World Literature Written in English

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Allegory and the grotesque image of the body:

Ngugi's Portrayal of depraved characters in Devil
on the cross

James A. Ogude

To cite this article: James A. Ogude (1997) Allegory and the grotesque image of the body:
Ngugi's Portrayal of depraved characters in Devil on the cross , World Literature Written in
English, 36:2, 77-91, DOI: 10.1080/17449859708589276

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449859708589276

Published online: 18 Jul 2008.

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 Allegory and the Grotesque Image of the Body:
Ngugi's Portrayal of Depraved Characters in Devil
on the Cross
World Literature Written in English, Vol 36.2 (1997)
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JAMES A. OGUDE
University of Witwaterscand

R e c e n t studies on post-colonial theories have attempted to redeem the

notion of allegory from its traditional conception as "a constrained and
mechanical mode of expression" (Slemon, "Post-Colonial Allegory and the
Transformation of History" 157). Allegory, as they argue, has been
reappropriated by the post-colonial writers as a strategy against the reconstruction
of the colonised by the coloniser. It is reappropriation because allegory, in their
view, "historically meant a way of speaking for the subjugated others of the
European colonial enterprise - a way of subordinating the colonised through the
politics of representation" (Slemon, "Monuments of Empire" 8). It is because
these theories challenge the mololithic representation of the colonised that
allegory has been transformed into a "site upon which post-colonial
cultures seek to contest and subvert colonialist appropriation through the
production of a literary, and specifically anti-imperialist, figurative
opposition or textual counter-discourse" (Slemon, "Monuments of
Empire" 10). Post-colonial allegory thus acquires a transformative
capacity in its attempt to subvert or challenge the imperial myths and codes
that make up the colonised peoples' notions of received history. Allegory,
Slemon adds:

provides the post-colonial writer with a means of foregrounding such inherited

notions and exposing them to the transformative powers of imagination; and in
doing so, post-colonial allegory helps to produce new ways of seeing history,
new ways of 'reading' the world. ("Post-Colonial Allegory and the Transforma-
tion of History" 164).

It seems to me that Ngugi in trying to fulfil the demands of an historical

77
 novel and the demands of re-writing and giving alternative interpretation to
Kenyan history, has fallen back on an allegorical mode.
Taken from the Greek word "allos," allegory means the other, that is, in
saying one thing you also imply something else. Allegory is traditionally de-
fined as "a double figure," writes Sommer (60). It is writing that involves, as
Stephen Selmon puts it, "doubling or reduplicating extra-textual material; and
since the allegorical sign refers always to a previous or anterior sign" it will
always draw our attention to the passage of time; it will inevitably create an
awareness of the past - a consciousness of history and tradition ("Post-
Colonial Allegory and the Transformation of History" 158). This has led to
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the frequent links between allegory and history. Allegorical writing, it is ar-
gued, concerns itself primarily with "redeeming or recuperating the past, ei-
ther because the present pales in comparison with it, or because the past has
become in some ways unacceptable to the dominant ideology of contemporary
society" (Slemon, "Post-Colonial Allegory and the Transformation of His-
tory" 158). The allegorical text, it would seem from this argument, is bound
to the authority of the past and is often deployed in the service of ordering his-
torical narratives.
Walter Benjamin, in his study of Trauerspiel, has added some illuminat-
ing dimensions to the theoretical assumption that allegory is a popular mode
for recuperating the past and ordering history. According to Benjamin, in pe-
riods of fragmentation and displacement, allegory is often the mode best
suited for piecing together history out of the ruins of the past. This is because
allegory's tendency towards a linear typology would provide the writer, in a
situation of fragmentation and marginalityi with a coherent framework within
which to re-write history. And so Benjamin writes: "The allegorical physiog-
nomy of the nature-history, which is put on stage in the Trauerspiel, is present
in reality in the form of ruin. In the ruin, history has physically merged into
the setting" (177-78). It is the allegorical narrative that provides the setting
and coherent expression to a fragmented reality.
It is not difficult to see why Ngugi resorts to allegory in his post-colonial
narratives in Kenya. As a writer of praxis, whose freedom of expression has
constantly been suppressed by the successive post-colonial regimes, he is al-
ways dogged by conditions of fragmentation. Indeed, he was detained for his
writing by the authorities. Significantly, his most obvious example of allegori-
cal narrative, Devil on the Cross, was written in prison. Like Bunyan's writ-
ing of The Pilgrim's Progress in Bedford gaol, Ngugi wrote Devil in Kamiti
Maximum Security Prison in Kenya. Again, given the prison conditions with
no proper writing material and in isolation from the rest of the society, Ngugi

