that he comes at a time when the Munroes are organizing their daughter's
wedding party.
The story about Raymond Banks revolves around the latter's
fantasies about death. At forty five, Banks is a "jolly man," regarded
as a kind of Santa Claus by the children of the Pastures. Banks has the
cleanest and most admired farm, where he raises five thousand white
chickens and one thousand white ducks. While the white chickens are
singing, eating and scratching in the dark alfalfa squares Banks has
made for them, the ducks have at their disposal a clean fresh water
pond, where they sail magnificently about, swimming "ponderously, as
though they were as huge as the Leviathan" [TPH, p. 191].
Banks is clean and organized about the way he takes care of his
poultry, but he is even cleaner and more meticulous about the way he
kills them. At such times, Banks becomes very serious and solemn:
Raymond picked a little rooster out of the trap and hung it
by its legs on wooden frame. He fastened the wildly beating
wings with a wire clamp ... Raymond had the killing knife with
its spear shaped blade on the box beside him... With sure,
quick hands, Raymond grasped the chicken's head and forced
the beak open. The knife slipped like a flash of light
along the roof of the beak and into the brain and out again.
The wings shuddered and beat against their clamp. For a
moment the neck stretched yearningly from side to side, and
a little rill of blood flowed from the tip of the beak [TPH,
p. 194]. ---
138
Banks' fantasies about clean, painless death and the pleasure he
derives from it reach a climax when he goes to watch executions at San
Quentin prison, from where Banks' friend sends him invitations two or
three times a year. Banks relishes these trips, which constitute the
only vacations he takes away from the farm:
Raymond liked to arrive at the warden's house the night
before the execution. Then, the next morning, Raymond liked
the excitement, the submerged hysteria of the other
witnesses in the warden's office. The slow march of the
condemned aroused his dramatic sense and moved him to
thrilling emotion. The hanging itself was not the important
part, it was the sharp, keen air of the whole proceeding
that impressed him. It was like a superchurch, solemn and
ceremonious and sombre ... The whole thing made him feel the
fullness of experience, a holy emotion that nothing else in
his life approached ... It made him feel alive; he seemed to
be living more acutely than at other times [TPH, pp. 197-
198] .
Unlike the other inhabitants of the Pastures who are both
interested and fascinated by Banks' excursions, Bert Munroe is
disillusioned and a little disgusted by them and finds it difficult to
put together Banks' "heartiness" and the perverse pleasure he derives
from watching poor fellows hanged. Yet, in spite of all this, Bert
finds himself asking Banks to procure him an invitation to the next
execution.
However, unlike Banks, whose illusions shelter him from the horror
of watching the executions without their violence intruding on him, Bert
Munroe finds himself incapable of relishing such scenes, even in
thought. His fertile imagination quickly pictures to Banks the horrors
of death by hanging and the nasty things that could happen, say the rope
139
pulling off the head, as was the case when a woman was hanged in
Arizona.
The story ends with Banks angry at Bert Munroe for having brought
home to his conscious mind the nasty reality of death, a reality that
Banks' illusions had shut from him. For the first time, Banks gives up
going to San Quentin and his wife advises him to invite his warden
friend to the Pastures instead.
The longest story, and probably the fullest, is about Richard
Whitesides' dream of founding a dynasty that will last about five
centuries. When Richard Whitesides, a fellow of Harvard, stumbles on
the Pastures he is not only moved, like the Spanish Corporal, but looks
for a vision to confirm that he has come to the Promised Land. Richard
finds this vision in his dream: "Richard saw a beautiful white house
with a trim garden in front of it and nearby, the white tower of a tank
house. There were little yellow lights in the windows ... The broad front
door opened, and a whole covey of children walked out on the veranda--at
least six children" [TPH, p. 148].
From this vision, Richard decides on the type of house to build.
However, from the moment he comes to the Pastures he does not see
himself as a temporary resident. Instead, Richard sees himself as a
Moses and considers the beautiful valley as Jerusalem, the permanent
seat of the Whitesides for generations to come. Richard makes known his
intentions to a neighbor baffled at the way Richard takes on himself the
burden of building a house to withstand the elements and to shelter
other Whitesides for generations to come: "I'm going to live here. I've
140
come to stay. My children and their children and theirs will live in
this house. There will be a great many Whitesides born, and a great
many will die here. Properly cared for, the house will last five
hundred years" [TPH, p. 249]. Richard is angry when the neighbor
questions the wisdom of such an enterprise:
I don't want to move ... That's just what I'm building
against. I shall build a structure so strong that neither I
nor my descendants will be able to move. As a precaution, I
shall be buried here when I die. Men find it hard to leave
the graves of their fathers ... Why, man, don't you see what
I'm doing? I'm founding a dynasty. I'm building a family
and a family seat that will survive, not forever, but for
several centuries [TPH, pp. 249-250].
Richard marries Alicia, but instead of six children as seen in the
vision, he finds himself the father of an only child, John. As soon as
the boy is old enough, Richard starts teaching him the tradition behind
the dynasty. Even on his death-bed, while John is away studying at
Harvard, Richard reiterates the dream and the hope of its fulfilment in
John.
John not only inherits his father's dream, but comes to see
himself as its materialization. He loves the house more than his father
did, for it becomes "the outer shell of his body." And he is certain
that wherever he goes he will always come back to it, in the same way as
the mind always returns to the body.
With his father's dream in mind, John marries Willa, who
unfortunately remains childless for seven years. On the eighth year,
she miraculously has a son, William. John attempts to get William
interested in the family tradition, but all his efforts are vain, for
141
the boy has simply "escaped him." The magnitude of John's dismay is
only comparable to the degree of his commitment to the dream: he loses
interest in life and in the land, but still nurses a secret hope that
the boy will still come back to him.
The story ends when William rather suddenly announces to his
parents that he has decided to marry Mae Monroe and that he intends to
move to Monterey with his bride. However, the final blow to the dream
comes when, on the advice of Bert, John sets fire to the brush around
the Whitesides' property and accidentally burns down the house. The old
couple then prepare to join their son in Monterey. Richard's illusion
about confining his offspring in the Pastures is broken by his grandson,
William the realist.
Our last sight of the Pastures, like the first, is from a hill-
top. A bus load of tourists has stopped to look down into the beautiful
valley. Like the Spanish corporal, these tourists are charmed by the
beauty of the place and dream of the tranquil life it promises:
They climbed stiffly from their seats and stood on the ridge
peak and looked down into the Pastures of Heaven. And the
air was as golden gauze in the last of the sun. The land
below them was plotted in squares of green orchard trees and
in squares of yellow grain and in squares of violet earth.
From the sturdy farmhouses, set in their gardens, the smoke
of the evening fires drifted upward ... Cowbells were softly
clashing ... ; a dog barked so far away that the sound rose up
to the travelers in sharp little whispers. Directly below
the ridge a band of sheep had gathered under an oak tree
against the night [TPH, p. 291].
We who know better the life of the beautiful valley understand the
crippling nature of these dreams, mainly when they are allowed to
replace reality. Besides, the new candidates for seclusion, like those
142
already in the valley, are men and women of the same social stamp, with
the same weaknesses and limitations; as a result, the same philosophy
and irony that "bring out the difference between characters' great
expectations and their frustrating fulfillment" will also apply to
17
them. However, such a conclusion, far from emphasizing Steinbeck's
pessimism about life, reveals the conditions that create his heroes.
In Dubious Battle
In Dubious Battle l8 is basically the story of a strike in the
fictional Torgas Valley that Mac, a professional communist organizer and
his friend, Jim Nolan, help start and keep going. In this novel,
Steinbeck's sympathy for the underdogs, the exploited migrant workers,
is never in doubt, even if it is a little overshadowed by the
relentless, bitter ideological war between the two communist activists
and the big growers. Mac and Jim want a long, protacted strike that
would eventually inculcate class consciousness into the migrant workers,
while the Corporate Farmers want to break the strike and, in the
process, force the migrants to accept their miserable wages. To avoid
being disbanded for illegally occupying farm premises and for lack of
adequate sanitation, the two radicals move the striking workers to a
sympathizer's farm and enlist the services of Dr Burton, a good but
uncommitted friend of Mac's. Though sympathetic to the great suffering
of the migrants, Dr Burton refuses to share Mac's optimism in the cause
and shows his opposition to the opportunism and radicalism of the two
friends. One veteran activist, Joy, who was on his way to help the
143
flagging strike, is shot and killed by vigilante gunfire and Mac uses
his mangled body to fuel the strike and cause the strikers to go on a
rampage. Though the outcome of the strike has long become desperate,
Mac is unrelenting about the cause and the necessity to carry on the
fight, until his radical friend, Jim, is shot by a vigilante sniper.
The book ends with Mac setting the stage to use Jim's body to agitate
the apathic workers.
In Dubious Battle is seen as Steinbeck's most successful novel by
most critics. It has also, as Warren French states, "often been called
the best novel about a strike ever written. ,,19But having said that, it
must be pointed out that many a critic has paid lip service to his own
partiality because, while all are unanimous in praising Steinbeck's
"objective" treatment of material, they tend to side with Doc Burton,
who they see as "truth-seeking" and whose "altruism has a saintliness."
On the other hand, Mac and Jim are condemned or dismissed as the
"exponents of Machiavellian opportunism. ,,20
Such views are at variance with Steinbeck's intentions stated in
some of his letters. For example, in a letter that tries to calm his
friend's worries that the book will be attacked by "both sides,"
Steinbeck states that he strongly anticipated such attacks and shows his
dismay at the public's behavior:
That is the trouble with the damned people of both sides.
They postulate either an ideal communist or a thoroughly
damnable communist and neither side is willing to suspect
that the communist is a human, subject to the weakness of
humans and the greatness of humans. I am not angry in the
least. But the blank wall of stupid refusal even to look at
the thing without colored glasses of some kind gives me a
feeling of overwhelming weariness and a desire to run away
144
and let them tear their stupid selves to pieces [Life in
Letters, p. 108].
Studying this apparently "objective" book in which Steinbeck
intended "to be merely a recording consciousness, judging nothing,
simply putting down the thing" [Life in Letters, p. 98], and where he
even denies having "an author's point of view" [po 105], becomes really
problematic especially when we perceive Steinbeck's voice and philosophy
in the character Doc Burton. Does Steinbeck, in contradiction to his
stated stand, side with Burton against the two radical friends? While
the quotation about the "damned people of both sides" points to
Steinbeck's sincerity, the character of Doc Burton and the statement
about the writer's intention to simply record things all add up to the
ambiguous atmosphere of the novel.
Besides, the very complex nature of In Dubious Battle is revealed
when Steinbeck claims the book is structured around three layers of
meaning: "surface story, group psychological structure, and
philosophical conclusions arrived at, not through statement but only
through structure. ,,21 In line with this statement, Dwens points out that
the surface story is that of the strike and its ramifications, while the
group psychological structure is found in the novel's study of
Steinbeck's group-man philosophy, "a theme which provides the novel with
much of dynamic force and which is voiced at times by several
characters;" and "the philosophical conclusions arrived at through
structure are conclusions regarding man's need for commitment,
145
conclusions that reverberate through ... Steinbeck's fiction both before
and after In Dubious Battle. ,,22
In his letter discussing In Dubious Battle, Steinbeck says his
objective in portraying the fruit strike is far less as a way of raising
wages or an occasion for ranting about injustice, and more as a symbol:
The symbol of man's eternal, bitter warfare with
himself ... Man hates something in himself. He has been able
to defeat every natural obstacle but himself. He cannot win
over unless he kills every individual. And this self-hate
which goes so closely in hand with self-love is what I wrote
about [Life in Letters, p. 98].
True enough, the very bitter ideological war between the
communist-led strikers and the capitalists can be seen to symbolize
"man's eternal bitter warfare with himself," a theme that Doc Burton
alludes to when he criticizes Jim's radicalism by reminding him that the
other side is also made up of people and their course of action can only
lead to a blind alley of violence, where human beings are the only
victims: "It seems to me that man has engaged in a blind and fearful
struggle out of a past he can't remember, into a future he can't foresee
nor understand. And man has met and defeated every obstacle, every
enemy except one. He cannot win over himself. How mankind hates
itself" [IDB, p. 230]. This self-hate also manifests itself when
Steinbeck explores the social conditions of the strikers and the nature
of commitment and non-commitment in the book.
In Dubious Battle exposes the capitalist dynamics of a corporate
farming that thrives on selfishness, labor manipulation, exploitation
and repression. We see all these very negative social conditions the
146
moment we are introduced to the Torgas Valley, the setting of the
strike:
Torgas is a little valley, and it's mostly apple orchards.
Most of it's owned by a few men ... Now these few guys that
own most of the Torgas Valley waited until most of the crop
tramps were already there. They spent most of their money
getting there, of course ... And then the owners announced
their price cut. Suppose the tramps are mad? What can they
do? They've got to work picking apples to get out even
[ IDB, p. 27].
Steinbeck recognizes that the very low wages and poor living
conditions of the migrants are by no means created by the two radicals,
and Mac is right when he sees their role as minor in getting the strike
started: "it's all ready to bust and we just give' it a little tiny push.
We organize the men, and we picket the orchards" [IDB, p. 27].
When the two radicals reach the valley, they find it ready to
"burst:" the migrants are unhappy about their wages, "fifteen cents,
fifteen lousy cents" [IDB, p. 45]; they are segregated from the local
residents, as the migrants' wives cannot get the least medical
assistance even during childbirth. The seventy-year old migrant worker,
Dan, probably sums up the crude exploitation and the poor living
conditions underneath the simmering anger and the explosive situation:
You know quite a bit before water boils, it gets to heavin'
around? That's the kind of feeling I got. I been with
workin' stiffs all my life. There ain't a plan in this at
all. It's just like that water heavin' before it
boils ... Maybe there's been too much goin' hungry; maybe too
many bosses've kicked hell out of the men ... It's
anger ... That's what it is ... Only it ain't in one man. It's
like the whole bunch, millions and millions was one man, and
he's been beat and starved, and he's gettin' that sick
feelin' in his guts [IDB, p. 59].
147
The theme of commitment is played mainly around the two
characters, Jim and Mac, who are committed to the Party and to
furthering its cause. The Party, however, remains a vague entity that
recruits and sends out people like Jim and Mac to promote its cause,
that is, as Mac defines it: "Organize the men" not for "temporary pay
raises even though we're glad to see a few poor bastards better off. We
got to take the long view. A strike that is settled too quickly won't
teach the men how to organize, how to work together. A tough strike is
good. We want the men to find out how strong they are when they work
together" [IDB, p. 27-28]. More than the measure of group unity and
strength is implied when Mac insists on the strike continuing, because
"it can only stop when the men rule themselves and get the profit of
their labor" [IDB, p. 229].
