James Mgucigis:

"Weep not child"

Weep Not, child, James Ngucigis first published novel as the appeal of unmediacy and jouth fulness. The novel talks about the repression and brutality on the part of Kenian’s white rulers erupt in the horror of the MAU MAU Wars,

and innocent Africans are forced to choose between the Mau Mau whose Sweet promise of freedom carried the stench of the death and violence-and the white settlers-whose way of life had always been something to be emulated.

Among those trapped in this wels of terror was njoroge, who sought to walk in the middle. Education, admiration for peace his father believ in his brothers, love for the beautiful Minihaki: all allowed him to hope for reconciliation amon the parts of his torn-up word. Until he San his father tortured and brolcen, his brothers imprisoned, is sweettheart driven away, his land destroyed, and reason totally consumed be war.

Ngugis’s weep Not child, brilliantly conveys the anguish inflicted on all sides during the Mau Mau holocaust. It is a perceptive study of revolution and the divisive effects of militancy in all societies.

Hope does exist in Ngugis work but it is a hope that gives likle comfort. Just as men are apparently fated to fight each other-at least the empirical evidence seems to support such a view- so are they fated to desire peace. It is in deed the pattern of Ngugis novel that a hero who seex to avoid conflict and violenc is throuwn into contact with a man who desires them.

The antagonist justifies is belief in violebce because of the injustices done to him and his people is the past; his soluctions to these problems of injustice are an armed conflict with the oppressor and relation in kind and of equal severity to the opposition. The novel show that non man can deny or hide his conflicts. Only the brave ones resolve them, and in these resoluction lies the hope of the future mankind. but first this hope must be shorn of its illusions. Ngugi semms to be sayng that only when people accept the present reality can they change their tomorrows. In Weep Not, child, the author says, "Hope of a better day was the only comfort he could give to a weeping child. He did not know that this fruts in the future could be a form of escape from the reality of the present". An later he has Njoroge, his child hero, say,"Me tomorrow was an illusion." In the process of saeein what today really is, then, tomorrow takes shape for Ngugis charachter. It is the dream of tomorrow that makes a new day possible, but it is the illusions about tomorrow that keep it from appearing.

In Weep Not, child Njorogr, has a great desire to become an educated person he is young and strong, a child who dreams of bringing peace and happines peace parents. Ngotho, is father, has keept hold of his dratictional customs, but he has also kept pace with the progress of the christian customs and the white man’s imperial march. Njorge is sent of to the white man’s school, while one of his brothers, Kamau, is apprenticed to the rich carpenter in town. Thus the attemt at reconciliation is set up almost imediately in the novel. One child will be responsible for the mental and intellectual duties of the familt; the other child will specialize in the affairs of trade. It is an approach to life taht is an emintly sensible compromise, but it is one that will not be allowed to proceed without repeat battering from within and without the community.

At the beginning of the novel the land of Kenya is quiescent. It matches the tone of njooroges view. He lives in the illusion, as most children do, of bringing, a new beautiful world to the door steps of his parents such children stand at the center of their world and in their egocentrism, they envisage the universal happiness that they will create. It is thes universal illusion of childhood-the first of many illusions- that must be shattered be NJorge before he can see the thim lights of reality. Along with the universal illusion are the local ones, which only a gifted East African writer like Ngugi came create: the illusions that have a particular abilitation us the eternal behavior of man.

These illusions concern the solution to the problems of the independence for and civil strife whiting Kenya. Njoroge always at school in this novel, except when he is forced to the climatic awareness of his father’s vulnerability is ever hope ful a solution can be found to unite the various factions around him. In historic terms these are the people who there caught in the situations that led to the Mau Mau uprisings. Ngugis’s novel malcess reference to several stages in this historic conflict in the 1950’s. IN THE BEGINNING OF THE NOVEL, NJORGE’S HAL BROTHER KOVI BECAMES ATTRACTED TO THE TEACHING OF JOMO KENYATTA AND HIS KAU. Socialist movement. BORO, another alf brother Joins the KAU. strike for abolition of color prejudice and for decent salaries and working conditions. When the historic strike fruled, the moderate views of the K.A.U. movement were escalated with a more activist philosophyst.

Repression and brutality on the part of the police force and the white governing body of Kenya culminated in the guerrilla tactiecs of the Mau Mau and the terrorism on both sides led to the "emergency" period in Kenya, which demanded allegiance to one another extreme. The voice of reconciliation was lost interractionalized violence by each of the opposing sides and modeartes, both white and black, were forced to align themselves a conflict they had tried to avoid.

Until Njoroge saw the physical wreck of his father as a result of prison torture and understood that his father had chosen or die for a political cause, Njoroge continued to belive - hope is perhaps a better word- that the reconciliation of the various factions involved in the strife was possible. amon these factions were the white over lords, the missionary teachers and blackmen some of them more impatiet than others. Hope for peace is ever-alive, but suffering and the violence must borne firsth before the elusive prize of peace has chance of realization.

by Nasir-u Iddrisu, Italy