The output of the two-state conditional freight-beta model analysed

constitute the source of all conflict in the text. Besides criticising the evils of capitalism in neo-colonial Kenya, Devil on the Cross, focuses on the plight of the most wretched victim of African society, the African woman.

Ngugi begins the marginalisation, exploitation and humiliation of Kenyan girls through the story of Wariinga, who becomes the victim of the lust of a wealthy old man. The novel opens with devastated and disillusioned Wariinga who is fleeing Nairobi. On the way to find a car to Ilmorog, she faints in the middle of the street and the bus is about to run over her but a stranger saves her. When he enquires about her, she tells him about the common fate of the young girls in modern Kenya. She gives the account of a Kareendi and her exploitation and humiliation, which incidentally was her own story to the stranger.

She begins with her education. According to her, the education of Kareendi is limited and ‗before she reaches Form Two, Karenndi has had it. She is pregnant‘. A loafer in the village happens to be responsible for it but when she approached this loafer to tell him about the child, he easily denied his any role in her pregnancy:

What! Kareendi, who are you claiming responsible for the pregnancy? Me? How have you worked that out? Go on and pester someone else with your delusions, Kareendi of easy thighs, ten-cent Kareendi. You can cry until your tears have filled oil drums- it will make no difference…

Kareendi you can‘t collect pregnancies wherever you may and then lay them at my door because one day I happened to tease you!

Wariinga leaves her baby in the care her grandparents to look after; she learns typewriting and shorthand in order to get a job. She leaves for Nairobi to find a job but everywhere, she gets the same answer that jobs are difficult to get but she will get the job after having discussed it at Modern Love Bar and Lodging. She enters another office and was confronted with the same question. It was then she realises that ―Modern Love Bar and

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Lodging has become the main employment bureau for girls and women‘s thighs are the tables on which contracts are signed‖ and ―modern problems are resolved with the aid of thighs‖. He who wishes to sleep is the one who is anxious to make the bed‖. Much later in the novel, she was employed by Mr. Kihara, who afterwards fired her because she refused to yield to his sexual demands. Apart from young women like Wariinga, older ones in the novel like Wangari are not spared this harrowing experience. Thus, Wariinga‘s anecdote on the fate of Kareendi, the archetypal Kenyan girl, removes the experience of sexual harassment from employers from a personal to a general level. It is not surprising that it is members of the national bourgeoisie that indulge in this dehumanisation of Kenyan womanhood.

The novel ends as the heroine, Wariinga, has now transformed herself, years after the devil‘s feast, to become a student of mechanical engineering, her very first ambition in life. To sustain her new image of the ‗wonder woman‘, she is portrayed as an independent, self-reliant lady who depends on odd jobs like typing, working on cars at a mechanic‘s garage etc., to sponsor her education. As a step towards preventing her further oppression and exploitation by members of the capitalist class, she joins a local martial arts‘ club and perfects the art of judo and karate. Ngugi specifically imbues Wariinga with these values, so that she can serve, according to Jennifer Evans (1987:134), ‗as a radical example of how a woman can resist being pushed or tempted into accepting subservient, degrading or decorative roles‘.

As you have learnt, the focus of contemporary postcolonial African fiction and novelists is centered around the class conflicts between the ruling class, whose members are ensconced within the corridors of power and the teaming mass of the African people, who are pauperised by the inanities of the wielders of power, who indulge in pillaging the resources of the nations for the selfish use of members of the ruling class. Ngugi has shown that he is a postcolonial novelist concerned with the oppression, dehumanisation and relegation of peasants and women by the political class in Kenya and Africa generally. As a novel of post-independence disillusionment, Devil on the Cross best illustrates the combative will of the oppressed to battle with and triumph over their oppressors. Ngugi in this novel fulfils the expectation that postcolonial writers should speak on behalf of the marginalised and downtrodden by giving them their own voice. Devil on the Cross provides a detailed and exhaustive exploration of life in postcolonial Kenya. At the same time, he criticises the neo-colonial stage of imperialism as well as the capitalist society that emerged in Kenya after independence, looking particularly at the effects that global

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capitalism has upon people. The novel is thematically concerned with how foreign companies and the corrupt local elite greedily exploit the workers, and peasants of Kenya. Ngugi's criticism of neo-colonial Kenya is not based on hatred, but rather on a reasoned critique of a country exploited and betrayed by a corrupt and parasitical national bourgeoisie.

