Thiong'o, Ngugi wa - Roger A. Berger (essay date spring 1989)
Roger A. Berger (essay date spring 1989)
SOURCE: Berger, Roger A. “Ngugi's Comic Vision.” Research in African Literatures 20, no. 1 (spring 1989): 1-25.
[In the following essay, Berger explores the comedic elements in Ngugi's fiction, noting how the author's satirical overtones transform his novels into works of “resistant political discourse.”]
The serious aspects of class culture are official and authoritarian; they are combined with violence, prohibitions, limitations and always contain an element of fear and of intimidation. … Laughter, on the contrary, overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its idiom is never used for violence and authority.
—Mikhail Bakhtin
1
We are reluctant to term Ngũgĩ's fiction comic. Indeed his novels and essays reflect an earnestness and an understandable seriousness, given what he sees as the betrayal of African aspirations...
[The entire page is 11451 words long]
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