78
 wrote from a situation of exile;1 he wrote from a situation of displacement and
fragmentation. Ngugi's recourse to allegory would seem to be a strategy
aimed at creating sense out a state of chaos; a way of reclaiming Kenya's his-
tory that had been suppressed in the colonial state and now again in the post-
colonial state. Allegorical writing, for Ngugi, must have opened up the possi-
bility of transformation - a means of re-reading the imperial myths and their
social agents in the post-colonial state.
The purpose of this paper is to explore Ngugi's use of allegory and to
show how his allegorical strategies impact on his characterisation. The paper
argues that Ngugi's use of allegory leads to a deliberate construction of char-
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acter types which act as the ultimate vehicles of his discourses on the post-
colonial state in Kenya. The thrust of the paper is on the portrayal of those
characters that Ngugi sees as the agents of exploitation in the post-colonial
state. In this paper, I refer to them as the comprador bourgeoisie; they are a
specific type in Ngugi's narrative.2 I will show that Ngugi uses the grotesque
image of the body and generic names in his delineation of these character
types - the depraved characters. The grotesque images and generic names are
specifically used in the portrayal of characters that Ngugi abhors: the oppres-
sor or the exploiter types. The exploiter type embodies the values of the com-
prador class and capitalism. However, the paper concludes by pointing out
that Ngugi is a prisoner of his own allegorising scheme in which the depraved
characters are sharply contrasted with the victim type, thereby deleting any
nuanced analysis of social relations or any other versions of competing reali-
ties within what is an over-determined narrative structure.

Character Delineation of the Exploiter Type: The Use of the Grotesque

Image of the Body and Generic Names

Ngugi's use of allegory leads him to a preponderant use of character types in

his narrative. Character types are representative and functional characters.
Within diis characterisation mode, characters are distinguished by their func-
tion. The character is easily identified for what he stands for and very little at-
tempt is made to give a character any concrete individuality. "Such figures,"
Scheiber writes, "resemble Forster's 'flat characters,' whose simplified semic
identities exist in total complicity with the needs of the discourse as a
whole" (264). In his delineation of character types, Ngugi deploys the gro-
tesque and uses character names as the principal mode of characterisation.3
The grotesque mode, is traditionally considered an especially effective means

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 of assailing middle-class values, is used by Ngugi as a specific typological
signifier of a major social type in his narrative. For example, in Devil on the
Cross where the use of the grotesque is most preponderant, Ngugi uses the
grotesque as an instrument of social satire, specifically in his depiction of
"thieves and robbers" - the comprador bourgeoisie of the post-colonial state.
But the use of generic names also becomes significant here. These names sug-
gest what characters are likely to do and how they might view the world so
that, in the course of the action, characters - particularly the major protago-
nists - only reveal various aspects of their already suggested nature. The
characters' names, therefore, become a deliberate translation of concepts into
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illustrative terms. The characters acquire some allegorical stature; they be-
come symbolic representations of meaning in the narrative. In this sense,
characters become deliberate "tropes" or figures for meaning which are in-
tended to tell us something of the writer's attitude towards a particular char-
acter and the social group the character(s) represent.4
The point being made is that Ngugi's deliberate choice of symbolically
loaded names - names which are grounded in a specific cultural context -
tend to undermine particularity, but points rather to the general or a type.
Scholes and Kellog assert that "whenever we consider a character as a type,
we are moving away from considering him as an individual towards consider-
ing him as some larger framework" (204).
To understand Ngugi's use of grotesque and of generic names we need to
place them within the context of the basic concerns of the novel Devil on the
Cross where the features are most glaring. Devil on the Cross deals with a
group of six protagonists'travelling together in a matatu taxi to Ilmorog. The
protagonists discover that they are all mysteriously invited to a Devil's feast,
where thieves and robbers of Kenya enter a competition for the election of the
seven cleverest thieves and robbers. The characters are Wariinga, Wangari,
Gatuiria, Muturi, Mwireri and Mwaura the driver. The narrative operates at
two levels: the allegorical story illustrated by the competition or feast organ-
ised by the Devil and the Story of Wariinga who is the pivot of the plot. Like
Petals of Blood, the novel takes place mainly in Ilmorog and partly in Nai-
robi. The novel is dedicated to "all Kenyans struggling against the neo-
colonial stage of imperialism" (Devil 5). It is no wonder then that the domi-
nant text in Devil should be a "kind of extended parable of neo-colonial de-
pendency, with the devil on the cross the major structuring symbol" (Cooper
52). This is best illustrated in Wariinga's nightmare in which white colonialist
devil is crucified by the masses, apparent reference to political independence,
only to be rescued by the local comprador. Significantly, "The Devil had two

