Poverty and Exploitation in Ngugi WA Thiongo’s Petals of Blood and Festus Iyayi’S Violence
Abstract
This research work examines corruption and violence in Festus Iyayi’s Violence and Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People. The study has revealed that Festus Iyayi and Chinua Achebe belong to different generations of Nigerian writers who see corruption, violence and socio-cultural conflicts in our Nigerian societies as the result of misleading and corrupt practices of political leaders in our contemporary Nigerian society. The study also shows that Nigerian societies are faced with political conflict, political disillusionment and political oppression because of mal-administration, dictatorship and excessive socio-political conflicts imposed by the corrupt leaders. The study therefore recommends good literature novels with good moral lessons to be exposed to the learners on the effects of corruption and violence in our Nigerian society and Africa at large. The authors’ views are equally established with the hope of an end goal of finding solutions that will take Africa out of the shackles of corruption, violence poverty and inequality.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
These two contents: poverty and exploitation are the two major concepts presently bed evilling Kenya ,Nigeria and fact Africa as a whole. These two concepts always generate conflict in every society of the world. It is on these reasons that these two novelists use literature as a medium to expose the evils committed against people in their given society. Such evils according to them include exploitation, deprivation, intimidation, suppression and corruption in high places, which are committed against people of lower classes. Iyayi’s Violence for instance, x-rays and highlights the lower classes of Nigerians how they go through oppression, poverty and exploitation as well as political and economic pains in the hands of the ruling class.
While Ngugi of Kenya also examines the awful condition of the poor Kenyans who live in poverty and sub-human standards of the lower class citizens as portrayed in the novel. The ruling class maintain their country economic wealth and inflicted suffering so much pain and humiliation to their poor citizens. Moreover, the novelists see the above exploitative condition of the poor in their society and kicked against the forces through their writings and to help liberate them from the clutches of exploitation and poverty imposed on them by the ruling class. It is on this note that this research work aim at portraying how Ngugi’s Petals of Blood and Iyayi’s Violence exposes poverty and exploitation in Kenya and Nigeria.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
African writers had had a large extent focused in their writings to the social injustices of the poor and calls for a classless society. Ngugi and Iyayi are such African writers who ambitiously tackled the question of a dilapidated society punctuated by exploitation, poverty and disillusionment. They interpret their societal events in an unfortunate way.
Poverty and Exploitation in Ngugi WA Thiongo’s Petals of Blood and Festus Iyayi’S Violence
Their two novels therefore explores different dimensions of violence inflicted on the individual in their society, such as the lack of development, fragmentation, the quest for wealth, the soured relationship between the employer and the employee and the gulf between the rich and the poor and urges the masses to embrace revolution as a way of reconstructing their rights through social reality of chasm between the rich and the poor.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of this research work is to analyse the poverty and exploitation in Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Petals of Blood and Festus Iyayi’s Violence.
1.4 Significance of the Study
this research will be beneficiary to the poor masses of Kenya and Nigeria on how to seek for their human right and quits the exploitative condition impose on them by the high class. Their writings will also enlighten researchers especially literature, reader of this study and students of English with more knowledge on the evil exploitative condition of upper class of Kenyan and Nigerian.
1.5 Objectives of the Study
The objectives of this research project seek:
- to analyse the poverty and exploitation in Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Petals of Blood and Festus Iyayi’s Violence
- to investigate the characters in the two novels that go through poverty and exploitation and how it affects their lives emotionally.
- To examine the meaning of poverty and exploitation proffer solutions to the above issues.
1.6 Research Methodology
This research project is a literary research based. The primary source is the use of Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Petals of Blood and Festus Iyayi’s Violence. The secondary sources are novels from African writers, novels from the library, internet information and academic journals to make the research project authentic.
1.7 Scope and Limitation of the study
The scope of this research work is limited to Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Petals of Blood and Festus Iyayi’s Violence.
1.8 Bio- Data of Ngugi Wa Thiongo
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o was born in Limuru, near Nairobi in 1938. He was called James Ngugi until March 1970 when he changed his name to the traditional name Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Many of his works are published under his former name, James Ngugi. He received his education at a church-run primary school near his home, an independent Gikuyu school providing education relevant to the African setting and a parochial high school. After completing his high school education, he attended Makerere College in Kampala, Uganda, as an honours student of English.
Makerere College was still a college of the University of London and it was here that Ngugi first began to write. His play The Black Hermit was put on by the Uganda National Theatre in 1962, but it was not until 1968 that it was published when Ngugi had already gained a reputation as a novelist. His first novel, Weep Not Child published in 1964. His other works are The River Between (1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967), This Time Tomorrow, reprinted in Short African Plays (1972), Homecoming (1972), The Trial of Dedan Kiumathi – with Micere Githae Mugo – (1976), Petals of Blood (1977) and Devil on the Cross (1982).
1.9 Bio- Data of Festus Iyayi
Iyayi was born on 29th of September, 1947 in Edo state, Nigeria. He started his primary school education at Annunciation Catholic College (ACC) in the former Bendel state and completed his studies in 1966. In 1967, he went to Government College at Ughelli and graduated in 1977 there he won the Kennedy Essay Competition organized by the United States Embassy in Nigeria.
He went to Ukraine in pursuit of his higher education and obtained an M.sc in industrial economics and his Ph.D at the University of Bradford, England. He returned to Nigeria in 1980 and begins his lecturing job in the Department of Business Administration at the University of Benin. He was also the president of the Academic Staff of Universities in 1986 and then he rose as the President of National Association of the Organization. He published the following novels; Violence 1979, The Contract 1982 and Heroes 1986. He died at the age of 66 years in a ghastly motor accident on November, 2013.