The question has repeatedly been asked of Mac and Jim about the
nature of the Party man's work and especially what he gets in return for
his unblinking commitment to serve the Party. Being in the service of
the Party is no easy thing, this is what Mac says when he reveals to Jim
the tasks and difficulties awaiting him: apart from acquiring the token
chance to vote on major party decisions, total obedience is expected of
the Party member; though entitled to about twenty dollars a month, he
hardly ever gets this and, in addition to performing party tasks, he is
expected to work alongside the fruit pickers, totalling between sixteen
and eighteen hours of work everyday. The worst part is the hatred he
gets from the people he is committed to help [IDB, p. 7]. For example,
Dakin, one of the workers' committee members, finds it difficult to
148
believe that the two radicals are getting nothing out of the strike and
comes to the conclusion that they are all the more unpredictable for
that: "If a man is gettin' somethin' you know he's goin' to do one or
two things, he's goin' to take orders, or he's goin' to doublecross.
But if a guy ain't gettin' nothin', you can't tell what he'll do" [IDB,
p. 138].
Mac and Jim commit themselves to the service of the Party, in
spite of the difficulties in stock for them, obviously because they want
to give meaning to their empty lives of exploitation, repression and
alienation. When Mac asks Jim why he is so keen on joining the Party,
the reasons he gives are directly related to the destruction of his
family, his resultant loneliness, his impotent anger and lack of
alternative course of action. After Jim's younger sister had
disappeared from home, his father was shot, and while his mother was
slowly dying alone he, Jim, was being held in prison on a false charge
of radicalism. Jim states his feeling in the following terms: "I want
to work towards something. I feel dead. I thought I might get alive
again" [IDB, p. 11]. He is even thrilled when Mac asks him to type
party sympathizer's letters: "I liked doing it, Mac ... I don't know why.
It seemed a good thing to be doing. It seemed to have some meaning.
Nothing I ever did before had any meaning. It was all just a mess. I
don't think I resented the fact that someone profited from the mess, but
I did hate being in the rat-cage" [IDB, p. 21].
Once in the Party, Jim reflects on the difference between himself
and his father, when Dr Burton prods him to talk about his newfound
149
strength and optimism: "I used to be lonely, and I'm not anymore. If I
go out (die) now it won't matter. The thing [the strike, the group
movement] won't stop. I'm just a little part of it ... My old man used to
fight alone. When he got licked, he was licked. I remember how lonely
it was" [IDB, p. 231].
Though less pathetic, Mac's previous experience or background is
not less traumatic or maddening. As a soldier in France during World
War I, Mac has come to look down on what he calls "the pure incendiarism
and brass knuckle patriotism" of soldiers, whom he considers "good,
honest, stupid cattle" [IDB, p. 22]. Mac is still smarting from the
destruction of his mother's house by arsonist soldiers, from their
beatings and a "busted arm" he received for making a speech about people
starving in the country.
However, the most pathetic victim of the pervasive climate of
repression, brutality and hate in the country is Joy. This veteran
radical has become "punch drunk" and physically warped from repeated
police torture: "it was impossible to tell how old he was. His face was
wizened and battered, his nose crushed flat against his face; his heavy
jaw sagged sideways" [IDB, p. 15]. Joy's hands are crushed and he won't
shake hands with anybody because they hurt him. In their dedication,
loyalty and self-surrender to a cause, these characters find themselves
transformed; not only are they engaged in a legitimate attempt to give
meaning to their broken lives, but they also nurse an equally bitter
hatred for the other camp. Mac is the one who comes closest to voicing
his hate for soldiers [IDB, p. 22].
150
The nature of the two radicals' commitment to a cause and their
notion of communal identity can be better understood when compared with
Doc Burton's uncommitted stand and his criticism of their group-man
philosophy. Doc sees Mac and Jim as the fanatical partisans of a
monolithic cause that they hold as eternal. True enough, they are
inflexible, opportunistic, manipulative, anti-democratic, authoritarian
and the mirror reflection of what they are fighting against in the first
place. They can even be sadistic about the suffering around them. From
the beginning of the novel, Mac is seen to applaud violence, as he prays
for the troops to be let loose on the striking workers, reasoning that
"everytime a guardsman jabs a fruit tramp with a bayonet, a thousand men
all over the country come on our side" [IDB, p. 28]. To him, the end
justifies the means, and he does not hesitate to use any means to
further their cause: Jim and Joy's dead bodies, Lisa's childbirth, old
Dan's accident, the Andersons' unsuspecting kindness in sheltering the
striking workers. Each time, the individual is either used or
destroyed, or both. Mac finds it difficult to understand why people
cannot sacrifice, say, a simple barn, when he is ready to lay down his
whole life for the cause.
Doc Burton stands in direct contrast to Jim and Mac. Though he is
ready to help them run the camp, he refuses to share their commitment.
Doc sees the world of human beings as in a constant process of
mutability, and he believes that commitment to a cause ignores this
fact. From this observation and from his belief that value judgements
remove the objectivity of the judge, Doc has decided to remain the
151
objective observer of life: "1 want to see the whole picture--as nearly
as 1 can. 1 don't want to put on the blinders of 'good' and 'bad,' and
limit my vision" [lOB, p. 129].
When Mac talks about the necessity of standing against "social
injustice" and "the profit system," Doc retorts that injustice is in the
nature of life. He gives the example of "physiological injustice, the
injustice of tetanus ... of syphilis, the gangster methods of amoebic
dysentry." The strikers' camp also provides Doc with the ideal
situation to experiment with a new phenemenon--the collective
individual. He reasons that "strikes are like the infection. Something
has got into the men; a little fever had started and the lymphatic
glands are shooting in reinforcements. 1 want to see, so 1 go to the
seat of the wound" [lOB, p. 130].
Furthermore, Doc wants to explode the myth around this new
individual. He is certain of the dubious nature of the cause, as he
sees the cause to be simplistic standards or pretexts set by this
collective individual to justify or mask objectives alien to its
individual members:
When group-man wants to move, he makes a standard. 'God
wills that we recapture the Holy Land;' or he says, 'We
fight to make the world safe for democracy;' or he says, 'We
will wipe out social injustice with communism.' But the
group doesn't care about the Holy Land, or Democracy, or
Communism. Maybe the group simply wants to move, to fight,
and uses these words simply to reassure the brains of
individual men [lOB, p. 131].
To show that these standards are alien to the wishes of the
individual member and to point out the dubiousness of the cause, Doc
152
later asks Lisa what she wants to make her happy, and the answer she
gives actually has nothing to do with the cause for which Mac is making
them fight: "I like to have a cow... I like to have butter and cheese
like you can make" [lOB, p. 229].
Doc Burton is a rather controversial character. He says he
believes in men and not in the cause, but when he starts telling Mac why
he would readily put himself in the service of both dogs or men, the
pessimistic edge in him shows through, for he does not make any
distinction between the starving dogs he would feed and the snarling men
he takes care of:
I don't know. I guess I just believe they're men, and not
animals. Maybe if I went into a kennel and the dogs were
hungry and sick and dirty, and maybe if I could help those
dogs, I would. Wouldn't be their fault they were that
way They don't save their bones. Dogs always are that
way I have some skills in helping, and when I see some who
need help, I just do it. If a painter saw a piece of
canvas, and he had colors, well, he would want to paint on
it. He wouldn't figure why he wanted to [lOB, pp. 176-177].
That Steinbeck is more sympathetic to Doc than he is to the two
radical friends is clear enough. In many instances Doc is seen to voice
some of the novelist's views: his apparent open-mindedness or scientific
approach, and particularly his ambition to see the whole picture without
prejudice echoes Steinbeck's stated desire to be merely a recording
consciousness in his novel. His understanding and criticism of the
"group-man" philosophy nearly corresponds both with Steinbeck's belief
that "the substitution of the idea collective for the idea God"
constituted the danger in his time, and Steinbeck's determination to
153
fight "any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the
individual. ,,23
In a letter to George A1bee, just before writing In Dubious
Battle, Steinbeck clearly states his group-man philosophy. He talks
about the tendency that people have to arrange themselves into larger
groups, that he calls "phalanxes." The phalanx, unlike its individual
components, "has emotions of which the unit man is incapable. Emotions
of destruction, of war, of migration, of hatred, of fear" [Life in
Letters, p. 80]. Steinbeck believes the complexity of the phalanx will
always thwart whoever tries to arrive at the nature of the group by
studying the nature of its individuals, in the same way as "you will
fail as surely as you try to understand man by studying one of his
cells" [po 80].
The individual becomes part of the phalanx through "the keying
mechanism in the unconscious of man, ... the plug which when inserted into
the cap of the phalanx makes him lose his unit identity in the phalanx."
In line with the different stages in the life of a man, "old phalanxes
break up ... new phalanxes are born under proper physical and spiritual
conditions. They may be of any size from the passionate three who are
necessary to receive the Holy Spirit, to the race which overnight
develops a soul of conquest, to the phalanx which commits suicide
through vice or war or disease" [Life in Letters, p. 81].
In another letter to George A1bee, Steinbeck reveals that the
title of his novel comes from the lines in the first part of the
argument of Milton's Paradise Lost:
154
Inumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In Dubious Battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
And is not lost--the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to subdue or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome [Life in Letters, p.
99] .
In Milton's lines, the Devil describes how other rebellious
Spirits have joined themselves to him against the Almighty in a battle
qualified as dubious, probably because the speaker knows the ultimate
outcome is desperate for them. However, the Devil holds as gain their
strong will never to submit or yield and their eternal hate of the
Almighty's party. When we refer to Steinbeck's novel, the bipartisan
view of the warring Heavens only applies to events in the Torgas Valley
in the sense that each camp shows such a bitter hatred for the other
side that no solution to the strike seems possible.
Steinbeck's criticism therefore seems to be directed more against
the two radical friends, the capitalist side being only criticized by
implication. The uncommitted Doe is seen in a more favorable light as
he clearly reflects the novelist's views or assumes his voice in many
instances. However, some limitations in Doe's character prevent him
from fully serving as Steinbeck's spokesman in the book. If their
radical commitment dehumanizes Mac and Jim, on the other hand Doe's
solitary stands fails to see Steinbeck's remark that "man is lonely when
he is cut off. He dies. From the phalanx he takes a fluid necessary to
his life" [Life in Letters, p. 80]. Seen from this angle, Mac and Jim's
155
selflessness is commendable, whereas Doe's coldblooded aloofness is
inhuman and perhaps condemnable.
Again, Doe's refusal to join the warring parties and his ambition
to see the whole picture can be meaningful only as a necessary
prerequisite stage of awareness before any form of commitment is
attempted. Graff judges the virtue of such an approach, which he calls
"methodological neutrality," and condemns the fanatical approach to
commitment, Mac and Jim's type:
Getting the facts right before leaping in with our value
judgement, is one of the progressive achievements of
civilization. It is true that nobody can be totally
neutral, and it is true that nineteenth-century objectivists
and historical reconstructions believed in the self-
effacement of the observer in a naive way. Yet we do not
have to repeat this naivete to recognize that observational
neutrality is relatively approachable as an ideal, and that
the technique of methodological detachment is something that
can be acquired by training ... Insofar as we "humanize"
knowledge by denying its objective basis, we m r ~
emasculate the language of morality and politics.
As it is, Doe has the right approach, but his fascinated gaze at
human nature, or at the relentless warfare sparked by the eternal hate
in human beings, lead him to pessimism and to a position that resembles
too well that of the Red Cross. In a context of eternal hate and
partisanship, Doe opts for a life of observation, or at least comes in
to take care of the wounded and the dying. Doe is a highly ambiguous
character who plays out the difficult problem of non-partisanship both
as a character and as a voice echoing his creator's voice--a voice he is
not supposed to hear! As Owens puts it, Doe's inability to commit
himself and come out with a possible alternative undermines the validity
156
of his own point of view.
25
Unlike Doc, however, Steinbeck is committed,
with the dynamic, questioning nature of his commitment played out in In
Dubious Battle. In this novel, the central issue is less the question
of how to stay free from commitment than that of how to be committed.
Owens points out the importance of this novel thus:
In Dubious Battle ... is perhaps his most artistically
successful novel and a key work in the whole of his fiction,
for it marks an important turning point in the direction of
two other great works: Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of
Wrath. In In Dubious Battle, Steinbeck balances a pure non-
teleological perspective against the nece
2g
ity of commitment
and finds commitment of first importance.
Of Mice and Men
Of M
, d M 27. h f' , h h d
e an en is t e story 0 two ~ t l n e r n t ranc an s,
George Milton and Lennie Small. At the opening of the novel, these two
characters are on their way to a new job, fleeing from their previous
one at which Lennie has been accused of attempting to rape a woman. We
gradually become aware that Lennie, the gentle, sensuous, sensitive,
feeble-minded giant, is totally dependent on his friend George to
protect and guide him through the complex social underworld of
expression and manners.
One of the problems facing these two workers comes from the fact
that the child's brain in Lennie is incapable of preventing his strength
from destroying the things he so much likes to pet. This he does
innocently, as he is lost in a sensuousness that is devoid even of the
mischievous intent of a child. The incident that cost them their job,
157
as George describes it in a rebuke to Lennie, actually occurs because of
Lennie's desire to feel a girl's dress:
Jus' wanted to feel that girl's dress--jus' wanted to pet it
like it was a mouse--Well, how the hell did she know you
jus' wanted to feel her dress? She jerks back and you hold
on like it was a mouse. She yells and we got to hide in a
irrigation ditch all day with guys looking for us, and we
got to sneak out in the dark and get outta the country. All
the time somethin' like--all the time [OMM, p. 236].
Their other bond is the secret dream they share, a dream they like
to recite like a liturgy. Their dream stresses the loneliness and
dissolute nature of the lives of migrant workers in a contrast that
reveals the importance of friendship:
George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words
rhythmically as though he had said them many times before.
'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys
in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no
place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then
they go into town and blow their stake, and the first thing
you know they're poundin' their tail on some other
ranch .... With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We
got somebody to talk to that gives adamn about us .... We're
gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little
house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs
and .... off the fatta the lan' .... and have rabbits .... when it
rains in the winter, we'll just say the hell with goin' to
work ... ' [OMM, pp. 238-239].
At their new job, they come into contact with the ranch owner's
son, Curley, a small, cross-grained man who "hates big guys ... alla time
picking scraps with big guys. Kind of like he is mad at 'ern because he
ain't a big guy" [OMM, p. 250]. But what has made Curley a little
cockier and perhaps more restless (or "his pants full of ants") is his
recent marriage to a girl "with full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes,
heavily made up. Her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little
158
rolled clusters, like sausages" [OMM, p. 254]. All the ranch hands see
her as "a tart," "a bitch," "a tramp" and "jail bait." Even Lennie's
feeble brain senses danger and he babbles out his wish to go somewhere
else: "I don't like this place, George. This ain't no good place. I
wanna get outa here" [OMM, p. 255-256]. But out of necessity, George
decides they must stay a little longer to make "jus' a few dollars."
The other ranch hands are portrayed as wretched, lonely
individuals struggling for a subsistence living. The contrast between
these workers and the George-Lennie couple made by Slim, "a jerkline
skinner, the prince of the ranch," summarizes the grim isolation that
characterizes the lives of these migrant workers:
Hardly none of the guys ever travel together. I hardly
never seen two guys travel together. You know how the hands
are, they just come in and get their bunk and work a month,
and then they quit and go out alone. Never seem to give a
damn about nobody. It jus' seems kinda funny a cuckoo like
him and a smart little guy like you travelin' together [OMM,
p.26l].