80
 mouths, one on his forehead and the other at the back of his head. His belly
sagged, as if it were about to give birth to all the evils of the world. His skin
was red, like that of a pig" (Devil 13). This is significant because the physical
features of the Devil draws attention to his grotesque image, the same image
that he gives to those that rescue him and in turn serve him. Significantly
again, the Devil rewards his rescuers by fattening their bellies. This dream be-
comes all too true when a "Devil's feast" is arranged by the local "thieves" to
commemorate a visit by foreign guests "particularly from America, England,
Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Japan" as part of "the International Or-
ganisation of Thieves and Robbers" (Devil 78).
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It is to the nature of the local comprador bourgeoisie that Ngugi draws

our attention by using the grotesque mode in his depiction of them. Indeed
grotesque characters, marked as they are by bodily deficiencies or deforma-
tion, would seem to offer Ngugi a perfect means of figuring the qualities that
have tended to characterise either the local comprador or the ruling elite in the
post-colonial state in Africa.5 The use of the grotesque mode draws the read-
ers' attention to the body as a site upon which stereotypical character con-
struction takes place. The grotesque image points to that which protrudes
from the body, to all that seeks to go out beyond the body's confines. Special
attention, Bakhtin writes, is given to the "shoots and branches, to all that pro-
longs the body and links it to other bodies or to the world outside" (16).
Ngugi's portrayal of the local thieves at the cave foregrounds the gro-
tesque image of the body in which the belly and the mouth stand out. One
striking example is that of Gitutu. We are told that he made it because his fa-
ther was a collaborator, "a court elder in the only courts black people were al-
lowed," and used the law to grab other people's land (Devil 101). Gitutu him-
self followed in his father's footsteps, became a court clerk and interpreter,
but finally, on the advice of his father, took to what Ngugi termed the eco-
nomic culture of "robbery and theft" (Writers in Politics 123-126) at inde-
pendence. Significantly, like his father, Gitutu turned to land as the basis of
his success. Land is again foregrounded as a metaphor for economic mobility
and success. Gitutu buys land from a colonial settler, a former boss of his fa-
ther, with a bank loan, subdivides it and sells it at exorbitant price to land-
thirsty Kenyan peasants and workers. Buying land cheaply and selling it to
poor peasants and workers becomes his business and indeed, through cunning
as opposed to hard work, he grows richer and richer. Ngugi's satire on the
comprador class, his laughter at their borrowed power, is best captured in the
narrator's graphic description of Gitutu's body:

Gitutu had a belly that protruded so far that it would have touched the ground

81
 had it not been supported by the braces that held up his trousers. It seemed as if
his belly had absorbed all his limbs and all the other organs of his body. .Gitutu
had no neck - at least, his neck was not visible. His arms and legs were short
stumps. His head had shrunk to the size of a fist. (Devil 99)

Gitutu's body is a body in the act of becoming; "it is continually built,

created, and builds and creates another body" (Bakhtin 317). It is a body that,
figuratively speaking, swallows the world and is itself swallowed by the
world. In the words of Bakhtin, the grotesque body "outgrows its own self,
transgressing its own body, in which it conceives a new, second body: the
bowels and the phallus" (317). In this act of swallowing, Gitutu's body be-
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comes monstrous - a typical grotesque hyperbole. Gitutu's belly threatens to

detach itself from the body and lead an independent life. Evidently, Gitutu's
body transgresses itself. Thus Gitutu's neck, his arms, legs and head acquire
a grotesque character when they adopt the animal form and the shape of in-
animate objects.
The realisation of the grotesque image of the body by associating the
parts or the whole body with the animal form is best illustrated again in the
body of Gitutu and to a degree in the body of Kihaahu, whose grotesque fea-
ture is his mouth rather than his stomach. To do this, Ngugi uses names
which are semantically fixed to the master code of the Gikuyu people. The
names that are culturally positioned or grounded to a "pretext" that is inherent
in the tradition of the Gikuyu, and in particular to some animal or inanimate
object in the Gikuyu cosmos whose traits the characters personify or share.
For the average Gikuyu reader the names are specific signs which they could
readily interpret because of the shared typology of meaning between the signs
and its interpreters.
Again the name Gitutu wa Gataanguru is a good illustration of the use of
this mutually intelligible typology of meaning between the sign and its com-
munity of readers. Gitutu in Gikuyu, Ndigirigi writes, refers to a "big jigger"
while Gataanguru refers to "a belly infested with tapeworms which produce a
bloating effect" (101). His physical form resembles that of a jigger. Thus Gi-
tutu's names within the context of the Gikuyu readership helps to concretise
the grotesque image of Gitutu's body. In this interplay between the grotesque
image of the body and the use of names as signifiers deeply embedded in a
specific cultural space, Ngugi's characterisation points to traditional allegory.
We have in his portrayal of Gitutu the inviolable parallel between the figure
and the referent, the jigger and the character - Gitutu wa Gataanguru. There
are clear grounds of comparison in which the physical features of Gitutu -
"pot belly," "short limbs" and "tiny head" - are placed in stark juxtaposition

