Browsing by Author "Alemu, Dagne"

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    Post-Independence Disillusionment in Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross
    (Addis Ababa University, 2010-06) Alemu, Dagne; Mengistu, Melakeneh (PhD
    Owing to the growing political depravity that has become the norm in many new born African nations, post-colonial African novelists use their literary works to depict the socio-economic and political realities of the continent. Initially, African literature was a tool for celebrating the heroic achievements of African past; later it was used for anticolonial struggle. Presently, it is being used as a veritable weapon for depicting the postcolonial disillusionment in African nations. Therefore, African literature is always chained to the experiences of the people of the continent. In this paper, an attempt is made to examine the discourse of post-independence disillusionment in Petals of Blood (1977) and Devil on the Cross (1982) as both novels depict an undistorted image of a post-colonial African state, Kenya, with all its complexity of problems. The study consists of four chapters: the introductory chapter provides general insights into the whole work by introducing why it became necessary to conduct the research and what it sets out to deal with. The second chapter focuses on a review of related literature in accordance with the thematic preoccupations of the author in the two selected novels. The third chapter is concerned with a critical analysis, in which an attempt has been made first to critically examine the two novels separately, and then conduct a comparative analysis as an attempt to show the pertinent issues in both novels. Accordingly, the study has found out that the aforementioned literary works deal with post-independence disillusionment: political corruption, social class stratification, gender inequality, resistance and liberation which are widely foregrounded in both novels. In the two selected novels the author teaches that the solution for the people’s disillusionment with the tyrant political elites is to move against imperialism and its recent manifestation, neo-colonialism, and embrace socialism or communism as a natural way of life for the people of Kenya (Africa). The fourth chapter provides concluding remarks, and summary based on the findings of the study. To be more specific, the study deals with post-independence disillusionment, as experienced by the people of the referent country, and depicted in the texts under the study.