In this world of outcasts and general isolation, perhaps Candy and
Brooks are the most pathetic. Candy is an old man who, because he lost
his right hand on this farm, has been kept as a "swamper." However, he
has no illusions about the fate that awaits him, to be shot like his
decrepit dog (by the insensitive Carlson), or if he escapes this, to be
discarded, for, in a materialistic and utilitarian society, there can be
no place for the invalid. Likewise, the predicament of Crooks, the old
man with a broken and twisted spine, is all the more acute because of
his color. In spite of his warning to both Lennie and Curley's wife to
stay away from him on the grounds that he also has the right to privacy,
159
Crooks' words sound hollow even to himself. Curley's wife brings out
both this hollowness and Crooks' personal insignificance when she
reminds him how easily she could get him lynched: "Well, you keep your
place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it
ain't even funny" [OMM, p. 299]. This speech destroys the little
dignity Crooks tries to seize and the dream that both he and Candy have
caught from George and Lennie:
It wasn't nothing," Crooks said dully. "You guys comin' in
an' settin' made me forget. What she says is true" ... Candy
and Lennie stood up and went toward the door. Crooks
called, "Candy! ... 'Member what I said about hoein' and doin'
odd jobs? .. Well, jus' forget it ... I didn' mean it. Jus'
fool in'. I wouldn' want to go no place like that" [OMM, pp.
300-301] .
The novel's denouement comes when Curley's wife learns that Lennie
is the one who has crushed her proud husband's hand in a fight. As a
result, she turns her frivolous attention to the child-giant. Finding
him alone in the barn, she gradually assuages his fears and makes him
touch her hair to "feel right aroun' there an' see how soft it is" [OMM,
p. 307). As Lennie's pettings get rougher, she cries out in pain and,
in panic, Lennie's other hand closes on her mouth and nose, suffocating
her. When George discovers what has happened, he follows Lennie to a
hiding place where they had agreed to meet in case of trouble. There,
George shoots his friend before the lynch-mob can lay hands on him.
The thematic focus of this short novel is on George and Lennie's
commitment to comradeship, their love and attempt to forge a community;
their love of the land and their desire to possess a little bit of it.
But what makes the concern of these two characters for each other more
160
significant is that the two, despite George's initial lie about Lennie's
being his cousin, are not related. The only bond that unites them is a
simple human tie, too mystical for George to explain: "Him and me was
both born in Auburn. I knowed his Aunt Clara. She took him when he was
a baby and raised him up. When his Aunt Clara died, Lennie just come
along with me out workin'. Got kinda used to each other after a little
while" [po 262]. Lennie's total and unquestioning dependence on George
is emphasized again and again: he not only follows George but does
whatever George tells him to, risking his life when he throws himself
into the Sacramento River merely because George has foolishly asked him
to do so.
Steinbeck points out that Lennie's mental handicap does not make
of him a "cuckoo" and a robot. This is hinted at throughout the novel,
through his comradeship with George and his need of human company. It
is also emphasized that, though retarded, Lennie is a "nice fella" and,
according to Slim, a "guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems
to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart
guy and he ain't hardly a nice fella" [OMM, p. 262].
Lennie's unconditional belief in and love for George is sorely
tested when Crooks points out to him the likelihood of George's getting
hurt or even killed, and thus being unable to come to Lennie's
assistance. To this, Lennie's answer is categorical: "he won't do it;
George would do nothing like that. I been with George a long time.
He'll come back tonight" [OMM, p. 291]. As Crooks persists in his
apprehensions, Lennie comes to believe that George is in actual danger
161
and he becomes threatening, forcing him to back down and admit that
George is allright. At this stage, Crooks contrasts the strong bond of
friendship between the two friends with his own isolation in an
environment of discrimination, to point up the importance of human
companionship:
Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he's goin'
to come back. S'pose you didn't have nobody. S'pose you
couldn't go into the bunk house and play rummy 'cause you
was black. How'd you like that? S'pose you had to out here
an' read books Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody
to be near him A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.
Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with
you ... l tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick [OMM,
p. 291-292].
The last part of this quote connects thematically with Lennie's
importance to George. Since Lennie is mentally retarded, all the
responsibility falls on George, who seems to protest the strain of such
a responsibility; yet George is also psychologically dependent on
Lennie. Life would be empty and meaningless for him without Lennie to
take care of. George is aware of this dependence, as he is aware of the
warping effects of isolation:
"1 ain't got no people," George said. "1 seen the guys that
go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They
don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They
get wantin' to fight all the time 'Course Lennie's a God
damn nuisance most of the time But you get used to goin'
around with a guy an' you can't get rid of him" [OMM, pp.
262-263] . ---
Through Lennie's and George's friendship Steinbeck offers a
possible solution to the pervasive problem of human isolation; however,
he remains vague as to the root cause of the problem. Slim attributes
it to fear: "Ain't many guys travel around together ... l don't know why.
162
Maybe ever'body in the whole damn world is scared of each other" [OMM,
p. 257]. Otherwise, the migrant workers of Of Mice and Men fail to see
why "they are the loneliest guys in the world." Perhaps, this is what
makes their story more pathetic, for the absence or the poorly defined
image of an alienating agent makes them victims of a situation they
cannot fathom. They lack the class consciousness developed by Mac and
Jim in In Dubious Battle and are incapable of seeing their wretchedness
as the result of the prevalent exploitative conditions of labor.
In this novel of outcasts and victims, Curley stands out as the
nearest victimizer, the person directly responsible for the migrant
workers' situation, since his father, the owner of the ranch, is simply
relegated to the background. Curley's personality radiates failure and
disappointment: he is splenetic and unable to love his wife as a human
being. His behavior is the result of a too-acquisitive spirit, while
his inferiority complex makes him callow and greedy for money and power
to manipulate men's lives. His small size detracts from his Faustian
dream of limitless grandeur. Steinbeck evokes little sympathy for the
alienated Curley, whose problem is self-inflicted.
Curley's wife, on the other hand, is more sympathetically
portrayed. Her position as a mere object and extension of Curley is
suggested by her namelessness. Though she precipitates Lennie's
destruction, she is more sinned against than sinning: merely a girl of
fifteen, unloved by her husband, rejected by the ranch hands who fear
she will get them in trouble, Curley's wife is seen as the loneliest
character beside Crooks and Candy. Her situation is all the more
163
desperate as she yearns for human company, refusing to confine herself
to the house and to the rantings of her husband. She is bitter when the
ranch hands remind her she has a husband and should stop bothering them:
The girl flared up. 'Sure 1 gotta husband. You all seen
him. Swell guy, ain't he? Spends all his time sayin' what
he's gonna do to guys he don't like, and he don't like
nobody. Think I'm gonna stay in that two-by four house and
listen how Curley's gonna lead with his left twict, and then
bring in the 01' right cross? One-two, he says. Jus' the
01' one-two an' he'll go down' [OMM, p. 296].
In this bleak environment, Lennie and George are a beacon of hope,
united by the bond of friendship and especially by the dream of a
brighter future. Through their friendship they escape the despair
toward which their wretched situation inexorably leads them; the belief
in the dream holds their friendship together and enables them to stay
afloat. They constantly allude to this dream with religious fervor:
first when we meet them fleeing from their job; at their new job when
they are alone with Candy; when George joins Lennie at Crooks' place;
and finally just before George takes the painful decision to shoot
Lennie. On each occasion, it is at Lennie's prompting that George
reiterates the dream in an effort to materialize it, as it were, by
merely reciting it.
George's and Lennie's dream is not to own a million acres like the
newspaper man in The Grapes of Wrath, but to possess a few acres where
they can build their house, grow their own crops, and achieve the
dignity denied them under exploitative wage-labor; a place where Lennie
can gratify his sensual need to pet and care for the rabbits; and where
164
they can lead a relatively independent harmonious life "offa the fatta
the land."
In Candy and Crooks, the damned of American society, this modest
dream of cooperative land ownership triggers a response of hope and
immediate adherence. Candy is ready to put in his life's savings,
"three hundred and fifty bucks," as a contribution to make the dream a
reality, thus enabling him "be on our own land an' ... be let to work on
our own place" [po 281]. He points to the general thirst for land:
Sure they all want it. Everybody wants a little bit of
land, not much. Jus' som'thin' that was his. Som'thin' he
could live on and there couldn't nobody throw him off of it.
I never had none. I planted crops for damn near ever'body
in this estate, but they wasn't my crops, and when I
harvested 'em, it wasn't none of my harvest. But we gonna
do it now [OMM, p. 295].
Candy's conviction that the dream can be realized is so great that
he refuses to see it has actually died with Lennie's murder of Curley's
wife, for he continues to think that he and George can make it come
true. His conviction in the feasibility of the dream wins over the
Negro, Crooks, despite the latter's initial expression of pessimism:
I seen hunderds of men come by on the road ... with their
bindles on their back an' that same thing in their
heads .... They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn
one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An'
never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like
heaven .... Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no
land. It's just in their heads [OMM, p. 293].
This pessimistic view is the ironic comment that summarizes both
the vision behind the whole work and the-probably-illusory nature of the
American Dream. The boundless optimism in the possibilities of human
existence that characterizes the American Dream has been reflected in
165
George and Lennie's dream of owning a few acres; the story has shown us
the frustration of such a dream, and that there is no chance that even
this modest migrant workers' dream will ever be fulfilled.
Unlike Lennie or Candy, George is apparently aware that the dream
is unrealizable in the actual social context, but says he played the
game because of Lennie: "I think I knowed from the very first. I think
I know'd we'd never do her. He usta like to hear about it so much I got
to thinking maybe we would" [p. 311].
An equally important question is whether George and Lennie's story
is an "unrelieved" tragedy. Warren French, who considers the closing
chapters of this novel a contrast to Steinbeck's later work, The Grapes
of Wrath, says that it ends on a note of resignation unlike that of
Steinbeck's "next heroes, who ... make , even in going down in defeat, bold
gestures that indicate that they intend to improve conditions or die
trying rather than 'splitting up' before implacable forces or dying
without recognizing the opponents they challenge. ,,28
Warren French's remark is particularly pertinent when we consider
George's behavior in the closing lines of the novel. For example, just
before he sets out to kill his friend, George is desperate, not only
because he is about to carry out a terrible act, but also because his
future is now barren: "I'll work my month an' I'll take my fifty bucks
an' I'll stay all night in some lousy cat house. Or I'll set in some
poolroom till ever'body goes home. An' then I'll come back an' work
another month an' I'll have fifty bucks more" [OMM, p. 311]. Without
Lennie, life will be empty, meaningless, with no motive for George to
166
try to improve it. George's conclusion points at the bleak and
unalterable nature of the migrant worker's life.
According to Steinbeck, focusing on his characters' impossible
dream, and especially on the desperate courage which leads to George's
killing of his only friend, makes George heroic, so that their story is
not an unrelieved tragedy. Steinbeck notes this in a letter to Annie
Laurie Williams about a musical play based on the novel:
M &M [that is, Of Mice and Men] may seem to be an
unrelieved tragedy, but it is not. A careful reading will
show that while the audience knows, against its hopes, that
the dream will not come true, the protagonist must, during
the play, become convinced that it will come true. Everyone
in the world has a dream he knows can't come' off but he
spends his life hoping it may. This is at once the sadness,
the greatness and the triumph of our species. And this
belief on stage must go from sketicism to possibility to
probability before it is nipped off by whatever the modern
word for fate is. And in hopelessness George is to rise to
greatness--to kill his friend to save him. George is a hero
and only heroes are worth writing about. Boileau said that
a long time ago and it is still true [Life in Letters, p.
562] .
Steinbeck's perceptive comment about George's heroism and the
human undertones of their impossible dream perhaps ignores the basic
cultural aspect of the novel. The dream of these migrant workers
embodies the democratic ideals in the mythical American Dream still
present in the collective American unconscious. The irony is that these
ideals, as portrayed in the novel, become mere fallacies with no
relation to the meaning of lived experience. Yet they are shown as
normative values, and thus alienating to the individual in the sense
that he or she is denied the essential right to learn from life. George
and Lennie's tragedy springs from this: they learn too late about the
167
impossibility of their dream. Furthermore, as a survivor, George fails
to grow in the awareness he accumulates during the course of the story
and takes a course of action that will eventually prove suicidal to him.
The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck's commitment to the lot of the poor culminates in The
29
Grapes of Wrath, where he shows close acquaintance and concern with
the plight of migrant workers. Having been in the fields and having
lived among these poor Americans, Steinbeck saw their suffering, felt
their pain and was profoundly shocked by it as he was by human beings'
inhumanity--a callous attitude that betrays their selfishness,
narrowness of mind, and inability to perceive others as belonging to the
same mainland of humanity.
In writing The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck made use of first-hand
information on American farmers turned migrant laborers during the
thirties. Steinbeck recorded much of this information in his 1936
newspaper reports, which he updated in 1938 and then published as an
30
illustrated pamphlet entitled "Their Blood is Strong." One of the
objectives of this pamphlet was "to educate public opinion to an
understanding of the problems of the working farmer and the conditions
of agricultural labor, and the need of them both for a progressive
.. b h ' d" 31
to etter t con
Steinbeck began his pamphlet by pointing out both the origin and
the nature of the migrants. They were not foreigners, Chinese,
Japanese, Filipinos, or Mexicans, nor were they lazy. Rather, they were
168
small farmers who have lost their farms, or farm hands who
lived with their families in the old American way. They are
men who have worked hard on their own farms and have felt
the pride of possessing and living in close touch with the
land. They are resourceful and intelligent Americans who
have gone through the hell of the drought, have seen their
land wither and die and the topsoil blown away; and this to
a has owned this land, is a curious and terrible

Steinbeck apparently makes this distinction not so much to
discriminate against foreign labor as to indicate that these unfortunate
"resourceful Americans" deserve better treatment from their fellow
Americans. He also reminds or warns insensitive fellow-citizens that
though desperate, these migrants have overcome enormous difficulties
because they are very sturdy and hardworking--"their blood is strong."
Furthermore, unlike foreign laborers who can be deported when their
labor is not needed, the present migrants are Americans and have nowhere
to go:
The new migrants to California from the dust bowl are here
to stay. They are of the best American stock, intelligent,
resourceful, and, if given the chance, socially
responsible ... They can be citizens of the highest types, or
they can be an army driven by suffering and hatred to take
what they need. On their future will depend which
course they will be forced to take.
Steinbeck exposes the squalid, disease-ridden conditions in the
Squatters' Camps. He inveighs against the cruelty of corporate farming
practices that herd the migrants like cattle, surround them with armed
guards, and allow them no other alternative than that of living in
squalor or starving. To alleviate their suffering, Steinbeck proposes
the creation of a state migratory board with local committees which will
169
assess and publish seasonal labor needs, the institution of labor
organizations, and the prosecution of the owners' vigilantes.
