Ngugi
wa Thiongo in the novel The River Between presents a society on
the move to find hope and restoration in the face of a clash of two cultures,
that is, the tribes culture and the culture of the white man, which has brought
so much confusion and division in the tribe.However,the real threat is not only the two proud cultures but also
institutions and individuals who fail in certain ways.Ngugi,however,points out
these failures in a subtle way by mocking them in the way he constructs them
and their circumstances.
Ngugi
mocks the leadership organ of the tribe, the Kiama. The Kiama being made up of
elders would be presumed to be a cluster of wisdom, a source from which the
tribe will get its guidance in its attempts to preserve the purity of the tribe and proper ways of
handling the white man.However,it proves to be a group of ignorant and more
confused individuals just like the rest of the people. It becomes a revenge
machinery for ensuring that Waiyaki does not achieve his mission. Kabonyi uses
it to revenge on Christian converts who are members of the tribe. More critically,
Waiyaki is put in the hands of the Kiama to be judged, but from the foregoing, the situation is awkward
since the Kiama too needs to be judged for causing more hatred, harm to its
people and creating more confusion in the tribe.
Kabonyi
is equally on the spotlight. He parades himself as an alternative leader,
somewhat better than Waiyaki who through his evil traps has managed to pull down.
He hates Waiyaki for being the one the people sing his name yet he too, Kabonyi
,has provided leadership to the people.However,he is a scum, Since he is a mean
individual who is so obsessed with getting power. He is no better position to
lead since he has no idea of where he wants to lead the people to and he is
ignorant of the fact that people want to be led to a different future different
from the past where Kabonyi wants them to stay.
The
people of the tribe have been mocked by Ngugi wa Thiongo.They are presented as
a people with great respect and love for the young leaders. They love him and
sing his praises for his demonstrated commitment to serving their interest like
championing foe education expansion and getting more teacher for the created schools.
However, this support and love for Waiyaki is a plastic one that does not wait
to disappear the moment problems arise. They are first to judge and convict
Waiyaki in the court of public opinion for being guilty even before placing him
in the hands of the vengeful kiama to be judged. The people are in no better
position to point a finger at Waiyaki for they too are responsible for the
division,mistrut and hatred that id fast eating the tribe.
Joshua
is the ultimate man of God, a faithful servant of God who must triumph in the
face of all challenges. He cannot compromise. He is the ideal Christian to
serve as a stepping stone to Christianity for the rest of the tribe who worship
the “prince of darkness, Murungu”.This a crafty presentation of Joshua by
Ngugi.He is no better than anyone yet he parades as a self righteous servant of
God. He is a man whose faith and understanding of Christianity is shallow. He
preaches Christianity yet he lacks love, compassion and forgiveness as Christ
demonstrated to his followers. Joshua is a sycophant of the white man whose
misconception and contempt he readily takes up as God inspired assertion. He
does not have a mind of his own but is subject to accepting and implement all
the white man says; so if the tribe’s culture is sinful, then so be it. It is
no wonder when Joshua fails to save his daughter Muthoni from getting the claws
of death and her death seem not to move him since she compromises Joshua’s self
righteous and image as a “man of God”.
Traditionalism
and Christianity are also satirized. These two religions are responsible for
the whole mess in the society that has placed the tribe on the brink of destruction.
The two are too proud and arrogant to co-exist. Traditionalism and its
believers believe that Christianity and Christians led by the white man are
responsible for interfering with the tribe and thus responsible for the
calamities befalling the tribe such as the unpredictable coming of the much
loved season of Njahi. The Christians
on the other hand view traditionalism as an ignorant and sinful way of life.
The Christians led by Rev.Livingstone and Joshua wage a war against some of the
rituals of traditionalism such as circumcision without knowing the harm it can
cause the tribe. Little do these two religions do to attempt to critically look
at the other and themselves before making judgements.All these two religions
have negative aspects and positive aspects and thus could accommodate and
tolerate each other on this basis, something they fail to do.
Waiyaki
after his father’s death rises to become the leader of the tribe and attempts
in his only known way of fulfilling the prophesy, that is, giving the people
the magic of the white man, formal education of the white man. As a leader he is to be in a constant state of
analyzing the circumstances of his people and searching for solutions .However,
he gets detached from the people in his pursuit to get his only known solution
to the problem of the interfering white man. He fails to notice the people’s
immediate need of sending away the white man. This is made worse by the fact he
himself has no better idea of what he is supposed to do as the savior of his
people.Thus,his failure is not any obvious than it is since he has no vision of
what to do nor his people’s many problems.
Rev.Livingstone
has been satirized too. His conclusion on the tribe’s culture is that it is
immoral and sinful. This misconception is based upon the fact that the songs he
heard and words he heard people say during the dance on the eve of circumcision
were vulgar. He does not understand that there are social codes that only
allows such words to be said only during such an occasion; that other than
during this event it is a taboo, a forbidden thing to say or dance in the
manner people dance.Thus,his notions that injects into people like Joshua who
uses the same to mistreat and look down others are a bunch of lies yet for him
he holds them to be true. He ought to have looked beyond the song to understand
the dynamics behind the performance. He
is thus ignorant of the tribes culture without knowing it.
Thus
in conclusion,Ngugi manages to point out the shortcomings and their undergoing
of the individuals, groups and even religion which in one way or the other pose
as the clean, the good and the perfect yet blatantly assuming they have no
mistakes or no shortcomings. This he does in clever way that is the hallmark of
satire in the novel.
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