Ngugui's The River Between - Position Paper - Essay Example

My thesis is to explore the intervention of colonization into African culture, the consequent failed acculturation and changes from some transformations. I believe that colonization was a failure because individuals could not fit into imposed imperialist authoritarian political structures in Kenya which did not benefit the locals. The River Between’s chief protagonist is Waiyaki, and it chronicled how he lived under colonization. The novel showed his background, the making of his leadership and his eventual fall from grace.

It showed how colonization affected Waiyaki and how it was partly responsible for his failed leadership because his villagers could not accept a colonized, local leader who showed acculturation. Colonization introduced missionization, or evangelization. The evangelism that attempted to change the tradition of circumcision of the Gikuyu adolescent girls failed because they still opted for the choice of female circumcision. Some girls bowed under peer pressure and consented to circumcision because of its traditional cultural value.

Muthoni, the daughter of Joshua, chose to be circumcised despite her Christian evangelism and her father. Joshua was the colonists’ Christian missionary and he was insulted by his own daughter’s defiant act of circumcision and he disowned her. This confirms the reader’s suspicious of his conversion since he himself told the people that they “should leave their ways and follow the ways of the white man”. (Ngugi 32). Yet if he were a true Christian, he would practice forgiveness and save Muthoni for redemption.

Imperialists failed to take into account that their subjects were not mere typological figures but flesh and blood humans with personalities that influence their actions far more than any imposed influences like evangelization. Colonization brought on power struggles of three cultural institutions; the Church, Mission school and Gikuyu cultural nationalism. Kameno’s Mugo showed