OBJECTS AS CHARACTER EMBLEMS IN SELECTED NOVELS OF MEJA MWANGI

Résumé

In most modern fictions, object and character as formal entities on the same plane tend to impress themselves with an equality of insistence on the consciousness of the viewer or a reader. In both the film form and the modern novel of concretized form, the new “democratized” structural situation produces essentially the same results: a new kind of equality between a seen character and the seen object especially that employed by the character in carrying out his day to day function and , in certain instances, a merging or cross breeding between the two. Thus for both film and the novel, things become increasingly important and attain conspicuous and compelling presence in the narrative action. No longer mere props, things are activated into the drama, in fact, become actors as they embody in themselves aspects of the character’s psychology and life-style and enact the drama, as it were, in place of the character. This is the background on which we shall study Mwangi’s novels selected for this work: Kill Me Quick (1973), Carcase for Hounds (1974), and Going Down River Road (1976) : Why is Razor’s flick knife so prominent in the character of Razor in Kill Me Quick? Why is the truck driven by Onesmus so terrifying to the construction workers in Going Down River Road? And why is Haraka’s gun so powerful that it equalizes, if not surpasses, Haraka in the narrative in Carcase for Hounds? Why do things increase in symbolic value as they stand equal to man, representing him in the world of the narrative made resonant and animate by his living presence in them? These are the issues we shall explicate in this study. The authors conclude by asserting that things, in Mwangi’s fiction, stand as character emblems that define the personality of given characters.