Nor is Steinbeck the only writer to witness the heart-rending
drama unfold in the thirties. Malcolm Cowley's report about the plight
of migrant workers, whose farms are destroyed by dust or drought or
seized by bankers, almost equals Steinbeck's in graphic immediacy.
Rejecting more optimistic views of the mid-thirties, Cowley insists that
even the second half of the decade cannot be taken as one of recovery
from the deep depression of the previous years:
Not if one bears in mind the suffering that ... continued
through those years, though with less despair; there were
still eight million persons out of work, and more than
twenty million, counting dependents, were on relief ... The
years from 1933 to 1936 were those of the great dust storms
that turned the sky black at noon. The air was solid with
dust; it filled the eyes and the nose. Dust went drifting
through the fields like snow and rose in pyramids over farm
machinery ... Crops failed year after year. Mortgages went
unpaid and the denuded farmland was seized by the banks.
Hundreds of thousands of farm families were 'dusted out; ,
the tenants were the first to go, when they couldn't pay
rent, and then the former landowners followed them. Still
other tenants in regions unaffected by dusters ... were
'tractored out' by new machines that made their labor
superfluous; it was the end of the American peasantry
... Part of the army would soon move northward, from
Mississippi to Chicago, from the Carolinas to Washington and
New York. Another part--consisting of 285,000 persons by
official count ... was already moving westward by highway into
California; those wer
34
the ragged pioneers, the Okies and
Arkies and Texicanos.
Though The Grapes of Wrath is fiction, many treated it as an
attempt at factual reporting. Denying the existence of Okies in
California, they branded the book a heap of lies. They advocated its
suppression on the grounds of its 'obscene and vulgar' language, and
170
accused Steinbeck of propagandizing for Communism.
35
If anything, this
kind of belligerent attitude, as Ralph Ellison remarks, derives from the
fact that "being committed to optimism, serious novels have always
proved troublesome to Americans ... Thus we approach serious novels with
distrust until the moment comes when the passage of time makes it
possible for us to ignore their moral cutting edge.,,36
The difference between "Their Blood is Strong " and The Grapes of
Wrath is clear: the straight forward reportage and limited problem-
solving focus of the former leave no room for the development of
character, symbol and style, and thus cannot be compared with the novel.
According to Warren French, Steinbeck makes use of thematic and
stylistic forms to present in this novel "an enduring and crucial
problem in human relations that stemmed from man's inhumanity to man,
but that happens to be epitomized by the situation of the migrants in
California. ,,37The Nobel Academy's citation for Steinbeck's "at one and
at the same time realistic rendering and imaginative writing
distinguished as they are by a sympathetic humor and a social
perception,,38perhaps sums up both Steinbeck's literary genius and the
social relevance of his work.
The Grapes of Wrath is the novel in which Steinbeck's commitment
finds a harmony with the themes, artistry and heroes of his fiction. It
is a book of epic dimensions in both its topical and the universal
treatment of the subject as it unites his concerns for the lot of the
exploited poor migrant workers in California with the far-reaching
problem of the poverty of the human spirit--ultimately revealing that
171
what is at stake is the continuance of the human species. The dramatic
heart of this novel is survival, and not love, as most critics initially
believed.
Rejecting his friend and editor's concern about the supposed
inappropriateness of the novel ending, Steinbeck claims that the ending
is quite appropriate and to his liking because it brings out the
primordial survival symbol:
I am sorry but I cannot change that ending. It is casual--
there is no fruity climax, it is more important than any
other part of the book--if there is a symbol, it is a
survival symbol not a love symbol, it must be an accident,
it must be a stranger and it must be quick. To build this
stranger into the structure of the book would be to warp the
whole meaning of the book: the fact that the Joads don't
know him, don't ,care about him, have no ties to him--that is
the emphasis. The giving of the breast has no more
sentiment than the giving of a piece of bread ... I've been on
this design and balance for a long time and I think I know
how I want it [Life in Letters, p. 178].
In The Grapes of Wrath, corporate farming threatens small farmers
and leads to a socio-economic crisis that fatally alienates employers
and workers. The novel is pervaded by the sense of the appalling
exploitation and dispossession of the workers. It chronicles their
restlessness, their growing awareness and unity.
The part of the book which is essential to Steinbeck's
understanding of the nature, causes and effects of a harmful social
atmosphere is unquestionably chapter 14. Here we learn that the Western
States are "nervous as horses before a thunder storm;" that the big
owners, sensing the gathering social storm but understanding nothing of
its nature, blindly strike at labor unions, confusing results with
172
causes; that the causes of social tension and unrest derive mainly from
hunger for food, hunger for security and joy, hunger for work, for
growth, for creation - for all that it means to be human.
This chapter sums up Steinbeck's profound belief in the necessity
for commitment and in the uniqueness of human beings--a belief that
later finds its final formulation in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
This you may say of man--when theories change and crash,
when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of
thought, national, religious, economic, grow and
disintegrate, man reaches, tumbles forward, painfully,
mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip
back, but only half a step, never the full step back ... This
you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes
on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs ... If
the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache
were not alive, the bombs would not fall .... Fear the time
when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live--for
every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear.
the time when the strikes stop while the great
every little beaten strike is proof that the step
taken. And this you can know--fear the time when Manself
will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality
is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man,
distinctive in the universe [TGW, pp. 204-205].
Linking the general atmosphere of poverty and its theoretical
basis in the lives of the individual characters, Steinbeck shows how
people such as the Joads are dispossessed by the Bank, which prefers
tractors to farmers; how tractors actually become comparable to tanks
when they are used for merely egoistic ends rather than for satisfying
basic human needs; how the dispossessed gradually gain awareness and
unity from a situation of "I lost my land" to "We lost our land" and
move towards revolutionary action. The lesson that Steinbeck draws on
behalf of the capitalists is, "if you could separate causes from
173
results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were
results, not causes, you might survive. But you cannot know. For the
quality of owning freezes you forever into 'I,' and cuts you off forever
from the 'we.'" Steinbeck concludes that "need is the stimulus to
concept, concept to action" [TGW, pp. 206-207].
Of all the characters and action of the novel, Jim Casy, the
former preacher, constitutes the philosophical bedrock. Jim Casy has
lost orthodox faith in that he says he has no God [TGW, p. 298], but
there is no doubt that he stands for a new religion which the whole
novel works to formulate. At the beginning of the book, Casy has, after
prolonged meditation, come to the conclusion that the essentials of a
viable faith are universal relationship, the wholeness of humanity, and
the necessity of communing with nature.
Greatly concerned with the plight of the migrant farmers, Casy has
decided to follow them, reasoning: "Folks are on the roads, I'm gonna be
with them" [TGW, p. 77]. His intention is no longer to preach, as he is
now less concerned with spiritual formulations than with the material
condition of their lives:
I'm gonna be near to folks. I ain't gonna try to teach 'em
nothin'. I'm gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why the folks
walk in the grass, gonna hear 'em talk, gonna hear 'em sing.
Gonna hear husban' an' wife a-poundin' the mattress in the
night. Gonna eat with 'em an' learn... Gonna cuss an' swear
an' hear the poetry of folks talkin'. All that's holy, all
that's what I didn' understan'. All them things is the good
things [TGW, p. 128].
174
Casy's new concerns are materialistic, with no room for the
hereafter. Casy's atheism shows in the episode of Grampa's death, when
he reluctantly preaches the sermon before the old man is buried:
"This here 01' man jus' lived a life an' jus' died out of
it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't
matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An'
now he's dead, an' that don't matter. Heard a fella tell a
poem one time, an' he says 'All that lives is holy.' ... I
wouldn' pray for a 01' fella that's dead. He's awright. He
got a job to do, but it's all laid out for 'im an' there's
on'y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an'
they's a thousan' ways [TGW, pp. 196-197].
Casy does not give much theoretical consideration to the issue of
commitment, apart from his awareness that where action is called for, we
must act on what we know and do what we have to do [TGW, p. 525]. When
Casy accepts arrest, imprisonment and suffering in order to protect Tom
and the Joads, he gives an almost perfunctory justification for his act:
"Somebody got to take the blame. I got no kids. They'll just put me in
jail, and I ain't doin' nothin' but set aroun'" [po 313]. His prison
experience leads toward further commitment, as he steps into the boots
of the trade unionist fighting for a living wage.
His prison experience also leads him to an awareness that human
behavior or character is fundamentally determined by human needs, and
that only concerted trade union-type action can bring about the
improvement of workers' lives:
I begin gettin' at things. Some a them fellas in the tank
was drunks, but mostly they was there 'cause they stole
stuff; an' mostly it was stuff they needed an' couldn' get
no other way. Ya see? ... What made 'em bad was they needed
stuff. An' I begin to see, then. It's need that makes all
the trouble. I ain't got it worked out. Well, one day they
give us some beans that was sour. One fella started
yellin', an' nothin' happened. He yelled his head off.
175
Trusty come along an' looked in an' went on. Then another
fella yelled. Well., . then we all got yellin'. And we all
got on ... By God! Then somepin happened! They come a-
runnin', and they give us some other stuff to eat [TGW, p.
521-522].
Casy is well aware of the constant threat that hangs over his
head, but this does not deter him the least. He knows that during the
French Revolution "all them fellas that figgered her [i.e. the
revolution] out got their heads chopped off. Always that way .. ,Jus' as
natural as rain" [TGW, p. 525]. What inspires and justifies his
acceptance of sacrificial commitment is his firm belief in the
perfectibility of human beings.
Any ways, you do what you can ... the on'y thing you got to
look at is ever' time they's a little step fo'ward, she may
slip back a little, but she never slips clear back. You can
prove that ... an' that makes the whole thing right. An' that
'means they wasn't no waste even if it seemed like they was
[TGW, p. 525].
The central story of The Grapes of Wrath is how the microcosmic
Joad family gradually abandons narrow family allegiance and evolves
towards a general awareness of humankind, the philosophy developed by
Casy. However, from the beginning it is the instinct of self-
preservation triggered by the natural reflexes of hunger and other
elementary needs that determines the action of the farmers. Their
plight parallels that of the tortoise crossing the highway: knocked by a
car, carried off by Tom, beaten by the sun and wind, the tortoise
struggles on with a determination that expresses both its instinct and
will to survive. Similarly, for the farmers the conjunction of hostile
social and natural forces makes their environment inhospitable, leading
176
to their displacement and eventual exodus westward, "kinda stunned.
Walking aroun' like they was half asleep" [TGW, p. 104].
Mulley Graves is shown as the only farmer unwittingly going
counter to the mass exodus. This is not because Mulley is unaware of
the problem and needs of the time, but because he is a proud, stubborn
individual who refuses to be ordered from the land he loves and
considers his rightful property:
Well, you know I ain't a fool. I know this land ain't much
good. Never was much good 'cept for grazin' ... Never should
a broke her up ... An' now she's cottoned damn near to death.
If on'y they didn't tell me I got to get off, why, I'd
prob'y be in California right now a' eatin' grapes an' a-
pickin' an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitches
say I got to get off--an' Jesus Christ, a man can't, when
he's tol' to [TGW, p. 64].
Despite its bravery, Mulley's stand is destructive to group unity
and survival. His refusal brings about the dislocation of his own
family, which is forced to go to California without him. Casy is quick
to identify Mulley's error: "You should of went. You shouldn't of broke
up the famly" [TGW, p. 65]. Even worse, Mulley's solitary fight has
little chance of success--he is blind to the importance of concerted
action, unlike Ma Joad when she warns Tom against fighting alone: "Tom,
don't you go fightin' 'em alone. They'll hunt you down like a coyote.
Tommy I got to thinkin' an' dreamin' an' wonderin'. They say there's a
hund'erd thousand of us shoved out. If we was all mad the same way,
Tommy--they wouldn't hunt nobody down" [p. 104].
From a single individual, Mulley's "madness" or stubbornness is
ineffective. It is even retrograde in the sense that he is driven to
177
live like a coyote on frogs, squirrels, prairie dogs, rabbits, coons,
skunks etc. [TGW, p. 66] and to wander around like "a damn 01' graveyard
ghos" [po 69].
However, Mulley's readiness to share his precarious meal (a
cottontail and a jackrabbit) with both Casy and Tom touches on one of
the book's central issues--universal kinship, and the moral obligation
to share with the destitute. Mulley justifies his actions in this way:
"1 ain't got no choice in the matter ... What 1 mean, if a fella's got
somepin' to eat an' another fella's hungry--why, the first fella ain't
got no choice" [TGW, p. 66]. Mulley also displays the close, almost
mystical relationship between people and land; he not only justifies his
refusal or inability to leave the land, but foretells Grampa and
Gramma's death after the loss of their land: "Place where folks live is
them folks. They ain't whole, out lonely on the road in a piled-up car.
They ain't alive no more. Them-sons-a-bitches killed 'em" [po 71].
Ma Joad is the character who embodies family unity. She is the
strength and comfort of the Joad family. Steinbeck emphasizes from the
beginning that she is outstanding in stature by giving her the
attributes of a mystical figure, the tribal goddess:
Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible
tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps
into a high calm and a superhuman understanding ... And from
her great and humble position in the family she had taken
dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as
healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from
her position as arbiter she had become as remote and
faultless in judgment as a goddess [TGW, p. 100].
178
From the moment we meet her, her readiness to share what she has
with utter strangers is emphasized. When Pa Joad asks her if she can
spare a bite for two passers-by, she warmly answers "Let ' em come ... we
got a 'plenty" [TGW, p. 99], even before learning that the newcomers are
her own son just back from prison and Jim Casy, the former itinerant
preacher. She is also instrumental in getting Casy accepted into the
family on its journey west, when she calms Pa's worries about the lack
of space and food for an extra passenger: "It ain't kin we? It's will
we? .. As far as 'kin,' we can't do nothin'; not go to California or
nothin', but as far as 'will,' why, we'll do what we will ... There ain't
no room now... There ain't room for more'n six an' twelve is goin' sure.
One more ain' t gonna hurt" [p. 139].
However, Ma's concern for her family can sometimes be so strong
that it becomes restrictive and excludes non-family members. Though
ready to let the Wilsons ride with the Joads, she loses her calm and
even threatens Pa with a jack handle for wanting to leave Tom and Al
behind to repair the Wilsons' truck and join the group later in
California. Again, while she signals to the Joads to keep together, she
hints to both Casy and the Wilsons that their departure would be no
loss, since they are no kin of hers:
What we got lef' in the worl'? Nothin' but us. Nothin' but
the folks ... An' now, right off, you wanna bust up the
folks ... The money we'd make wouldn't do no good ... All we got
is the family unbroke. Like a bunch a cows, when the lobos
are ranging, stickall together. I ain't scared while we're
all here, all that's alive, but I ain't gonna see us bust
up. The Wilsons here is with us, an' the preacher is with
us. I can't say nothin' is they want to go, but I'm a'goin'
cat-wild with this here piece a bar-arn is my own folks
busts up [TGW, pp. 230-231].
