Surajwaran
Mangaleswaran
Muhammad
Fadhli Bin Aminuddin
Mohamad
Iqbal Afham Bin Mohd Afandi
Al
Arimi Bin Mohd
Wan
Nazira Binti Che Nor
W.
Syazwani Nasuha Binti Wan Mazlan
Based on one of the tasks given to us,
we were needed to analyse two novels in which for the first novel we were
needed to analyse two themes whereas for another novel, we were needed to
analyse the main characters of the novel. For the novels, it was up to us on
deciding the novels that we wanted to analyse. After further discussion between
our group members, we had decided to analyse the novel “The River Between” by
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. The author, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o was born in Kenya in 1938.
During his youth, he had lived in a colonial time in his country where the
British had colonized.
Most of his novels including “The River Between” were influenced
by the colonization of the British towards his country. He was once imprisoned
because of his straight forward literature in condemning the neo-colonial life
in Kenya. From the imprisonment, he had decided not to use English anymore as a
medium for his writing but prefer to focus more on his mother tongue, Gikuyu.
He felt that if he kept using English as a medium for his literature, it will
be like he is living his life like the white people and it will eventually
kills the beauty of his own mother tongue language. One of the novel that he
had wrote in his mother tongue language was Caitani Mutharabaini (1981) which
was then translated in English that was called, “Devil on The Cross” (1982). The
novel “The River Between” was published on the year 1965 in which the novel is
about the clash between the Christians and the indigenous tribe of one of the
African country that resembles the life on the people in his country at that
time. The two groups were divided by a river in which in resembles the differences
between the two groups.