82
 to the physical features of a jigger. But more importantly, these features un-
derscore the parasitical nature of jiggers and by extension the parasitism of
the ruling class in the post-colonial state that Gitutu represents or parallels.
As a parasite, Gitutu finds its host in the lives of workers and peasants that he
exploits. Characteristic of this class, Ngugi seems to suggest, Gitutu eats
more than he needs as he shamelessly confesses that his "belly is becoming
larger and larger because it is constantly overworked!" (Devil 100). Ironi-
cally, he spends more time eating than working and his body has become a
"wasteland" or a "shitland" which his name evokes: the appropriate breeding
place for tapeworms.
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And yet the significance of Gitutu's grotesque image and, by extension,

that of Kihaahu and the other members of the comprador bourgeoisie, only
makes sense when linked to a couple of sub-narratives in Devil. The first is
derived from Wariinga's nightmare which was mentioned earlier in this paper.
The second consists of three stories that Gatuiria relates to his fellow passen-
gers on their way to Ilmorog in a tnatatu.
In Wariinga's nightmare, the Devil that he sees being driven to the cross
is cast in the grotesque mode: he is cunning, he has two mouths and signifi-
cantly a sagging belly like that of Gitutu - the same bellies that the Devil
gives his rescuers:

And their bellies began to swell, and they stood up, and they walked towards
Wariinga, laughing at her, stroking their large bellies, which had now inherited
all the evils of this world....(Dev;7 14)

In the grotesque image of the Devil that Wariinga sees, Ngugi seems to
suggest a linear and continuing relationship between the Devil (read colonial-
ism) and the black elite (read comprador bourgeoisie) that takes over at inde-
pendence. Ngugi further suggests that the desire of the comprador class which
rescues the devil, thereby introducing a new form of colonialism, is to inherit
the devil's worst qualities. The relationship is one of dependency and that is
what the young man - the student leader - tells Wariinga soon after her night-
mare:

These countries are finding it difficult to stave off property for the simple reason
that they have taken it upon themselves to leani how to run their economies from
American experts. (Devil 15)

The basic traits of cunning, meanness, hate, evil and individualism of the
comprador class are again captured in the dictum of life in Nairobi and the
dance-song that the student leader relates to Wariinga (Devil 16).

83
 The grotesque image of the comprador class that permeates Devil could
also be linked to the story of ogres that Gatuiria relates to his fellow passen-
gers in the matatu taxi. Common to all the stories are the themes of avarice
and conceit. The first story is about the peasant farmer that was turned into a
beast of burden by an ogre {Devil 62). The second story is about the black
and beautiful girl who rejected all the men in her country and took to the first
young man from a foreign country. The young foreigner turned out to be a
man-eating ogre who tore off her "limbs one by one and ate them" (62). The
third and last story that Gatuiria relates is about an old man called Nding'uri
who had a soul that was richly endowed. He was well respected, hardworking
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and displayed no desire nor greed for other people's property until one day, "a
strange pestilence attacked the village" and destroyed all his possessions (63).
Nding'uri was forced to turn to the evil spirits. "At the entrance to the cave,"
we read, "he was met by a spirit in the shape of an ogre." We are further told
that the ogre "had two mouths, one on his forehead and the other at the back
of his head. The one at the back of his head was covered by his long hair, and
it was only visible when the wind blew the hair aside" (64). The thrust of the
narrative is that Nding'uri surrenders his soul to the ogre who demands it in
exchange for riches. Nding'uri is turned "into an eater of human flesh and a
drinker of human blood" (64). And in a typical Bakhtinian conception of the
grotesque image of the body - the body as a site for defecation - both laugh-
able and revolting, we read that:

From that day on, Nding'uri began to fart property, shit property, to sneeze prop-
erty, to scratch property, to laugh property, to think property, to dream property,
to talk property, to sweat property, to piss property. {Devil 64)