179
Despite Ma's firm determination and efforts, the Joad family
gradually disintegrates, either through death or desertion: Grampa and
Gramma die on the way to California; Noah deserts and, as befits his
name, decides to stay near a river "all life long, lazy as a brood sow
in the mud" [TGW, p. 278]; Connie Rivers abandons both the Joads and his
pregnant wife, Rose of Sharon; and Tom is in hiding after killing a
Deputy. Meanwhile, they are ruthlessly exploited by the large growers,
mercilessly oppressed by law enforcement agents, and despised by the
inhabitants of California. In this context it gradually dawns on Ma
that she and her family are part and parcel of a larger migratory family
with whom they share privations and humiliations.
The necessity for love beyond family lines and concern for all--
the basis of Casy's philosophy--is articulated for Ma by Tom, just
before the latter goes underground to avoid arrest. Tom comforts her in
her growing awareness of the importance of group unity, by arguing that
"a fella ain't good alone," that "two are better than one because they
have a good reward for their labor" [TGW, p. 570]; that "a fella ain't
got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one" [po 5721, and he
informs her of his determination to transcend family loyalties to fight
for the needy and the oppressed everywhere:
I'll be aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever' where--wherever
you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can
eat ... Wherever they's a cop beatin' a guy ... 1'11 be in the
way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's
ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live
in the houses they build [TGW, p. 572].
180
The great change of attitude that comes over Ma from then on,
indicates that she is actually practicing Casy's message of universal
kinship, now preached by Tom. We first notice this in her conversation
with Mrs Wainright, when she thanks the latter for helping during Rose
of Sharon's labor:
smiled. "No need to thank. Everybody's in
S'pose we was down, you'd give us hand."
"we would."
-The stout woman
the same wagon.
-"Yes," Ma said,
-"or anybody."
-"anybody, use' ta be
Worse off we get, the
the famly was fust. It ain't so now.
more we got to do [TGW, p. 606].
Had this change been limited to Ma alone, it would have somehow
been too insignificant to reflect the notion of wholeness central to
Casy's philosophy. If Mrs Wainwright is aware that everybody is in the
same boat, the Joad family are even more so: Al, who is initially only
interested in cars and girls, becomes responsible enough to want to
marry the Wainright daughter; the guilt-ridden and uncommitted Uncle
John, who was involved in disorganized expiatory acts of charity, breaks
with custom, becomes so involved with what is going on around them that
he decides to teach the world a lesson by sending "the shrivelled little
mummy" in an apple box down the river[TGW, p. 603]; as for Pa Joad, he
not only gradually shares his authority as the "head" of the family with
Ma, but eventually comes to understand the importance of sacrifice,
unity and cooporation. But all this seems to be nothing compared with
the change in Rose of Sharon, when this newly bereaved mother makes the
ultimate gesture to save the old man from starving by breastfeeding him.
181
In line with the extreme symbolic importance that Steinbeck
attaches to the ending of The Grapes of Wrath, Joseph Fontenrose also
sees this final scene as
an oracular image, forecasting in a moment of defeat and
despair the final triumph of the people--a contingent
forecast, for only if the people nourish and sustain one
another will they achieve their ends. More than that, the
episode represents the novel's most comprehensive thesis,
that all life is one and holy, and that every man, in Casy's
words, 'jus' got a little piece of a great big soul.' The
Joads' intense feelings of family loyalty have been
39
transcended; they have expanded to embrace all men.
All through The Grapes of Wrath, we are shown the warping effects
of poverty and need. Starting with Mulley Graves, the migrants are
reduced to sub-human standards of existence by want, and are treated as
brutes. The station boy, who serves the Joads petrol, hardly believes
that such "hard lookin" people have got sense, and even comes to the
conclusion that "them goddam Okies got no sense and no feeling. They
ain't human. A human being wouldn't live like they do. A human being
couldn't stand it to be so dirty and miserable. They ain't a hell of a
lot better than gorillas" [TGW, p. 301].
The major conflict in The Grapes of Wrath centers around these
poor farmers' struggle to keep their heads above the sub-human standards
of living and their brutalizing effects, while the big growers strive
hard to maintain them in such a state to justify the repressive measures
taken. As a result, these growers are strongly against the government
built migrant camps, where the migrants get used to being treated with
dignity and even demonstrate that they are capable of organizing
themselves if they are given the chance. The Joads and their likes are
182
heroes not merely because they embody Steinbeck's "dream wish of
wisdom," but mainly because of their capacity to withstand and overcome
the most brutalizing conditions and stay human and even entertain the
idea of kinship with others--their blood is really strong!
Steinbeck is also aware that when wealth corrupts, it corrupts
thoroughly. To him, the rich are different from the poor not merely
because the rich have extra "fins," (an image that is said to have
fascinated F. Scott Fitzgerald), but mainly because they can be frozen
into their possessions. In the process, they lose the conscience that
unites the individual to the rest or, in Steinbeck's words, "the quality
of owning freezes you forever into 'I,' and cuts you forever from the
'we'" [TGW, p. 206-207].
The danger of the fetishization of property is an important issue
in The Grapes of Wrath and may justify Steinbeck's caricatured portrayal
of the big growers. Benign ownership of property places the owner in
direct contact with the thing owned; it is concrete and serves the
immediate needs of the owner:
If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it is
part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so
he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it's not
doing well ... and some way he's bigger because he owns it.
Even if he is not successful he's big with his property."
On the other hand, bad ownership is depersonalizing and
acquisitive for its own sake; it is when the property
acquires life of its own and enslaves its owner: "he can't
do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The
property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small,
not big. Only his possessions are big--and he is the
servant of his property" [TGW, pp. 50-51].
183
Steinbeck finds the symbol of the latter type of ownership in the
Banks, Big Companies and Corporate Farming. These become monsters,
creatures which are stronger than their creators. They refuse to
breathe simple air but instead, "breathe profits; they eat the interest
on money. If they don't get it, they die the way you die without air"
[TGW, p. 43]. Thus, "the newspaper man," who owns one million acres, is
so obsessed by his property that he has hired gun-toting guards to keep
trespassers away and is so scared of death that he rides around in a
bullet-proof car. To Casy, such an irrational acquisitiveness and
unnatural fear of death only betray the dire spiritual emptiness, which
no amount of landed property can fill:
If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to
me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself,
and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres
gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that
nothin' he can do'll make him feel rich ... I ain't tryin' to
preach no sermon, but I never seen nobody that's busy as a
prairie dog collectin' stuff that wasn't disappointed [TGW,
p. 282]. -
The process of alienation is made complete with industrialism and
machinism, as Steinbeck describes it at the beginning of the novel, in a
scene in which a tractor is seen pulling down peasants' houses and
furiously ploughing the land. Here, neither the man working the tractor
nor the tractor itself have any feeling for the land; the man is even
shown to be no more than a robot in the service of a machine. The
poignant description of the mechanical and destructive way the land is
worked by both machine and robot-man is unparalleled in fiction:
Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the
earth with blades--not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut
earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and
184
pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by
the cut earth. And pulled behind the disks, the harrows
combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up
and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long
seeders--twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry,
orgasm set by gears, raping methodically, raping without
passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud
of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor
he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not
control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man
had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers ... No man had touched
the seed, or lusted for the growth The land bore under
iron, and under iron gradually died [TGW, p. 48-49].
The only wealthy farmer seen in more favorable light is Mr Thomas,
the owner of sixty-five acres. Though a member of the Farmers'
Association, itself run by the Bank of the West, Mr Thomas disapproves
of the Bank's policies. When forced to comply with the Bank's decision
to lower wages, Mr Thomas not only informs his workers about the
imminent wage cut, with much regret, but reveals the Association's plot
to send trouble shooters into the Camp, something that will justify
police intervention and an eventual closing down of the Camp (404).
The acquisitive spirit not only cuts the individual from the rest
of humanity, but alienates him or her from nature as well. The
breathtaking beauty of California, reminiscent of The Pastures of
Heaven, is only perceived by the land-hungry peasants, when they come
within view of California:
Suddenly they saw the Great Valley below them. Al jammed on
the brake and stopped in the middle of the road, and, "Jesus
Christ! Look!" he said. The vineyards, the orchards, the
great flat valley, green and beautiful, the trees set in
rows and the farm houses The distant cities ... the morning
sun, golden on the valley The grain fields golden in the
morning, and the willow lines, the eucalyptus trees in
rows ... they stood, silent and awestruck, embarrassed before
the great valley. The distance was thinned with haze, and
the land grew softer in the distance [TGW, pp. 309-310].
185
Steinbeck succeeds as a good writer through his awareness of the
issues at stake; through his keen insight into human nature; and through
his stylistic versatility. For example, though he presents events from
the standpoint of the fruit pickers in In Dubious Battle, he adopts a
style that enables him to project their woes and still be critical of
their method of fighting the oppressive reality. Steinbeck's insight
into human nature is manifest in his letter that regrets people's
inability to realize that communists are also human and, as such,
subject to human greatness or weakness. The immediate concern of
Steinbeck's committed fiction is with social issues related to the
living conditions of migrants during the Depression, but beyond that it
aspires for universal kinship. This notion of universality is perhaps
what Ralph Ellison alludes to when he sees "the events which racked the
D.S. during the Civil War and again during the twenties [as] archetypes
of events which are now sweeping all societies.,,400ne of Steinbeck's
characters, Tom Joad, comes to the conclusion that the necessity for
commitment and concern for the underdog lie in the fact that we shall
always have the poor and the weak in human society [TGW, p. 571].
186
Notes
1. Alexis de Tocqueville On Democracy, Revolution, and Society, p. 53.
2. Ibid., p. 293.
3. Ibid., pp. 294-295.
4. Michel Terrier, Individu et Societe dans le Roman Americain de
1900 a 1940, Etudes Anglaises--52--(Paris: Librairie Marcel Didier,
1973), p. 29; translation mine, JZ.
5. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, p. 9.
6. Ibid., p. 245.
7. Ibid., p. 245.
8. Richard H. Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams, p. xiv.
9. Ibid., p. 226.
10. Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten (eds.), Steinbeck: Life in
Letters (New York: Viking Press, 1963), p. 31. Future reference to this
work will be made directly in the body of the thesis.
11. Louis Owens, John Steinbeck's Re-vision of America (Athens: The
University of Georgia Press, 1985), p. 17.
12. Ibid., p. 19.
13. Jean-Paul Sartre, What is Literature, pp. viii-xv.
14. R.W.B. Lewis, Modern American Fiction, p. 267.
15. John Steinbeck, The Pastures of Heaven (New York: Covici Friede
Publishers, 1932). Future reference to this work will be made from the
same edition preceded by the abbreviation TPH. This will be done
directly in the body of the thesis.
16. Louis Owens, John Steinbeck's Re-vision of America, p. 75.
17. Warren French, John Steinbeck, p. 55.
18. John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle (New York: The Viking Press,
1963). Future reference to this work will be from the same edition
preceded by the abbreviation IDB. This will be done directly in the
body of the thesis.
19. Warren French, A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath, p. 64.
187
20. Thematic Designs in the Novels of John Steinbeck, p. 49.
21. Louis Owens, John Steinbeck's Re-vision of America, p. 97.
22. Ibid., p. 98.
23. The Portable Steinbeck, pp. 688-689.
24. Gerald Graff, Literature Against Itself, p. 86.
25. Louis Owens, p. 96.
26. Ibid., p. 99.
27. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, in The Portable Steinbeck. Future
reference to the novel will be made from the above mentioned collection
preceded by the abbreviation OMM. This will be done directly in the
body of the thesis.
28. Warren French, John Steinbeck, p. 91.
29. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking Press, 1958).
Future reference to this work will be made from the same edition
preceded by the abbreviation TGW. This will be done directly in the
body of the thesis.
30. Warren French (ed. ) , A Companion to The Grapes of Wrath (Clifton:
A.M. Kelly, 1972) , p. 52.
3l. Ibid. , p. 52.
32. Ibid. , p. 56.
33. Ibid. , p. 87.
34. Malcolm Cowley, The Dream of the Golden Mountains, Remembering the
1930's (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), pp. 304-305.
35. A Casebook on The Grapes of Wrath, pp. 4, 7.
36. Ralph Ellison, The Living Novel, ed. Granville Hicks (New York:
Collier Books, 1962), pp. 77-78.
37. Warren French, A Companion to The Grapes of Wrath, p. 53.
38. Ibid., p. 147.
39. Joseph Fontenrose, John Steinbeck (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, Inc., 1963), p. 69.
40. The Living Novel, p. 82.
188
189
CHAPTER IV
STRUCTLffiE AND MEANING
Realists ... in the final posing of questions always take the
most important, burning problems of their community for
their starting point; their pathos as writers is always
stimulated by the sufferings of the people which are the
most acute at the time; it is these sufferings that
determine also what they see in their poetic vision and how
they see it ... their deep ties with the great issues of their
time, their sympathy, with the sufferings of the people can
find adequate expression only in the being and fate of their
characters.
The previous chapters have enabled us to see aspects of commitment
in some of Steinbeck's and Ngugi's works. A very important feature of
their writings is creativeness, that is, the styles or artistic
techniques used by the two writers to infuse their ideas and ideologies
with life and stir their characters into making meaningful and
passionate gestures.
However, I must point out that such a division between content and
style, aspects of commitment and aesthetic devices, apart from being
purely arbitrary, is done for convenience in the handling of material.
As Lukacs observes in the passage quoted above, not only can there be no
division between content and aesthetic form, but even more, there is a
necessary link and importance of aesthetic forms that serves the purpose
of expressing moments of universality. We shall study the stylistic
190
devices of our two writers by considering the structures of their works,
their modes of characterization, and other dynamic elements in narrative
which, according to Robert Scholes, are part of the plot.
2
The plot structures of Ngugi's works reveal him as a complex
writer full of artistry. The plots of his first two novels show Ngugi
making use of historically recognizable moments in the lives of his
Gikuyu people and weaving these with the myths and legends
characteristic of the oral tradition. Talking about what he calls
"Ngugi's oral universe" in The River Between, James Vuiningoma points
out how Ngugi "carries the reader into a world of magic, spiritual and
mystical powers with myths and legends ... integrated into the written
text. ,,3This is illustrated with the scene in which Chege laments the
Gikuyu refusal to heed the word of their seer, Mugo, concerning the
impending peril tied to the coming of white missionaries into their
midst, and reminds them of their glorious past (The River Between, p.
18) .
This cultural reactualization also acts as a subtext that
parallels the Biblical creation story and reinforces the Gikuyu claim to
the land as rightfully theirs, a claim that sustains all Ngugi's works.
In spite of the complexity created by the highly symbolic language
used in combination with Gikuyu history and culture, in these first two
novels, Ngugi makes use of the novelistic third person biographical
structure, a device he abandons in A Grain of Wheat. In an interview,
Ngugi says he finds this narrative device limiting because, according to
191
him, "nobody invents what is happening to a person in a logical,
4
historical, chronological sequence."
