Decolonising the Mind and The Prisoners Dilemma - Essay Example

The researcher would like to compare both of the essays, and judge on whether which essay is actually stronger, based on the argumentation that was used by Thiong’o and Chapman. The first part of this paper would try to focus on the main arguments outlined in the paper of Thiong’o, while the second part would try to look at and describe the argumentation used by Chapman in his essay. Finally, based on the argumentation presented in the two essays, the researcher would then judge which essay is stronger.

            Ngugi Thiong’o, regarded as “one of the most important contemporary writers in the African Continent” (Thiong’o, 396), tried to explain the negative effects of colonialism on African mentality in his essay “Decolonising the Mind” (Thiong’o, 396). Thiong’o started his essay by explaining the unique power of language, wherein language was not merely a “string of words,” but on the contrary, has

…a suggestive power well beyond the immediate lexical meaning…the language, through images and symbols, gave us a view of the world, but it had a beauty of its own…the language of our evening teach-ins, and the language of our immediate and wider community, and the language of our work in the fields were one. (Thiong’o, 397)

However, since colonization came in, instruction eventually came in the language of the colonizers (English), breaking the “harmony: of language, and resulting in the inculcation of a different view of the world, that is, from the eyes of the colonizer (Thiong’o, 397-399). This resulted into eventually what became a colonial mentality, wherein the imposition of a foreign language actually made the colonizers control the African people’s wealth and culture, and the imposition of the colonizer's culture over the colonized people (Thiong’o, 397-402). Meanwhile, Chapman, in his essay “The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” actually argued that the western system of punishment is as barbaric and inhumane as compared to the punishment system of eastern Islamic countries (which included stoning, flogging, and amputation), because of the fact that the universal system of punishment in western societies (long term imprisonment) is also inhumane to offenders, for it isolates one from society altogether while making the offender exposed to a very cruel and punishing environment away from the public’s view (Chapman, 370). According to Chapman, the western punishment system of long-term incarceration just does not serve its purpose. From the said argumentation, I think that Chapman’s The Prisoner’s Dilemma” is the stronger essay. This is because of the fact that Chapman used more logical statements in his argumentation, and objectively analyzed the difference in punishment systems according to their purpose, as well as their effects on the punished.