Wizard Of The Crow Stylistic Analysis

In Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi blends satire and polemic in his depiction of an African nation at crossroads in the aftermath of the white rule. Essentially a realist work, the author uses his peculiar style and language to sniff out the foul stenches of complacency towards despotism, repression of women and ethnic minorities, widespread corruption and – under girding of all these – a neocolonial system in which today’s lending banks and multinationals have supplanted yesterday’s European overlords. References are made to Ngugi’s skilful use of literary and linguistic approaches to x-ray the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions which the text fulfils as a realist literature. At the end, this paper’s main contribution is to firmly

To literary critic James Gibbon, it is a meditation on theatricality, particularly the theatricality of politics. He equally sees it as an epic burlesque of a sick, lumbering state and a praise song to the manifold forms of African resilience. John Updike posits that in Wizard of the Crow, Ngugi offers more indignations than analysis in his portrayal of postcolonial Africa. Andrew Van der Vlies analyzes the novel as a satire on the betrayal of independence by corrupt governments in neo-colonial Africa. Gilbert Ndi Shang observes that the novel is an exposition of “disturbed movement” of historical “progression” in the post colony wherein the new era of hope often carries shades of the past and seeds of future disillusionment. But in this present study, explanations are made that the peculiar language and style as used by Ngugi are distinct linguistic thumb-prints which can be applied in many national transformational agenda in Africa so as to avert the impending collapse of instituted democratic settings which have done little or nothing to ameliorate the ugly trends of neo-colonialism, ineptitude leadership, lack-luster political system and enthroned injustice in many poverty stricken African