Futility of Violence in Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Weep Not, Child

Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is a celebrated Kenyan writer and East Africa’s leading novelist. He authored several novels, plays, short stories and essays most of which are written in Gikuyu. He criticised the evils of colonization in his works. His Weep Not, Child (1964) is the first major novel in English written by an East African. It portrays the tragedy of a family, that was drawn into the conflict of Kenyan Independence during the state of emergency and the violence of the Mau Mau rebellion. It specifically explores the harmful consequences of dispossessing the people of their ancestral land. In this novel, Ngugi projected violence as futile and destructive. Taking revenge on the oppressors by Boro, who fought in World War II ultimately led to the ruin of the budding life of his brother, Njoroge, the protagonist of the novel. Violence didn’t bring any positive change, rather it brought awful destruction. This paper aims to bring out the futility of violence in the novel Weep Not, Child.