If the first story by Gatuiria relates directly to the burden of colonialism

on the colonised and points to the possibility of liberation from the shackles of
colonialism, the second one relates to a colonial mentality - a form of cultural
imperialism that locks the colonised within the orbit of dependency and leads
to a fixation with all that is foreign. The third story captures the advanced
stage in which the colonised now surrenders his or her being, integrity and
pride to the coloniser in order to receive the protection and be schooled in the
ways of the ogre. The third story is a narrative expression of the stage that
Ngugi has characterised as the neo-colonial stage of imperialism" {Writers in
Politics 119-120). This is the stage that he satirizes in the Devil's feast by fo-
cusing our attention on the grotesque image of the comprador class that has
given up its soul and betrayed the nation for property. There is therefore a

84
 parallel between Wariinga's nightmare and the story of Nding'uri. Just like
the rescuers in Wartinga's nightmare, Nding'uri also gives his soul - his free-
dom - in exchange for property.
Significantly, both the ogre and his worshippers like Gitutu and Kihaahu
seem to have a similar bodily deformation; they both seem to share in the
common traits of avarice and conceit. Thus every other layer of the narrative
in the text serves to draw our attention to the grotesque image of the ogre, the
Devil and his followers. The1 narrative layers serve to reveal the nature and
values of the capitalist ogre and the comprador class that it gives rise to. The
likes of Gitutu are born out of the ogre's womb and they continue to perpetu-
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ate its legacy, the legacy of neo-colonial dependency.

Gitutu is one of the best illustrations of Ngugi's satirical assault on the
ruling comprador bourgeoisie. Ngugi uses him to portray this class as foolish,
opportunistic and uncreative. He satirises their borrowed power and authority
underpinned by wealth through the grotesqueness of the body. Gitutu's por-
trayal is thus Ngugi's exposure of the betrayal of the Kenyan masses by the
ruling elite in Kenya. A section of the African elite, Ngugi seems to be saying,
never contributed in the struggle for independence, but were able to make it
through sheer cunning and cheating, and by exploiting their history of col-
laboration to their advantage. Gitutu is like Rev. Waweru in Petals who was
a collaborator at the height of anti-colonial struggle in Kenya. Waweru by
virtue of his position as a religious leader and a sympathiser of the colonial
government accumulates wealth before independence, and at independence
buys himself acres of land in the former white highlands while those who took
part in the liberation war remain landless.
Through the characters of Gitutu and the likes of Waweru, Ngugi again
foregrounds the mentality of the native bourgeoisie as a shallow and an un-
creative class. He portrays them as a class that is unenterprising because they
not only engage in petty trade, but they also have a shallow consumerist men-
tality, often milking their own resources by going for ostentatious goods in-
stead of real investment. They are not, as Fanon would put it, captains of in-
dustry; they cannot generate wealth for the country because they are content
with playing the role of middlemen for international capital. This class, Ngugi
suggests, cannot survive without the patronage of their foreign masters.6 Part
of their fundamental weakness is that they are disposed to parasitism, selfish-
ness, greed and outright exploitation of workers and peasants through cunning
rather than creative entrepreneurship and hard-work. Thus a character like
Gitutu is not individualised in his delineation, but he is made to figure the
traits and values of a specific social group. He is a type.

85
 But Ngugi also seems to be suggesting that a predisposition towards
these negative traits of parasitism, greed, and mindless exploitation of work-
ers is not just characteristic of the native bourgeoisie, but indeed of the capi-
talist system itself. This system is portrayed in Devil and to a large extent in
Petals of Blood1 os parasitic - an ogre that sucks the blood of workers and
peasants. Indeed, there is even some suggestion that the native bourgeoisie is
"doomed" to serve the world capitalist system because any attempt to break
ranks can only lead to disaster and self-destruction.8
Ngugi's thesis is that the nascent bourgeoisie in Kenya is doomed to play
the role of middlemen, or else face liquidation. Ngugi insists that the compra-
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dor bourgeoisie use the forces of law and order to safeguard the interests of
international capital in the country. This role is well illustrated through In-
spector Godfrey in Petals, Gakono in Devil and Giceru in Matigari, all of
whom are portrayed as faithful and ruthless law enforcing agents.
What emerges clearly is that both the comprador bourgeoisie and the
nascent national bourgeoisie - those who have hope for building an indige-
nous capital - are portrayed in a negative light. The writer, as we have ar-
gued, invests in them values which are both abhorrent and anti-social. They
are individualistic, selfish, and uncreative and mere puppets of their foreign
masters. As individuals, we know little about them other than their self-
serving function as collaborators, exploiters and middlemen in a system that
seeks to subjugate the poor. These characters in their portrayal allegorize both
the collaborators in the colonial state and the comprador class in the post-
colonial state in Kenya. The comprador class are mere caricatures. For Ngugi
then, the grotesque at its best exaggerates and caricatures the negative, the in-
appropriate, the anti-human that the comprador class has come to symbolize
in his works. To this end Ngugi is in agreement with Keorapetse Kgositsile's
comment that black writers should deploy the grotesque to portray "the unde-
sirable, the corrupting, the destructive..." (147). But as Bakhtin argues:

