Criticism Of Wheatha

Ngugi’s thirdearly novel,A Grain of Wheathas been read by innumerable scholars and critics over the years, producing copious of edifying criticisms. However, substantialnumber of such criticisms places much premium on the content in preference to form. The few, which centre on theform, seem to have focused onthe entire literary merits of the text or theartful aspect of the work: what Tony Bennett, further describes as “the concept of literariness”,which as Rice and Waugh argue is“the effect of form”. This paper explores the avalanche of symbols in the novel as an embodiment of form,using formalist literary theory as its analytical tool. The goal is not only to produce a critical work which focuses on the symbols of one of theNgugi’s early novels,

It is a novel which over the years has been read from the Liberal Humanist, Marxist andFeminist, Formalist perspectives, producing copious of critical works in African literature. However, one way this paper differs from the previous formalist readings is its total focus on the symbolic representations in the text, as opposed to the entire formal properties of literariness which the previous works have done.Its goal is to prove the veracity of Ciardi’s and James’ positions, whose delineation of the term places a symbol as the most twinkling star in the galaxy of the text or the highest denomination among themultiple literary

(Baldick 1990:218) concurs with Cuddon’s view, yet, for him, there seem to be more to symbol than simply‘animate’ or ‘inanimate’ objects standing for something else. So, he defines the term as anything that ‘stands for’ or represents something else beyond it – usually an idea conventionally associated with it. Symbol is therefore an evocative kind of image that is a word or phrase referring to a concrete object, scene, or action which also has some further significance associated with it. Roses, mountains, birds, and voyages he argueshave all been used as common literary symbols. However, according toKennedy (1987:203) symbol is something or a thing that suggests more than its literal meaning. What is more, symbols generally do not “stand for” any one meaning, nor for anything absolutely definite. Equally important, in their book KeyConcepts in Cultural Theory (1999:394) Edgar and Sedgwick define symbol as a word with a variety of meanings. Symbols they expound further pervade human life, and are used in a wide range of specialized discourses, as well as in everyday living, although there is no necessary connection between them and what they stand