The African Writer and Commitment in Art: a Critical Discourse of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Literature of Commitment, Social Vision and Stylistic Use of Satire in Matigari

Abstract

African writers like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o have not relented in their portraiture of the dehumanizing plights of the working class. Ngugi is a revolutionary writer conditioned by the colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial socio-political and economic quagmire and experiences surrounding him, and as such he has no choice than to use art as an avenue of expressing his ideology and vision about the multifaceted problems as pictured in his society. This paper therefore, examines commitment in literature with particular focus on the Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s committed literature and social vision, his stylistic use of satire. The conceptual framework is Marxism using Ngugi’s Matigari. The study as a close textual analysis adopts the descriptive design.