A grotesque world in which only the inappropriate is exaggerated is only quanti-

tatively large, but qualitatively it is extremely poor, colourless, and farfromgay.
(308)

Bakhtin's comment draws our attention to the feet that a complex gro-
tesque world is only possible when the use of the grotesque is all embracing
and the hyperbole is directed at all facets of the narrative. And yet Ngugi's
satire - his quantitative exaggeration - is limited to one social group of char-
acters, the comprador bourgeoisie, whose grotesque drama both in the cave
and outside illustrates the basic tendencies that characterise them. As a result

86
 we end up with a situation in which Ngugi's depraved characters are sharply
contrasted to the victim type - the characters in whom Ngugi invests positive
values and with whom he symphatises. At a structural level, an over-determined
narrative structure seems to underpin Devil. This kind of structure tends to
develop around a predictable casual chain of events in which plot, theme and
character are invariably linked to what constitutes the dominant discourse in
the text. In the case of Devil, class oppression by the comprador class within
the broad dependency perspective would seem to be the dominant text, al-
though this is also linked to gender oppression as a sub-text. In the delineation
of Wariinga's character as the main victim of oppression in the text, the focus
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is on the compounded effects of class and gender on Wariinga. And this is

achieved by means of the over-determined narrative structure, the kind that
Daniel Scheiber argues, tends "toward redundancy - the repetition or exag-
geration of semic material far beyond the discourse" (265).9 Every incident in
the novel, for example, is securely linked in a casual chain that compels our
attention to class and gender oppression as the source of Wariinga's predica-
ment. Each narrative foray leads to a single point, the suffering of Wariinga.
Each detail in the novel contributes its own resonance to Wariinga's tragedy,
at the level of plot or symbolism.
Right from the beginning of the narrative, the writer focuses on Wariinga
as a victim whose life history demands narrative ordering. We read that the
Prophet of Justice was compelled to "reveal what now lies concealed by dark-
ness" (Devil 7) because "this story was too disgraceful, too shameful, that it
should be concealed in the depths of everlasting darkness" (7). The compel-
ling voice of revelation, Julien writes, "signals both the symbolic nature of the
ensuing story, its kinship to allegory and fable, and its moral authority" (147).
For Ngugi, Wariinga's narrative is allegorical of the state of the nation; it is a
narrative about the submerged history of the oppressed which has always
been suppressed in the master narrative.
Yet, the delineation of Wariinga according to the victim type is
rather flat - a projective characterisation that is certainly a product of the
over-determined narrative structure. Wariinga is portrayed initially as an in-
nocent girl beset by men who are intent on exploiting her sexually. Signifi-
cantly, she displays the seme of naivete - a mark of innocence - in her rela-
tions with the Rich Old Man and the university boyfriend. But we also know
that she has the semes which point to ideal love and social ambition. She gets
involved with the university boyfriend and later with Gatuiria because of that
deep desire for the ideal love and not for casual romantic exploits. Similarly,
she trains as a mechanic to realise her childhood ambition. But the two semes

