Trauma, Betrayal and the Resistance: a marxist analysis of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s Weep Not, Child and Matigari

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novels, Weep Not, Child (1964) and Matigari (1986), by examining the class exploitation of the Kenyan people both during the colonial rule, and in the postcolonial Kenyan landscape. In doing, this thesis explores the economic structures that confine the working class into a system of oppression under corporate greed, the betrayal of the government and local elites of the Kenyan society who took up the mantle of class exploitation granted to them by the ex-colonisers, and the mental colonisation and trauma that emerges from continued subjugation. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s stance on these class and power dichotomies will be highlighted in the paper, as he emphasised the need to form a resistance in the wake of oppression and to fight back against injustices that still persists before and after the Kenyan independence.