Browsing by Author "Demissie, Balew"

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    Ideology and the Representation of Female Characters in Ngiigi wa Thiong'o's The River Between and A Grain of Wheat
    (Addis Ababa University, 2009-06) Demissie, Balew; Yazbec, Olga (PhD)
    This thesis aims at showing and analyzing the representation of female characters in Ngugi's two novels-The River Between and A Grain of Wheat from ideological perspectives. To accomplish the study, the notions of ideology and literary representation are discussed. Though ideology IS defined as a set of beliefs, it has specific definitions depending on its kinds. Different types of ideologies such as dominant, authorial, aesthetic, patriarchal and gendered are looked at in the study. Thus, based on ideology and literary representation as a theoretical framework, all female characters in the selected novels are examined. The study is divided into four chapters. The first chapter deals with the introduction to the study. The second chapter is devoted to the review of literature on the issues of ideology and representation. The third chapter is analysis and interpretation of the two selected novels. The analysis is divided into four major sections and it analyses and interprets the representation female characters from dominant, authorial, aesthetic, patriarchal and gendered ideological points of view. Finally, the last chapter deals with the conclusion to the analysis in the third chapter, where the representation of female characters in the two novels is examined from the ideological dimensions. The analysis and interpretation of the novels show that female characters are victims of the dominant, gendered and patriarchal ideologies. Ngugi, using his authorial ideology, has shown the different nationalistic roles female characters have played in the two novels. Finally, the study has confirmed that the representation of female characters in the two novels reveals the realities of women in the social context of the period when the novels were written.