87
 of love and ambition are suppressed in favour of the naive, innocent and help-
less victim, because if they are not suppressed they would hasten Wariinga's
subversion or.outright rejection of the trappings of unscrupulous men. These
are two possibilities that the narrative would not allow. Indeed when Wariinga
appears to be in control of her life as a motor-mechanical engineer, she fells
victim again to the educated gatuiria who opens up the possibility of her real-
ising ideal love. When Wariinga readily accepts her engagement to Gatuiria,
even before knowing the parents, the irony is stark - Wariinga's adaptation to
her role as a sexual victim still rings of innocence and naivete. She cannot
marry Gatuiria and she cannot go back to her work because the plot on
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which she shared with other workers has been sold to none other than Boss
Kihara and his foreign friends. Thus the plot only progresses to emphasise the
spectre of the victim type. And as the narrative voice confirms, Wariinga
"knew with all her heart that the hardest struggles of her life's journey lay
ahead" (254).
The nature of Wariinga's story show clearly how Ngugi works to re-
move the spectre of "choice" - traditionally regarded as the prime source of
character motivation - from Wariinga's actions.10 The heroine's fate is tied to
the demands of the discourse as Ngugi asserts the inevitability of the plot's
movement in a predictable direction. The plot points to the unresolved tragic
conflict between the victim type and the exploiter type.
Seemingly, independent agents like Gatuiria and his unknowing implica-
tion in Wariinga's tragedy, help to amplify Wariinga's victimization. The
novel's highly directive structure relentlessly pushes us in two directions: to-
ward Wariinga as a victim and, as we have already seen, toward the elite
propertied class - as the source of Wariinga's tragedy. The immediate agent
of Wariinga's suffering, Gitahi, is partially obscured, becoming just a foil in
the structural confrontation between the capitalists and workers that Wariinga
represents. That is the symbolic significance of the confrontation between Gi-
tahi and Wariinga in which Wariinga dismisses the fatally wounded Gitahi in
images we have come to associate with the grotesque in the narrative:

There kneels a jigger, a louse, a weevil, a flea, a bedbug! He is a mistletoe, a

parasite that lives on the trees of other people's lives. (Devil 254)

Although Wariinga's act of revolt points to a release of a new semic en-

ergy, the trait of resistance which now underpins Wiiranga's desire to realise
her social ambition constantly stifled by forces of capital and male oppres-
sion, is contrived. Ngugi's allegorising seems to divide issues into two neat
categories of the depraved exploiter and the victim type with an inexorable

88
 potential for regeneration. It allows no room for other forms of competing re-
alities. We can only understand Wariinga's character in relation to her op-
pression, both in class and gender terms. Her character is contrasted to that of
Gitahi or Gitutu. Gitahi, like Gitutu, is denied any positive human values,
while Wariinga is endowed with positive values, but stereotypically con-
structed as victim to elicit our sympathy. But because Gitahi and Wariinga
represent two binary polarities - evil and good, exploiter and exploited, hunter
and hunted - they are both denied full humanity. They are mere symbolic
structures and "have a significance that is more typological than psychologi-
cal: they are composed of traits which provide a necessary "complicity" with
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the requirements of the discourse, and nothing more" (Scheiber 263).

Conclusion

Ngugi tends towards a purely schematic allegorical portrayal that undermines

the quality of his social analysis given the fact that his works seek to order
history through the narrative mode. Evidently, his method of creating types is
not particularly challenging. He seems to suggest that a "type" is the common
denominator of a class, whom the writer creates by first detaching character-
istic features of a society from different individuals, and then embodying them
in one figure. For example, since private property is theft in Ngugi's view, his
most typical figures of the post-colonial comprador-bourgeoisie are the ruth-
less thief, the cunning landlord, the cruel detective, the heartless call-girl. And
as I have argued elsewhere, by contrast, Ngugi's workers are humane, tireless
toilers and resilient fighters led by valiant heroic leaders.11
Allegory for Ngugi would seem to be a textual counter-discourse, an
anti-imperialist figurative opposition which involves the contestation of colo-
nialist discourse and nothing more. And yet a counter-discourse such as
Ngugi's, which positions itself as "Other" to a dominant discourse, runs the
risk of excluding "heterogeneity from the domain of utterance and is thus
functionally incapable of even conceiving the possibility of discursive opposi-
tion or resistance to it" (Slemon, "Monuments of Empire" 11). The kind of
discourse that locates itself in direct opposition to the dominant Other tends to
negate plurality, diversity and specific contradictions that should characterise
the anti-colonial narrative. Ngugi's narrative reduces history to broad analyti-
cal paradigms and figures history through static and general symbols of cog-
nition.

