Grain of Wheat

¶ … Ngugi treat or portray Christianity in a Grain of Wheat? Is he overly critical or does he explore some positive aspects of the European religion. What do the specific Biblical reference mean in the context of the story? Give specific examples.

Along with this theme, what does the title of the book signify? What is Ngugi trying to say with this title and references to it throughout the book? Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o poses some interesting questions for the reader in terms of the way it deals with religion. First of all, it is a mythological, magical realist work of postcolonial fiction set in the real world of Africa, detailing both African and European characters' perspectives on Kenyans' struggle for independence from Britain.

Given this theme and stylistic device, it might be assumed that the text takes an extremely negative view of the religion of the colonialist, British oppressors. However, the plot theme of the book seems to exemplify the gospel narrative of Jesus, a man wrongly accused of crimes he did not commit, and the grain of wheat of the title refers to the gospel narrative of John.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus, while teaching through the use of parables states that: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies it yields a rich harvest. (John 12:24) The parable of the gospel, of course, refers to the sacrifice of Jesus, who is about to sacrifice his life for the sins of humanity.

Likewise, the resistance leaders of the novel A Grain of Wheat make sacrifices, not only of their lives and the lives of their loved ones, but even of their own souls and existences as private citizens, for the sake of their nation.

Death and sacrifice of the personal as a creative act of the body that yields dividends not for the self, but for the many, and yields not a harvest of profits in the short-term, but only in the long-term, becomes a metaphor for the revolution of Kenya, which was ultimately successful, despite the images that end the book of a village's destruction.

As Jesus' sacrifice was not immediately understood by his people or even his close circle of disciplines in the Gospel of John, the significance of the acts that transpire are not immediately understood by the African natives of the village or of the incipient Kenyan nation. Only later do they become clear. The central dilemma of the novel's plot, such as the plot exists in a non-linear fashion, is constructed along the decisions of one of the protagonists, a gentle man named Mugo.

He is a rather standoffish yet intellectual and soft-spoken individual whose inner integrity and convictions about resistance result in his getting caught up in the center of Kenya's revolution for independence. However, Mugo's gentle, lamb-like persona does not mean he is a perfect parallel with Jesus' lamb-like sacrifice. Mugo also has certain characteristics emblematic of the betrayer of Jesus, Judas, as well as Jesus' denier, Peter. Mugo is of the resistance, yet stands to the side of it, much like Peter, endorsing it at times yet also internally critiquing it.

Ultimately, Mugo's betrayal of his friend Kihika forms central moral dilemma of the story. Should Mugo go back to living as a private citizen as he desires, outside of the world of politics, returning to the rhythms of the life he has lost, or should he aid his fellow Kenyans in revolution? The theme of betrayal so integral to the gospel narratives of Jesus, a man who also lived in an occupied nation, that of Israel under Roman authority, forms the crux of A Grain of Wheat's plotline.

As the title suggests, in a state of feminine, a feminine of freedom, the bodies and freedoms and lives of individuals must be sacrificed to yield a later harvest. Thus Ngugi wa Thiong'o thus does not present a narrow view of the Christian religion, although he does point to the hypocrisy of the British espousal and use of a faith where ultimately the first are supposed to be last. But Ngugi uses this ideological tension not to condemn the British occupiers in simple, strident, but in a creative narrative fashion.

In essence, he turns the British, Christian rhetoric against the occupying force. The strength of the grain of wheat, so simple and small, has enough to defeat the forces of occupation and oppression with the truth, a truth that these supposed Christians can no longer see. Grain of Wheat, like the overall structure of the Biblical narratives themselves, makes use of no singular, linear point-of-view, nor is character development a strictly internal or external work in progress.

The novel is self-consciously moral and epic in tone, chronicling the birth of a nation and how being caught in the wheels of history affects individuals within a historical and philosophical context, rather than a psychological one.

Destiny itself and the force of historical development takes on the state of a character on the novel as it grinds the protagonists into an "earth smoked gray like freshly dropped cow-dung." (215) The ending destruction of the village creates havoc not just in the personal lives of the characters, but rends the natural world asunder as "dogs" tear "the limbs off a rabbit and run.