On the question of whether his writings hold a clear message for
his audience, Ngugi recognizes that though his fiction is not directly
didactic, he discusses problems that affect them; he says that he is
"making people aware of the issues around them, aware of those things
that are shaping their own lives ... I like to think that I am touching
the heart of the matter, that I should be able to discuss the moving
issues of Kenya and East Africa. "SIn terms of technique, however,
Ngugi believes the effect of his audience on him is minor, except that
he tries "to get that narrative technique which is part of the people's
. . h' ,,6

About this narrative inheritance, that is, the oral narrative
technique, Ngugi has this to say:
In so far as oral tradition is part and parcel of one's
cultural upbringing, it is bound to affect one's narrative
technique. But there is another more immediate way the
people can affect one's narrative. I have in mind, in the
village, two or three women sitting by the fire talking of
something that affected them recently. Let's say they are
describing a journey from a village to Nairobi. Now the
description of the journey will take several forms: The
first narrator tells a certain amount, and this portion will
remind the listener of another episode, and she will stop
the first narrator to tell more about this episode. And
this can make another take up another episode, etc. So the
whole narrative structure can become more and more involved
and by the time you reach
7
Nairobi, you have covered a whole
history of the community.
It is in A Grain of Wheat that Ngugi begins to make use of this
technique of narratives embedded within other narratives as a conscious
narrative structure. Even though such narratives are complex, more so
192
when used in combination with the flashback technique that allows the
liberty of temporal movement, the point of view in this novel is
basically that of the omniscient third person, with the omniscient
narrator coordinating events and exploring the psychological and
historical dynamics of the characters. Peter Nazareth's remark that
Ngugi's novels, like Conrad's, are basically chronological in spite of
their backward and forward movement, is perhaps pertinent to A Grain of
8
Wheat and Petals of Blood. Even though both novels cover the whole
span of Kenyan history, the hypothetical time during which events take
place in the novels is respectively seven days for the former and twelve
for the latter.
However, the flashback technique can create confusion in the
readers and even in the characters themselves, when past events
coincidentally resurface in the present, making it difficult to
determine whether one is living in the past or the present. For
example, during the exodus to the city, Abdulla is reminded of Mau Mau
hardships and also of the communal bond that existed between the members
of the movement. But as he remembers one of their attacks on a garrison
and the ensuing pandemonium, he is again caught off guard by another
pandemonium--the trekking delegation has come across a herd of
antelopes, resulting in confused attempts to kill the animals to feed
the famished people:
He would ever remember that day ... they had carefully planned
to capture a garrison in the heart of Nakuru Town, and free
the prisoners ... , as earlier in the struggle Kihika had done
at Mahee and Kimathi's guerillas at Naivasha. They had
freed the prisoners ... There was pandemonium
193
everywhere ... people were shouting ... catch ... catch ... and for
a second Abdulla had the illusion of a double vision.
For indeed, around him, the children were shouting catch,
catch, meat, meat .. then he too saw what they had seen, the
procession had surprised a herd of antelopes which were now
leap-leaping across the plains. Abdulla's mind worked very
fast [PB, p. 138].
Perhaps more than anything else, it is the narrative technique
adopted in Petals of Blood that establishes Ngugi's artistry and
partisanship with the people and gives the novel its epic dimension. In
this novel, Ngugi entirely identifies himself with the oppressed to the
extent that he now writes as their spokesman. As a result the narrative
is often in various forms of the first person plural: we, us, our.
In an article on the narrative method of Ngugi's four novels,
Florence Stratton points out the presence of this unidentified
spokesman, whom she calls "the lyrical centre" or "the collective
consciousness." She also points out the difference between the "you" in
the first two novels, mainly in The River Between, and the "we" used in
A Grain of Wheat but more pervasively in Petals of Blood:
The 'you' of the earlier writing is the indefinite or
generic 'you' meaning 'people in general' ... it has the
effect of involving the reader in the events, the bond
between speaker and reader is comparatively weak ... 'We'
refers to the speaker and others who had a s m ~ r
experience, while the reader ... is the addressee.
In conclusion, Stratton recognizes this change from 'you' to 'we'
both as a move toward authorial commentary and as an attempt on the part
of the writer to disguise his voice as that of the collective
consciousness. However, the use of "we" certainly shows the writer's
involvement but in a more complex way than Stratton points out. The
194
"we" used in the opening pages of the book [pages 6, 7, 8, 10, 31] is
undoubtedly from the perspective of the inhabitants and shows how they
see events before or during the coming of the protagonists. Even later
in the book, the four protagonists seem to be excluded, as they are
variously referred to as "she," "he" or "they." This is the case in
pages 242, 264, 266, 267, 268. However, in 297-298, the first person
plural refers not only to the inhabitants of Ilmorog but also includes
all the central characters. Here, Munira quotes Wanja as having said
"we were all like Abdulla but instead of our limbs it was our souls that
were maimed. It was at this time we heard the terrible news: the lawyer
had been murdered" [p. 297]. Such a use of "we" both represents
Munira's newfound desire to belong and the notion that the four
protagonists, having actually participated in the collective experience
of the exodus to the city, now qualify to be seen as part of that
collectivity.
The narrative of Petals of Blood is more complex than that of the
previous novel, not only because it makes more use of the personna "we,"
but also because it has several levels of narration--two or perhaps
three. The first level is that of the omniscient narrator, who
coordinates events and transcends his characters' limitations (as is the
case when he refers to the history of Ilmorog) and beyond that, views a
wider world history such as the glimpses we get of King Solomon, Zeus,
Genghis Khan, slave traders and merchants from North Africa, Gaul,
Germany, England ... until we first see the protagonists.
195
At the center of the second and third levels of narration, we have
Munira's "statement." We must be reminded that the detective line of
the novel starts not only with the arrest of the four suspects, but also
with the appointment of Inspector Godfrey to find the arsonist/murderer
and, ironically, with his decision to use the religious fanatic, Munira,
by making him to write about what had happened:
Mr Munira we shall provide you with pen and paper and a
place to sleep even ... You can handle it any way you like. I
myself am curious about the history of Ilmorog, of your
school even, that is, if you have the patience and the
writer's energy; but remember that all we are asking you to
do is to tell in a clear simple statement anything you may
know about the behaviour, the general mental disposition,
and especially the movements of Abdulla, Wanja and Karega on
the night of ... and even during the week or so before this
triple murder [PB, p. 45].
Now, the omniscient narrator/writer appropriates this "statement"
and decides either to paraphrase it or simply let it stand as a first
person narrative. However, in both instances, he uses expressions that
perhaps show his distance vis-a-vis Munira, such as: "Munira paused"
[PB, p. 29], "Munira continued" [30], "he wrote" [99], "he continued"
[104], "Munira was to write later" [117], "he wrote" [118], "Munira
scribbled with the inner fury of trying to understand" [226]. Munira's
first person narratives are found on pages 45-54, 99-105, 117-118, and
226-227; the rest of the time Munira's "statement" is paraphrased. As
we can see, both forms of this second level of narration cover less than
half the total length of the novel. The major part of the book is
therefore from the perspective of the omniscient narrator, who reflects
the collective consciousness Stratton describes, but he also sees events
196
from the perspective of the other central characters--things that Munira
would not know, such as Wanja and Karega's love making [230] or
criticism of Munira [228], Abdulla's determination to avenge himself,
Wanja's last minute killing of Kimeria or her pregnancy, both Karega's
and Abdulla's tortures while in detention, and so forth.
Ngugi's readiness to experiment with narrative techniques and
structural forms is evident in Petals of Blood, where he makes use of
the "people's narrative inheritance" of multiple narrators and involved
narratives to realize a kind of structural collage with the detective
structure. According to Eckhard Breitinger, "both the Western literary
tradition and African oral tradition are used as quarry which can
furnish well-known structural props, themes, material and images, which
are [however] assembled in a new way to form a different, original
10
structure."
Explaining Ngugi's ingenuity further, Breitinger shows how the
writer in Petals of Blood gives the impression he is going to follow the
detective novel pattern with the murder and the investigating detective
to unravel the crime, but this murder, according to Breitinger, "is not
a murder in the usual sense of the formula ... but attains the quality of
an execution ... the detective novel is only a catch (for) it is
transformed into an allegory of revolution. ,,11
Breitinger also sees the class perspective in Ngugi's use of two
investigators: the writer and Inspector Godfrey, with the latter
reflecting the dominant exploiting class' intention to maintain their
197
version of "law and order." This is clearly shown towards the end of
the novel, where the Inspector's bias against Karega is revealed:
Inspector Godfrey ... had been brought to believe in the
sanctity of private property. The system... was for him
synonymous with the natural order of things like the sun,
the moon and the stars which seemed fixed and permanent in
the firmament. Anybody who interfered with that ordained
fixity and permanence of things was himself unnatural and
deserved no mercy: was he not inviting chaos such as would
occur if some foolish astronaut/cosmonaut should go and push
the sun or the moon from its place? People like Karega and
their radical trade unionism and communism threatened the
very structure of capitalism: as such they were worse than
murderers [PB, p. 333].
As Breitinger says, the investigating writer "seeks a new order
that detects and lays bare the rapaciousness of the old ruling class.
It is quite obviously the class perspective that decides on what is
'criminal' and what is positive; it is the class perspective that
necessitates the individual detective or the collective process of
detection. ,,12
Ngugi is aware of the complex narrative technique and structure of
both A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood, and he is also conscious that
this might prove a formidable barrier to the understanding of these
works, and hence, a danger to his objective of addressing issues that
concern his audience. In the interview he gave to Egejuru, Ngugi shows
both his awareness of this danger and his determination to overcome it:
"It is not easy to be clear using the technique. In a book one is faced
with a few difficulties using that technique. The thread of the story
is lost.
13
This is danger which I am trying to overcome."
198
Ngugi's attempt to overcome the barrier raised by the complexity
of A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood is manifest in Devil on the
Cross and Matigari, the two novels he wrote in the Gikuyu language.
Though the story of Devil on the Cross is not linear and still makes use
of the journey motif, of involved narratives, it is less complex. It
has a chorus-like opening that establishes both its objective and its
tone--to reveal the hidden factors behind Wariinga's murder of the rich
old man and perhaps bring about her acquittal. Ngugi also introduces
the notion of the novel as fable through the Prophet of Justice, and
also as parable through the parable of "Earthly Wiles" told by the
recalcitrant servant. This parable actually provides the fundamental
image of the neo-colonial situation in the novel.
One major problem of Devil on the Cross, however, is related to
the protagonist Wariinga's evolution from placid sufferer to radical,
self-sufficient woman, ready to pull the trigger. Her evolution may be
seen as unconvincing, especially when she is suddenly thrust on the
reader toward the end of the novel with the information that she has
metamorphosed. This should not be seen as a failure if the reader sees
the shift in Wariinga's character as an ironic commentary on the initial
objective of the novel to project the whole truth. Confronted with the
impossibility or dilemma of handling the whole of reality, the writer
can only proceed through selectivity, which is here informed by the
writer's committed socio-political perspective. Besides, Wariinga, like
the other characters, also belongs to this world which, though fabulous,
199
bears on or finds its meaning in human society, as the old peasant has
told Gatuiria.
. .14
h
. 1 1 d t'
as an even er p ot structure an narra In
this novel, which is actually a moral fable, the legendary Mau Mau,
Matigari ma Njiruungi (meaning "the patriots who survived the liberation
war and their political offspring," Matigari, p. 20), is shown at the
end of the heroic freedom struggle. The dramatic heart of the novel
resides in the fact that Matigari believes in the hard-won freedom,
rids himself of his weapons, and decides to make a journey through Kenya
to see how his children fare. What he sees convinces him of the
betrayal of the noble objectives that the Mau Mau fought for. The
society has undergone a process of transvaluation: totalitarianism is at
its climax, the exploitation or extermination of the weak is the rule,
justice is mocked, and parrotry is a most rewarded quality. Matigari's
open stand for justice results in his arrest, imprisonment, and
afterwards, in attempts to kill him. Helped by a woman and a child,
Matigari makes his escape and reaches a river across whose banks he has
buried his weapons. As they try to cross over to recover the weapons,
Matigari and the woman are shot, but the child manages to make it to the
shore. The novel closes with the child arming himself with Matigari's
weapons.
In these two novels, Ngugi's achievement is to be perceived not
only from the standpoint of thematic treatment of the burning issues of
his people, the main concern of all the previous novels, but also from
his determination and ability to write them in Gikuyu. I must point out
200
that such a decision is part of Ngugi's strong anti-imperialist stand;
it brings out his increasing partisanship with the people and proves a
very important contribution in the fight against cultural oppression for
the effective building of a national culture. As described by Frantz
Fanon, national culture is neither populism nor a folkloric return to
the past; it is a dynamic process that holds together "the whole body of
efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify
and praise the action through which that people has created itself and
keeps itself in existence. ,,15Furthermore, Fanon says that we can talk
of national literature only when
the native writer progessively takes on the habit of
addressing his own people ... Here there is, at the level of
literary creation, the taking up and the clarification of
themes which are typically nationalist. This may be called
a literature of combat, in the sense that it calls on the
whole people to fight for their existence as a nation. It
is a literature of combat, because it moulds the national
consciousness, giving it form and contours and flinging open
before it new and boundless horizons; it is a literature of
combat, because it assumes responsibility, and because t ~ s
the will to liberty expressed in terms of time and space.
As the study of Ngugi's novels has shown, his fiction, by its
overriding concern with national issues, is nationalist and tries to
bring the realization of the national culture, but never before did he
do that in his native language.
By giving up the heavy diction, style and structure of the
previous novels, Ngugi's writing acquires an added fluency. As a
result, central issues like neo-colonial exploitation or injustice, and
other related concerns, are expressed in a style and in a language
familiar to the common people, whose perspective the novels project.
201
Ngugi's choice of imagery, diction, and tone in these two novels shows
his conscious effort to avoid the foreign in favor of the indigenous.
For example, the notion of class is now represented by terms such as:
"age-group," "family," or "clan." Both the nationalist group and the
advocates of self-interest use a language that conforms with their
African oral background. However, the "thieves" seem to be more aware
of the class nature of their struggle than the nationalist group.
Again, the image of neo-colonialism seen in all the other novels
CA Grain of Wheat and more particularly in Petals of Blood), is brought
home with more inunediacy through the use of the parable of "Earthly
Wiles" which, in combination with images such as the "Devil's feast,"
calls on the reader's knowledge of myths, fables, legends,
characteristic of the oral tradition. The image behind the "Devil's
feast" also echoes the people's belief in the supernatural or in
witchcraft. Through this image Ngugi sees neo-colonialism as a new form
of witchcraft that makes it possible for a country's life-blood to be
pumped away by foreigners through their local surrogates. The "Devil's
feast" or the meeting organized by the Organization of Modern Theft and
Robbery in Ilmorog, actually becomes a Witches Sabbath that brings
together witches intent on despoiling a country of its resources, both
material and spiritual. The physical attributes of the thieves also
point to such an interpretation: they are said to have fangs, to drink
blood; even their own language betrays them as people who both thrive on
human woes and actually seem to deal in human spare parts.
