A Comparative Study of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not, Child And Dreams in A Time of War

ABSTRACT

The interrelationship between fiction and autobiography provides the grounds for a comparative study of two literary works of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Weep not, Child and his Dreams in a Time of War. The two texts are therefore placed side by side to draw the intertextual links between them. Ngugi’s works, both fiction and non-fiction, often articulate issues concerning his personal experiences as well as the socio-political concerns of the Kenyan people. Undertaking the comparative study of these two narratives is therefore aimed at unearthing various similar issues addressed in them. It is also aimed at critically examining the generic differences between fiction (Weep Not, Child) and autobiography (Dreams in a Time of War), to determine the extent to which each genre employs artistry. It is further aimed at examining the autobiographical dimensions of Dreams in a Time of War. The conclusions drawn from this study are arrived at through the use of qualitative study based on content analysis. The study thus puts the two texts side by side and looks at issues such as, Ngugi’s representation of society, home, and the self; land ownership, land appropriation and land alienation; and then the Mau Mau revolutionary resistance and the state of emergency in both narratives. It further looks at the narrative techniques in terms of Time, Narrator and Point of View. The study confirms the fact that Ngugi uses the same data/material in different genres - one a fiction and the other an autobiography - to dwell on the same issues hence making the two genres intertextually linked. The study further confirms that although Dreams in a Time of War is also a literary work, Weep Not, Child, being a work of fiction has more flexible narrative freedom than Dreams in a Time of War which is an autobiography and employs more memory. The study is significant because of the years between the two texts, since Dreams in a Time of War was written forty-six years after Weep not Child was written, yet the same data is used in the two different genres to achieve the same purpose.