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Marxism In Petals Of Blood

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A Marxist Reading to Petals of Blood

"Struggle" is a part of nature and a part of our history and cultures. As a central concept in my aesthetic or cultural vision, "struggle" has been developing, I think, starting from my essays on writers and politics. One can see this theme become more and more dominant in my cultural theory and aesthetic theory. "Struggle" is central to nature, to human art and to my history. --Ngugi wa Thiong 'o, interview with Charles Cantalupo (222).
The key term in this statement is the word "struggle" which is the cornerstone of Marx’s theory. Though his theories are shaped within the realm of economics, they trespassed literary innovation as a theme of a paramount pedigree. Africans as one, if not the most, effected …show more content…

Petals of Blood is an incisive proof on Ngugi’s anarchic stance toward capitalism, and a candid onslaught on post-independence Kenya’s economic capitalistic system, which he refers to in the novel as “it” or “the system”, besides its horrendous effects on the traditional Kenyan society. Ngugi brilliantly melded his Marxist views through the symbolic characterization and the ubiquitous national confusion. To begin with, the shifting perspectives and timeline of the novel reinforce the sense of dislocation and disorientation of the once-proud community of villagers who now struggle against the indignities of the neocolonial world “it was a new kind of war…but war all the same” (Ngugi, …show more content…

Ngugi uses the delegation 's reception in Nairobi to reveal the hypocrisy of various elite-run institutions in postcolonial Kenya, however; the delegation travel to Nairobi foreshadowed the topsy-turvy situation of Ilmorog as the offspring of the capitalistic regime. “Capitalism reproduces itself and keeps the exploited working class from rising up and overthrowing a system designed to exploit and alienate them not through the brutality of totalitarianism but rather by institutional naturalization of the process via religion, the legal system, the educational system, and the government”, henceforth for Ngugi: The village was the scapegoat for” progress”; a church, a police station, the African Economic Bank and the Trans-Africa highway “Christianity, Commerce, Civilisation: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity” (88) which symbolizes the rift between the past and the present, and the ultimate deficiencies of the new system which can only be altered by the zealous endeavor of the people“ it’s the system that needs to be changed…and only the workers of Kenya and peasants can do that”

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