202
The satiric portrayal of the thieves is remarkably humorous: they
have kilometric names that encapsulate cupidity, lust, emptiness--
"Rottenborough Groundflesh Shitland Narrow Isthmus Joint Stock Brown"
[DC, p. 99], or "Lord Gabriel Bloodwell-Stuart-Jones" [po 109]; their
schemes bring out their cunning, ruthlessness in dealing with ordinary
people, in conformity with their general objective to plunder the
country; they gloat over what they consider their discovery--the fact
that "the loss of the masses is the gain of the few" [DC, p. 104]; their
concerns for worldly pleasures is well illustrated by their lewdness.
The people's reaction to the situation reveals some streaks of
humor, but mostly brings out their wit or wisdom accumulated from years
of frustration, exploitation and also from their growing awareness of
the situation. An instance of this is when the servant refuses to water
the capital with his sweat and buries it instead. However, the best
illustration of the people's wisdom is to be found in their use of
proverbs.
Devil on the Cross is studded with more proverbs and wise sayings
than any of the previous novels. Apart from a rather decorative
function given to proverbs by Chinua Achebe in his Things Fall Apart,
where they are believed to be the palm oil with which words are eaten,
these crisp, concise, utterances carry a wealth of lived experience and
wisdom and are generally used to clinch arguments, leaving the listener
with the impression that nothing more can be added. For example, the
behavior of characters like Wanja and Wariinga, who kill or who turn
prostitute because of social pressure, is given meaning by the proverb
203
"a bird in flight lands on any tree when tired" [DC, p. 33]; again, the
saying which has it that the land rewards those who come after it was
cleared rather than those who did the task of clearing it [DC, p. 37],
brings out the former patriots' frustration with Uhuru; the existence of
an alternative way or course of action for the country is implied in
"the seeds in the gourd are not all of the same kind" [DC, p. 52];
while the necessity for the people to take a violent course of action
against its enemies is brought home through the image of the leopard
whose "scratches" prove deadly only to its enemies--no one has ever seen
the leopard kill its own cub scratching it [DC, p. 54].
Steinbeck's celebrity as a writer has something to do with his
human/ecological concerns as well as with his style, an aspect of which
Hayashi sees as "his 'poetic' prose that appeals to the reader's
aesthetic sense and sensibility; his artistic detachment and
journalistic concern; his unique holistic theory and group-man
concept ... his great indigenous style; and his vivid narration and
. d' . ,,17
H
h' . d . b k
ayas even ers ec a more
gifted storyteller than Ernest Hemingway.
Lewis Gannet recognizes Steinbeck's genius and versatility or,
what he calls his "philosophic vagrancy" in his preface to the 1936
edition of Cup of Gold, Steinbeck's first novel and picaresque rendering
of the life of a pirate, Henry Morgan. Gannet also points out that "no
two of Steinbeck's books have ever fitted in the same valise" and that
the appearance of "In Dubious Battle had taught them [the American
public] that Steinbeck's genius was of a versatility utterly alien to
204
those ardent young writers who can only tell the same story over and
over again" (p. vi). Steinbeck's greatness as a writer also has
something to do with this ability and courage to experiment with
different prose styles or structures while abandoning easy, proven ones,
but this dispersion of effort may also have been a source of his
limitation.
Though Steinbeck uses a variety of prose styles and narrative
structures, the plots of his novels are relatively simple, linear, and
concise, and employ a great deal of dialogue. Unlike the other novels,
The Pastures of Heaven makes use of a loose unifying structure.
Actually, the debate as to whether this book is a novel still continues.
Warren French considers it and other collections of related but
individually autonomous stories, such as Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, as
"short story cycles," which he defines as sets "of stories linked to
each other in such a way as to maintain a balance between the
individuality of each of the stories and the necessities of the larger
unit. While the stories can stand by themselves ... [they] take an
18
additional meaning when they are read in relation to one another." In
contrast, Steinbeck cautions the reader about the tendency to take the
book as just a series of short stories, pointing out that they "are not
short stories at all but tiny novels."
Though Steinbeck's claim that his stories are "tiny novels" may be
a little exaggerated, in the light of their brevity and limited scope of
character development and style, it would nevertheless be possible to
consider some of the stories (Shark, Maltby, Banks and mainly the
205
Whitesides' story) as within the scope of the long-short story or
novella format. Even more important, a close consideration of the
central unifying devices in The Pastures of Heaven--its
characterization, setting, and tones--would qualify the book to stand as
a novel.
Instead of the loose construction of The Pastures of Heaven, In
Dubious Battle has a unified plot, even if this is held in a kind of
tension by the two contradictory perspectives--the non-teleological
perspective advocated by Doe, and the teleological standpoint used by
Mac and Jim. Also adding to this tension is the application of
Steinbeck's group-man theory. Perhaps the ambiguous unity of the book
is what Steinbeck refers to, when he talks about the underlying "order"
of the book despite its apparent "disorder." He also describes both the
"oral" nature of the book and its implicit partisanship with the migrant
workers through the use of their language, in his letter to George
Albee:
The book is disorder, but if it should ever come to you to
read, listen to your own thoughts when you finish it and see
if you don't find in it a terrible order, a frightful kind
of movement. The talk, and the book is about 80% dialogue,
is what is usually called vulgar. I have worked along with
working stiffs and I have rarely heard a sentence that had
not some bit of profanity in it. And in books I am sick of
the noble working man talking very like a junior college
professor [Life in Letters, p. 99].
Even the slow, gradual movement of events in the book and then the
sudden explosion of intermitent violence are all carefully planned, as
Steinbeck informs us in his letter: "I strove for a serene movement like
the movement of the year and the turn of the seasons, in this I wanted
206
to get over unrest and irritation and slow sullen movement breaking out
now and then in fierce irruptions. And so I have a jerky method" [99].
The fact that Steinbeck places much importance on the way his works end
must have been clear to us by what I have said about his refusal to
alter the end of The Grapes of Wrath. In Dubious Battle also ends on an
important note, without a conclusion, but rather in the middle of a
sentence about how Mac is preparing to use Jim's body to rouse the
apathetic workers to action. According to Steinbeck, such an ending
brings out both the notion of the inconclusiveness of events and his
collective humanity theory, that "there is a cycle in the life of man
but there is no ending in the life of Man. I tried to indicate this by
stopping on a high point, leaving out any conclusion" [pp. 98-99].
The plot structure of Of Mice and Men is the simplest of that of
the four novels studied in this thesis because of its brevity and
journalistic tone. Though Steinbeck reverts to the plight of migrant
workers, he does not inform these workers with the very keen class
awareness developed in the previous novel. Rather, with the exception
of Lennie, George and the ranch owner, all the characters are resigned
to their wretched condition of existence. Even the solidarity between
the two friends seems less a means of overcoming the unfair system in
place than a way of fighting a rather abstract notion of human
isolation.
The other new feature of this novel is Steinbeck's desire to
experiment with the play-novelette form. Joseph Fontenrose, who sees
207
this novel as "a cross between novel and drama," outlines its dramatic
features thus:
Each of the six chapters is confined to one scene and opens
with a description of the scene; there follows dialogue with
entrance and exit of characters. Every description or
narrative remark can be considered a stage direction... The
chapter can easily be converted, as they stand, into acts or
scenes; and this is nearly what was done when Of Mice and
Men was published and produced as a play, in November
1937 ... As drama or novel Of Mice and1ijen is economical,
tightly knit, carefully constructed.
Instead of a complicated, contrived plot, events in The Grapes of
Wrath are articulated around the chronicle of the Joad family's
experience of dispossession in Oklahoma, their migration to California,
their subsequent disillusionment and suffering, and their awakening to
the necessity of brotherhood, understanding and love beyond family lines
to reach all human beings. As Peter Lisca points out, the major
difficulty that confronted Steinbeck in this novel was how to show above
any reasonable doubt that he places the individual experience of the
Joad family within the larger framework of the Great Depression, that
is, how to bring out the unquestionable epic dimension of the plight of
peasants during the thirties. Steinbeck finds the solution in the
insertion of interchapters, the sixteen chapters of the book that,
without dealing directly with the Joads, "present the social, economic,
and historical background, telling the story of all the migrants" and
only allowing the Joads to play out, as it were, the archetypal
. . . d' h' h 20
once presente t e apters.
Another major problem was how to integrate these interchapters
into the narrative without having them stand out as mere juxtapositions.
208
Steinbeck overcomes this problem through his masterful command of prose
styles that enable him choose the right diction, tone and rhythm to suit
the various conditions in which the Joads find themselves. This
stylistic ingenuity alone makes of The Grapes of Wrath a masterpiece
and, according to Fontenrose, "no other American novel has succeeded in
21
forging and making instrumental so many prose styles."
Steinbeck's versatile use of prose styles, the simplicity of his
diction, his near lyricism, his compassion and deep understanding of the
peasants' plight can best be illustrated by some random quotations from
the following scenes: 1) the opening chapter, where the narrator
poignantly and repetitiously illustrates the catastrophic magnitude of
the drought and its effect on the farmers
The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot
stinging air and covered their noses from it. And the
children came out of the houses, but they did not run or
shout as they would have done after a rain. Men stood by
their fences and looked at the ruined corn, dying fast now,
only a little green showing through the film of dust. The
men were silent and did not move often. And the women came
out of the houses to stand beside their men--to feel whether
this time the men would break ... Horses came to the watering
troughs and nuzzle the water to clear the surface dust.
After a while the faces of the watching men lost their
bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant
[TGW, p. 6].
2) Chapter five brings out the part played by industrialization or
mechanization in the plight of the peasants, as I have already
demonstrated in the quotation that showed the robotic driver callously
bulldozing peasants' houses and furiously ploughing the land. 3)
Chapter seven illustrates how peasants are exploited by unscrupulous
209
salesmen, whose callousness and inhumanity are only marvelously
reflected by their dry, staccato language
Used cars. Good used cars. Clean, runs good. Don't pump
oil.
Christ, look at 'er! Somebody took nice care of 'er.
Cadillacs, La Salles, Buicks, Plymouths, Packards, Chevies,
Fords, Pontiacs. Row on row, headlights glinting in the
afternoon sun. Good Used Cars.
Soften 'em up, Joe. Jesus, I wisht I had a thousand
jalopies! Get 'em ready to deal, an' I'll close 'em.
Goin' to California? Here's jus' what you need. Looks shot,
but they's thousan's miles in her.
Lined up side by side. Good Used Cars ... [TGW, p. 89].
4) Chapter twenty-three brings out the courage and determination
of the peasants, with the lighthearted, rhythmic prose reflecting the
way they spend their few moments of "happiness." The chapter begins
with a slow, ponderous rhythm that brings out, as it were, the notion of
musical instruments being tuned, while the last part is more accelerated
to suit the quickened tempo of a dance:
A harmonica is easy to carry. Take it out of your hip
pocket, knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and
pocket z ~ and bits of tobacco. Now it's ready. You can
do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or
chords, or melody with rhythm chords. You can mold the
music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like
bagpipes, making it full and round like an organ ... [TGW, pp.
447-448] .
Look at that Texas boy, long legs loose, taps four times for
ever' damn step. Never seen a boy swing aroun' like that.
Look at him swing that Cherokee girl, red in her cheeks and
her toe points out. Look at her pant, look at her heave.
Think she's tired? Think she's winded? Well she ain't.
Texas boy got his hair in his eyes, mouth's wide open, can't
get air, but he pats four times for ever' darn step, an'
he'll keep a-going' with the Cherokee girl [TGW, p. 449].
5) In Chapter twenty-four the Joads and the other inhabitants of
the Weedpath camp echo the lighthearted note of the previous chapter by
210
their language and the actual dance they organize. 6) Chapter twenty-
five starts out with a catalogue of the beauty of California's spring,
the luxuriance of her vegetation/plantations, and the bounty of her
harvests--all seen as a paradox to the generally befouled atmosphere
caused by the criminally crude mercantilist mentality that allows
oranges to be dumped in pools, coffee to be burned as fuel, pigs to be
slaughtered and covered with quicklime, and people to starve:
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There
is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a
failure here that topples all our success. The fertile
earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the
ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because
a profit cannot be taken from an orange ...
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river,
and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to
get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And
they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to
the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with
quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a
putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the
failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing
wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are
filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage
[TGW, p. 477].
Unlike Ngugi's use of personna to openly identify with the Kenya
peasantry, Steinbeck's presence in his works is very subtle and may take
the form of a slight hint as in The Pastures of Heaven, where the
omniscient narrator informs the reader that not all the rumors about the
Maltby are correct, or it is done generally through the self-characters
who, according to Steinbeck, contain his dream wish of wisdom and
acceptance. Perhaps more than any writer, Steinbeck's lived experience
plays an important role in his writing and the extreme care with which
he went about his job as a writer proves this. For example, DeMott
211
shows important biographical evidences in Steinbeck's journals/diary on
the The Grapes of Wrath that may have influenced events in the novel, in
spite of Steinbeck's attempts to efface his own presence in the book.
As a result, DeMott concludes that "the 'prowling' pace of Steinbeck's
writing schedule informed the slow, 'crawling' movement of the Joads'
journey, while the harried beat of his own life gave the proper 'feel'
and tone to the beleagued Joads. Specifically, aspects of Steinbeck's
1
" f b d 1 " d ". ,,2
2
1 e ore irect y on manuscript eCisions.
The epic plots of The Grapes of Wrath and Petals of Blood are
bespoken by their epic styles and characterization. Though the
multiplication of central characters in both novels may be seen to
undercut reality because of the two writers' awareness of the
contingency of human experience, such a characterization actually
reinforces reality for the same reason. Perhaps this is what Scholes
means when, on the one hand, he sees the multiplication of characters in
mid-twentieth century narratives as "a sign of the decline of 'realism'
as an esthetic force," and, on the other hand, recognizes that it has
another effect of placing "the primary narrator [the writer] in the
position of histor, seeking to find out the truth from the versions he
is told. ,,23
Both writers make use of a symbolic language generally associated
with the Bible. But here again, while Ngugi's allusion to the Bible is
more systematic and constant in all his works, Steinbeck's analogy to
the Bible is particularly noticeable in The Grapes of Wrath: the
pestilential conditions of life that lead to the farmers' exodus from
212
Oklahoma to California echo the exodus of the Israelites in the Bible;
the former preacher, Jim Casy's initials and dying words ["you don' know
what you're doin' ," TGW, p. 535] also correspond with Jesus Christ's
initials and last words before he was crucified ["Father, forgive them;
they know not what they do," Luc 23:34]. These and many other Biblical
analogies have led some critics to see strong thematic and even
structural links between this book and the Bible, to the extent that Jim
Casy becomes Christ, Tom Joad is one of Christ's disciples, and Rose of
Sharon's breast feeding is a communion.
Eric W. Carlson, in a brilliant article, agrees that some loose
Biblical analogies do exist in The Grapes of Wrath, but cautions that
"these are not primary to the structure and theme of the novel."
