Postcolonial Ogres: the Grotesque in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow

Abstract

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow dramatises the social decay in much of postcolonial Africa in such a manner that it appears caricatural and rather grotesque. The novel, in fact, teems with grotesque imagery. This paper will analyse Ngugi’s usage of the grotesque aesthetic, with a view to examining the various representations of the grotesque and the extent to which the text is unarguably grotesque. Drawing on M.M. Bakhtin’s concept of the grotesque and of a few other theorists, the paper concludes that Ngugi employs the grotesque as a narrative strategy to illuminate the dehumanising socio-political conditions symptomatic of despotic African nations. By using this strategy, Ngugi equally critiques the monstrosity of unbridled power amongst politicians in government, while advocating its subversion by popular revolution.