4.0 CONCLUSION

In this unit, you learnt that Devil on the Cross was secretly written on sheets of toilet paper while Ngugi was detained in prison. It is an insightful interpretation and a scathing critique of Kenyan politics and society during the period of neo-colonialism. Originally written in Ngugi‘s native Gikuyu language, Devil on the Cross contains many of the issues and concerns that are central to Ngugi‘s views of postcolonial African politics and literature. The novel tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a young woman who emigrated from her small rural town to the city of Nairobi only to be exploited by her boss and later a corrupt businessman. In particular, Ngugi uses Wariinga's story of exploitation and social struggle, common to many young people in contemporary Kenya, to satirise and thus harshly criticise the political and social situation of postcolonial Kenya in the face of the so-called devil of capitalism, which for Ngugi himself is

‗the last vicious kick of a dying imperialism‘. In the novel, Ngugi‘s pungent satire is a fierce attack against the postcolonial African elite and new African leaders, that is, the so-called ‗local watchdogs‘, who perpetuate Western domination and thus were nothing but pawns of the white man whose presence on the African continent was no longer endurable. Devil on the Cross, despite the fact that it refers to Kenya in particular, depicts situations and problems that are common to almost all postcolonial African countries. In this novel, Ngugi shows that he is fully aware of the social and economic struggle between the exploiters and the exploited, the elite and the masses, which is at the core of the capitalist system, and decides to line up with the masses in their struggle for liberation.

5.0 SUMMARY

Devil on the Cross tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a young Kenyan woman who emigrates from her small rural hometown to urban and modern Nairobi only to be subjected and exploited by a corrupt and greedy capitalist society. Also, the novel follows a symbolic group of characters, including Wariinga, who meet on a bus, each with her own dramatic story about social and economic exploitation in Kenya. The novel focuses on the social and political contradictions of both capitalism and neo-colonialism. It is within these contradictions that the issues of elitism, class struggle and social collectivism are evident. These themes are an

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important component of Ngugi concern about the breakdown in Kenya's socio-political system. Community divisions, political corruption, and social revolution exist structurally in post-independence Kenya. Along these lines, Ngugi historically documents, through allegorical characters and situations, the abuse of political privilege and power as well as the destructive ascent of the new Kenyan bourgeoisie.

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT (TMA)

1. Devil on the Cross illustrates the combative will of the oppressed to battle with and triumph over their oppressors. Discuss the validity of this assertion.

2. Discuss the significance of the title Devil on the Cross.

7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING

Agho, Jude. (1992). ‗The Aesthetics of Social Commitment in Ngugi wa Thiong‘O‘s Devil on the Cross‘. Review of English and Literary Studies 9.1, 1-7.

Brumley, Emily, Ann. (2007). ‗Wariinga's Got a Gun: Feminism and Revolution in Devil on the Cross‘. Being a Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For a Degree in Bachelor of Arts with The University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Evans, Jennifer. (1987). ‗Women and Resistance in Ngugi‘s Devil on the Cross‖. Women in African Literature Today 15: 131-139.

Gikandi, Simon. (2000). Ngugi wa Thiong‟o. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Howe, Stephen. (1993). ‗Postcolonialism: Empire Strikes Back‘. The Weekend Triumph, Saturday April 17.

Kgalemang, Malebogo. (2013). ‗Ngugi, the Bible and Devil on the Cross‟.

Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal.

www.galaxyimrj.com.

Wa Thiong'o, Ngugi. (1992). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.

Wa Thiong'o, Ngugi. (1980). Devil on the Cross. Johannesburg:

Heinemann.

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UNIT 6 POSTCOLONIAL POLITICS IN BEN OKRI’S THE