Carlson comes to this conclusion from the consideration that:
1) the Christian symbols and Biblical analogies function at
best in a secondary capacity within a context of meaning
that is so unorthodox as to be opposite of what is generally
considered "Christian;" 2) the primary symbolic structure,
as well as meaning, is naturalistic and humanistic, not
Christian; 3) the main theme reflects not only this
foreground of natural symbolism but also the auZaor's
philosophic perspective of scientific humanism.
According to Carlson, the title theme of The Grapes of Wrath "has
its origin in the experience of the people rather than in a body of
religious concepts and beliefs ... [it also] has behind it the American
'democratic tradition' ... embodied in its 'epic form' and 'epic tendency'
of style." Carlson points out that Casy's faith has grown "out of an
experimental understanding and love of his fellows," that his religious
213
reverence of all life forms has nothing to do with the God of Christ,
and "Christianity without Christ is hardly Christianity. ,,25
Ngugi, like Steinbeck's character Casy, has given up Christianity
and yet seems to be fascinated with the believer's Bible. Apart from
their satiric intent, the two writers make use of the Bible (or of
religion) by rewriting it. Steinbeck's rejection of the Bible/orthodox
religion in The Grapes of Wrath derives from its alienation of humans
from nature, society, and themselves. Instead, like Casy, Steinbeck's
believes we can place our faith in the earth and in the spirit of
humans--Casy's form of humanism that Carlson calls "a belief in the
brotherhood of man, manifesting itself as 'love' ... good will, compassion
and mutualism... an acceptance of all life as an expression of
spirit.,,26In addition to the alienating aspects of Christianity that
calls on the individual to consider society as Caesar's, Ngugi also sees
the hypocritical role that makes of this religion one of the power bases
of the neo-colonial system in Africa.
214
Notes
1. Georg Lukacs, "His torica1 Truth in Fiction," in The Modern
Tradition, Background of Modern Literature, p. 355.
2. Robert Scho1es and Robert Ke11ogg, The Nature of Narratives (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 207.
3. James Vuiningoma, "Literacy and Orality in African Literature: The
Case of Ngugi wa Thiong'o" in Commonwealth, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring
(1987): 66
4. Phanue1 Akubueze Egejuru, Towards African Literary Independence: A
Dialogue with Contemporary African Writers (London: Greenwood Press,
1980), p. 108. All page references are from this edition.
5. Ibid., pp. 29-30.
6. Ibid., p. 30.
7. Ibid.,p.81.
8. Peter Nazareth, The Third World Writer, p. xxvii.
9. Florence Stratton, "Narrative Method in the Novels of Ngugi," in
African Literature Today, 13, p. 123.
10. Eckhard BreitingerjRinehard Sander (eds.), Studies in Commonwealth
Literature (Gunter Narr Ver1ag Tubingen, 1985), p. 99.
11. Ibid., pp. 99-100.
12. Ibid., p. 101.
13. Phanue1 A. Egejuru, Towards African Literary Independence, p. 81.
14. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Matigari, trans. from the Gikuyu by Wangui wa
Goro; (Oxford: Heinemann International, 1989).
15. F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 188.
16. Ibid., p. 193.
17. Tetsurnaro Hayashi, "Why is Steinbeck's Literature Widely Read?,"
pp. 21-22.
18. Warren French, John Steinbeck, p. 55.
215
19. Joseph Fontenrose, John Steinbeck: An Introduction and
Interpretation (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1963), p.
55.
20. Ibid., p. 69.
21. Ibid.,p.64.
22. Robert DeMott, Working Days, p. 14.
23. Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narratives, p.
262.
24. Eric W. Carlson, "Symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath," in A Casebook
on The Grapes of Wrath, p. 97.
25. Ibid., pp. 98-99.
26. Ibid., p. 98.
216
CONCLUSION
As a positive aesthetics, commitment implies the awareness of the
human plight and the imperative call of conscience, but it derives
mainly from an act of choice to advocate fundamental values for the
improvement of human 1ife--democracy, social justice, human dignity:
values that call on the writer to side with the underprivileged and
strengthen his or her will to work toward changing their negative
condition of life. This behavior or attitude of mind in the writer is
what I refer to as the positive perspective, force, and direction of his
or her work. Without the writer's will to move toward a better,
alternative reality, simple criticism would amount to raking a polluted
self-enclosed environment, an act whose lack of direction or opening
only adds up to the existing confusion and filth. Like the currents of
two Ocean-bound rivers, Steinbeck's and Ngugi's works or perspectives
bring up unexpected similarities as well as differences.
Their partisanship with the underdog manifests itself both through
their thematic treatment of socio-po1itica1 issues relevant to their
respective societies, and also through their styles. Both writers
present events from the standpoint of the underdog, that is, have inside
perspectives, whereas they generally show the oppressing party from the
217
outside. Such an attitude perhaps explains why the latter group is
caricatured, implied, or simply lost sight of.
The two writers' partisanship with the underdog also manifests
itself through their language, a language that consciously identifies
with the American migrants of the thirties or with the Kenyan peasantry.
Ngugi's commitment actually culminates in his decision to use the Gikuyu
language instead of English. Apart from expressing Ngugi's anti-
imperialist stand and his determination to contribute in the elaboration
of Kenyan national culture, this decision constitutes a significant step
that allows new creative imput into Gikuyu which, like other African
languages, is still underdeveloped in its written form. Ngugi's
decision is therefore of both literary and cultural importance, and must
not be seen as the equivalent of "a withdrawal in the cocoon of tribe."
More importantly, Ngugi's view of the world minimizes the tribal or the
racial factor in favor of the socio-economic which, he believes, acts
across tribal or racial categories. For him, what passes for tribalism
in Africa is nothing but a struggle between the haves and the have-
1
nots.
Similarly, to Steinbeck, the writer's language is as important as
the message it holds. Steinbeck's endeavor to portray the language of
migrants and his indignation with people for distorting the language of
"working stiffs," are certainly not motivated by folkloric nostalgia.
Again, Steinbeck's interest in the language of migrant workers brings
out his concerns for these people, for common, human values, and for the
ecological notion of link between human life and the land. Yet,
218
recorded outside ideology or the notion of class, Steinbeck's language
becomes the principal distinguishing feature of the migrants and, as a
result, is illustrative of the characteristic simplicity pointed out by
Trilling: "Our most fervent interest in manners has been lingistic, and
our pleasure in drawing distinctions between a presumably normal way of
speech and an 'accent' or a 'dialect' may suggest how simple is our
national notion of social difference. ,,2
Both Ngugi and Steinbeck succeed in reflecting in their works the
major issues of their respective societies. However, Ngugi sets his
novels against a constant backdrop of chaos, violence, and misery;
presents a keener picture of his Third World background of crude
exploitation, dispossession, and suffering; allows his characters to
register with the sensitivity of a barometer the different socio-
political phases of his Kenyan society. Thus, from the basically
black/white culture conflict presented in The River Between, he moves to
the turbulent moments before and during the Emergency with the struggle
between the Mau Mau nationalists and the advocates of colonialism in
Weep Not, Child. The warfare is both exacerbated and solved in A Grain
of Wheat with the advent of Uhuru, signaling the beginning of a
black/black class-related conflict. Again, this conflict is exacerbated
in the following novel, Petals of Blood, where it becomes a struggle
between the haves (the rulers) and the have-nots (the ruled). The last
two novels continue to deal with this struggle, but with more emphasis
on its neo-colonial or international dimensions. Ngugi therefore shows
a more sustained, evolutive treatment of the issues, manifests a keener
219
understanding of the ideological underpinnings of the social system--
both the colonial and neo-colonial stages of Kenyan society--and
subjects his characters to a more systematic, logical, philosophy of
commitment. All of this points to Ngugi's determination and will to
bring about a better social reality in Kenya.
Even if Steinbeck lacks Ngugi's consistent philosophy of
commitment or the systematic way Ngugi's characters react to social
stimuli (for example, Steinbeck's refusal to build on the awareness that
his characters acquire in In Dubious Battle, but instead projecting them
in Of Mice and Men as a work force totally oblivious to the fact that
their wretchedness also derives from the exploitative nature of their
labor), we still see that the most realized characters of Steinbeck's
committed fiction blunder not into a self-obsessed isolation but rather
into an awareness of themselves as part of the larger world. They
struggle for human kinship outside the ideological class war, drawing
sustenance from both their individual and collective potential, failing
by the lack or the excess of it, never really succeeding by coming down
on one side or the other. For example, In Dubious Battle brings out the
negative dehumanizing aspects of collectivism. Jim Nolan's evolution
from a sensitive to an insensitive individual concerned only with an
abstract collective cause is totalitarian and extremely frightening.
Though Steinbeck's concern for the underdog culminates in The Grapes of
Wrath, he does not show a clear grasp of the oppressive social system,
as he is more interested to illustrate how capitalism, in the form of
220
eviction of indebted farmers and the maximization of profit at the
expense of any human consideration, is detrimental to human existence.
Still, in his particularly American context, Steinbeck's committed
fiction raises the reader above the narrow individualism of American
life and the complacent middle-class contemplation of the degrading
living conditions of migrants in the thirties. Though less compelling
in its call for change, Steinbeck's message acquires a note of urgency
in The Grapes of Wrath. Again, instead of the apparenL.y unavoidable
class struggle and revolutionary violence that Ngugi's fiction projects
and advocates, Steinbeck's works generally tend toward a non-violent
solution to social problems. Even when Steinbeck condones violence, as
may be the case in The Grapes of Wrath, where Tom Joad kills twice
without any sign of remorse (first in self-defence and later in reaction
to Casy's murder), this violence comes as instinctive outbursts and not
necessarily motivated by labor-related struggles or conflicts, the type
Mac and Jim Nolan advocate in In Dubious Battle. Strangely enough,
Tom's violent outbursts are neither manichaean nor
revolutionary.3Rather, they come as instinctive outbursts against
oppression and injustice.
Steinbeck's lack of interest in ideology or socio-political
systems per se may have come from his skepticism that any such system
would contain the panacea for social problems, outside a Casy-type human
kinship and reverence of life. This is perhaps implied in his rejection
of "Hitlerite, Democrat, capitalist, and voodoo," his determination to
go to "those things which are relatively more lasting," and in his
221
optimism about the ultimate emergence of a "new world" [Life in Letters,
p. 193-194].
Ngugi is certainly aware that the source of social evil is
inherent in human nature. However, in addition to the exploitation and
injustice that Steinbeck's First World reality reveals, Ngugi's neo-
colonial Third World contains the reality of tyranny, of domination,
which manifests itself economically, culturally, politically,
spiritually, and creates iniquitous forms of relationship: the dominator
and the dominated, the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and
the oppressed. Ngugi sees at least three possible responses to such a
reality: the conservative approach that preserves the status quo; the
liberal response which Ngugi compares to "the man who is carried on
another's back and who will vehemently protest his willingness to do
anything to help his victim... except getting off his back;" and the
radical response which "calls for a total transformation of the systems
of inequality and oppression in every nation and between nations"
[Barrel of a Pen, pp. 73-74].
It is Ngugi's firm belief that the third world writer must be on
the side of those "sat upon," but even more, his or her writing must
entail a perspective that advocates action for, apart from providing us
with the images of the world in which we live:
[literature] shapes our consciousness to look at the world in a certain
way. Our propensity to action or inaction or to a certain kind of
action or inaction can be profoundly affected by the way we look at the
world ... Writing for peace should at the very least mean raising human
consciousness to an uncompromising hatred of all exploitative parasitic
relations between nations and between people within each nation... For we
must all struggle for a world in which one's cleanliness is not
222
dependent on another's dirt, one health on another's ill-health, and
one's welfare on another's misery [Barrel of a Pen, p. 75].
Ngugi's awareness of and great concern with Kenyan socio-cultural
issues bring out the nationalist side of his fiction, but it is his
advocacy of change and of a better alternative reality for the underdog
that provide a perspective to his fiction and, in line with Fanon's
definition of national literature, "[fling] open before it new and
boundless horizons; ... [it is a literature that] assumes responsibility,
and ... the will to liberty. ,,4
Ngugi has no ambiguity about his partisanship with the underdog,
nor does he show any doubt about the necessity of struggle and possible
violence to change the existing oppressive situation in Kenya. He makes
this clear both in his fiction and non-fiction, as when he quotes the
nineteenth-century self-educated and self-emancipated slave, Frederick
Douglass:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to
favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation are men who want crops
without prowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the Ocean without the awful roar of many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may
be both moral and physical; but it may a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out what
people may submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of
injustice and wrong which will be impose on them; and these will
continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with
both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress (Barrel of the Pen, p. 3).
This study has made it possible for us to determine the extent
which Steinbeck's and Ngugi's works succeed as art, and not propaganda
pamphlets. Ngugi and Steinbeck successfully dramatize the burning
issues of their time, emerge as great writers with positive aesthetic
223
perspectives, and make use of technique, language, symbol, to show wider
and universal relation in the human experience of their respective
societies.
224
Notes
1. For Ngugi, social strife in Africa is essentially politico-
economic, which any struggle for change must take into account. He
points this out in Homecoming:
"Political and economic liberation are the essential conditions for
cultural liberation, for the true release of a people's creative spirit
and imagination. It is when a people are involved in the active work of
destroying an inhibitive social structure and building a new one that
they begin to see themselves. They are born again" [po 11].
2. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, p. 245.
3. According to Patrick Taylor, manichaean violence "makes an ethical
demand for liberation higher than the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill.'
On the other hand, though the revolutionary is uncertain 'that his/her
[violence] will lead to the elimination of oppression ... like
Abraham... he/she does not despair but, instead, acts out of freedom.
He/she believes that the experience of freedom is uncommensurable with
political domination and economic exploitation and acts on this belief
[The Narrative of Liberation (Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 81.
It is true that violence is implied everywhere in The Grapes of Wrath,
but it is presented as an avoidable threat, if the Big Growers tow the
humanist line.
Joan Steele talks about Steinbeck's "vague radicalism" when she quotes
George Orwell's comment on Charles Dickens:
"His radicalism is of the vaguest kind and yet one knows that it is
there ... He promotes reforms rather than revolution ... He tells us mass
society is an evil, against which the individual has no chance unless he
unites with others to achieve his goals. Irresponsible individualism
brings death and destruction" [Joan Steele, in Steinbeck's Literary
Dimension: A Guide to Comparative Studies, ed. Tetsumaro Hayashi (New
Jersey: The ScareCrow Press, Inc., Metuchen, 1973), p. 25].
4. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, p. 193. Patrick Taylor takes up
this Fanonian notion of liberation in his book The Narrative of
Liberation, where he sees the two major categories of Caribbean
narratives--"the liberating narrative" and "the mythical narrative."
For Taylor, "the liberating narrative issues the challenge of
transformation [whereby the neo-colonized] rise above the manichaean
conception of the world as a tragic drama to assume a historical
conception of the world as infinite possibility" [po 70]. On the other
hand, "the mythical narrative" [perhaps Taylor's equivalent of Negritude
writing] is negative because "it depicts human beings as minor actor in
a world that remains essentially the same in spite of its apparent flux"
[po 2], and also fails to introduce "the notion of humanity as freedom
in the world, bound to act in accordance with this freedom" [po 9].
225
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