89
 NOTES

1 In his prison diary, Detained, Ngugi talks of their prison condition as a kind of "Colonial Lazarus raised
from the dead: this putrid spectre of our recent history haunted us daily at Kamiti prison. It hovered over
us, its shadow looming larger and larger in our consciousness as days and nights rolled away without
discernible end to our sufferings. We discussed its various shades and aspects, drawing on our personal
experiences, often arriving at clashing interpretations and conclusions. Who raised colonial Lazarus from
the dead to once again foul the fresh air of Kenya's dawn?" (63). Evidently, the past was very much a
parallel to the present In the same diary, Ngugi recounts to us the difficulties he faced while writing
Devil, often resorting to using a toilet roll as writing paper (Detained 164).
2 The term, comprador bourgeoisie, is used here to refer to the group of the nationalist or native elite that
take over the political leadership and economic levers of the state without severing their links with the
former colonial masters and international capital. According to Ngugi, it is this type of power relations
which is tilted in favour of Western and major capitalist countries that translates into a situation of de-
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pendency. In such a situation, Ngugi writes, the comprador class and a client indigenous government "is
ruling and oppressing people on behalf of American, European and Japanese capital" (Writers in Poli-
tics 119-121). Fanon described this group as the national middle-class which he argued was economi-
cally powerless (The Wretched 119-120). In this paper, our use of the term is functional because it best
describes what constitutes Ngugi's understanding of this group. Although one is quite aware of its ana-
lytical limitations in capturing the complex nature and essence of the African ruling elite whose dynam-
ics, I believe, are more complex than is implied by both Fanon and Ngugi. For example, the position in
the paper is that Ngugi's representation of the "comprador class" - the African ruling elite as mere pup-
pets of western capitalism conceals a number of political and socio-economic dynamics in Africa.
3 My understanding of the grotesque relies very heavily on Bakhtin's study of "Rabelais and His World"
in which he argues that although exaggeration, hyperbole and excess are always considered as the funda-
mental attributes of the grotesque style, the grotesque at its best should never be restricted to caricaturing
the negative or the inappropriate only, but should draw our attention to the possibility of combining the
negative and the positive poles in one image. My understanding of the meanings of the generic names
that Ngugi uses within the context of the Gikuyu is indebted to Gichingiri Ndigirigi, himself a Cikuyu,
in his seminal study, "Character Names and Types in Ngugi's Devil on the Cross," UFAHAMU XIX
II. & III (1991) 96-109, and through m y personal communications with him (his letter dated 19 June
1992), on Ngugi's use of names which are loaded with symbolic meaning.
4 Ngugi's use of generic names is not just confined to Devil on the Cross, but also to Petals of Blood and
Matigari. In Petals, for example, Kimeria whose name literally means "the one who swallows" connotes
a greedy person. His father, Kamianja - meaning "the one who would defecate outside the house" rein-
forces the author's portrayal of Kimeria as a ruthless collaborator.
5 One has in mind here Fanon's characterisation of this class as decadent and parasitic, uncreative and
"completely canalized into activities of the intermediary type" (Wretched 120).
6 Ngugi is heavily indebted to Frantz Fanon who argued that "The national middle class which takes over
power at the end of the colonial regime is an under-developed middle class. It has practically no eco-
nomic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country
which it hopes to replace. . . . The national bourgeoisie of under-developed countries is not engaged in pro-
duction, nor in invention, nor building, nor labour, it is completely canalized into activities of the inter-
mediary type" (The Wretched 119-120).
7 T h e system of capitalism in Petals of Blood is likened to a worm that destroys flowers that would other-
wise bloom. In this respect the allegorical description of a pale flower which should have "petals of
blood" is significant and Munira explains why it is so. "Here is a worm-eaten flower. . . ," he tells his stu-
dents, "it cannot bear fruit That's why we must always kill worms. . . . A flower can also become this col-
our if it's prevented from reaching the light" (Petals 22). The worm which eats and destroys the beauty
of such a flower, at least within the context of Petals' thematic concerns, is capitalism aided by the com-
prador bourgeoisie. The "worm-eaten flower," Ngugi suggests, is today's Kenya - her workers and peas-
ants, devastated as it were by capitalism and its comprador agents.
8 A good example of the native bourgeoisie that seeks to break ranks with international capital is Mwireri
in Devil Mwireri believes in "national theft" - the kind of theft in which the local capitalists exploit
their own people and fight against foreign dominatioa Ngugi would seem to be suggesting that the com-
prador bourgeoisie cannot allow national capitalism to take roots, and this is the symbolic significance of
Mwireri's murder.

90
 9 Scheiber contrasts the redundant form of over-determination with the more complex one which he calls
"semic variegation, in which characters are made more complex through the number and diversity of
connotations conferred on them" (263).
10 See James A. Ogude, "The Use of Popular Forms and Characterisation in Ngugi's Post-Colonial Narra-
tive," English in Africa 24.1 (May 1997): 71-87, in which I show that Ngugi resorts to dreams, the fan-
tastic and the journey motif to realise Warünga's character transformation.
11 See James A. Ogude, "The Use of Popular Forms and Characterisation in Ngugi's Post-Colonial Narra-
tive," English in Africa May 1998 (Forthcoming).

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