ISSN No :2231-5063
Vol 4 Issue 2 Aug 2014
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International Multidisciplinary
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Golden Research
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Welcome to GRT
RNI MAHMUL/2011/38595
ISSN No.2231-5063
Golden Research Thoughts Journal is a multidisciplinary research journal, published monthly in English,
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GRT
ARMAH, A BIRGHT STAR OF DARK WORLD
Pradnya D godwadikar
Asst. Professor , Department of English , Baliram Patil College, Kinwat , Tq. Kinwat Dist. Nanded.
Abstract:-Ayi Kwei Armah is considered as one of the leading fictional voices of Africa. His
works typically explore the nuances of postcolonial Africa and focus on African existential
conditions .Though Armah's vision is one of a unified Africa, he writes vehemently of the
psychological effect of colonialism on the people of contemporary Ghana and Africa. His works
have met with mixed critical reaction, but many reviewers laud his stylistic innovations.
Keywords:Ayi Kwei Armah , leading fictional voices , psychological , Ghanaian novelist.
INTRODUCTION
Armah is a Ghanaian novelist and poet, known for his visionary symbolism, poetic energy and the
extremely high moral integrity of his political vision. His first three novels were hailed as modernistic prose, while
his next two challenged the Euro-centric notions of history. Armah has lived and worked in the different cultural
zones of Africa. Much of Armah's earlier work deals with the betrayed ideals of Ghanaian nationalism and
Nkrumahist socialism.
Ayi Kwei Armah was born in 1939 to Fante-speaking parents in the port city of Takoradi, Ghana. He left
Ghana in 1959 to attend the Groton School in Groton, M.A, afterwards, he attended Harvard. Much of his work deals
with the problems of post- colonial Ghana .
Armah is a scholar, a critic, a university professor, essayist, poet and short story writer, but his reputation
derives from his novels. He has written and published six novels: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), an
unflinching expose of government corruption; Fragments (1970), in which he deploys the auto-biographical mode to
expose and lament the giddying suffocation of a post – colonial African society (represented by Ghana ); Why Are
We So Blest ? (1972), which, while excoriating post-colonial African leadership for its privileging of European
culture, encapsulates a vision of the contemporary world; Two Thousand Seasons (1973), which Wole Soyinka calls
a 'visionary reconstruction' of the African past; The Healers (1978), a fictional re-creation of Akan society ; and
Osiris Rising (1995), which borrows its narrative structure from the Isis- Osiris myth cycle to tell a story of love,
death, and the promise of creative renewal in modern Africa
In an essentially autobiographical article, 'One Writer's Education' (West Africa, August 1985 ), Armah
identifies himself not simply as an Akan, an Ewe, a Ghanaian, and a West African, but 'most significantly as an
African'. His concern to work for change in Africa has made him perhaps not only the most controversial but also the
most polemical African writer . In Armah's Africa, revolutionaries are the only creators, an ideological position that
has elicited the wrath of both African and foreign critics. But although those critics have taken him to task for his
position on race, it is pertinent that The Beautyful Ones and Fragments lambast not whites but the corrupt African
leadership. Like his compatriot Ama Ata Aidoo, he sees Africa as a 'community without unity' and his writing
particularly in Two Thousand Seasons stridently insists on a community with unity. Critics have also commented on
the Western influences on Armah's thought and style . Although such influences are undeniable, his concerns in all
his work are African, and his art, like that of many committed artists, demonstrates a synthesis between style and
subject matter.
Armah's first three novels are often grouped together in critical commentary. They each are heavily
symbolic representations of life in contemporary Africa. The first, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, tells the
story of a simple railway clerk during the regime of Kwame Nkrumah. The protagonist, known only as The Man acts
Pradnya D godwadikar , “ARMAH, A BIRGHT STAR OF DARK WORLD”, Golden Research Thoughts | Volume 4 | Issue 2 | Aug
2014 | Online & Print
1
.Armah, A Birght Star Of Dark World
as a representation of the common man Nkurmah has promised to represent. The novel dramatizes the conflict
between hope for change and the betrayal of that hope by the nation's leaders and serves as a stinging indictment of the
Nkrumah regime. Armah's first and best known novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), describes the
life of an unnamed rail worker who is pressured by his family and fellow workers to accept bribes and involve himself
in corrupt activities in order to provide his family with material goods. The other workers who accept bribes are able
to live a prosperous life, while he and his family live from paycheck to paycheck as a result of his honesty. At times he
perceives himself as a moral failure for not providing his family with the money which would allow them to have the
beautiful things that they seek. His honesty also makes him a social misfit, and he is a man who is truly alone .The
book is filled with images of birth, decay and death, most notably in the form of a manchild who goes through the
entire life cycle in seven years. This manchild is a metaphor for post- independence Ghana.
Fragments (1970), recounts the story of Baako, who returns to Ghana after studying in New York for five
years .His family expects him to flaunt his Western education to gain prestige and wealth for the family .Baako,
however, rejects what he sees as the corrupt values of the new Africa and only wishes to live a quiet life. In the end,
Baako becomes so alienated he undergoes a breakdown and ends up in an asylum. His second, more
autobiographical, novel Fragments (1971), also deals with the subject of materialism in contemporary Ghana. In it,
the main character Baako is a “been to,” meaning that he has been to the United States and received his education
there. As a result of this privilege, he is expected to return to his family bearing the monetary gifts which this status
yields in Ghana. As in his first novel, these material goods are bought with graft and corruption , which impoverishes
the county's infrastructure .The author contrasts the decadence and materialism of those who see Baako as a cash cow
with the philosophy of his blind grandmother, Naana , whose concerns are not of this earth .
Why Are We So Blest? (1972), tells the story of Modin Dofu, an African student studying in the United
States who decides to return to Africa after becoming disillusioned with his experience with Western education. He
brings his white lover Aimee Reitch, who acts as a representation of the white race in the novel. The return to Africa
proves disastrous when the conflict between his rejection of Western values and his involvement with Aimee
eventually destroys him. The novel is complex in structure, abandoning the linear progression of Armah's previous
works. The emphasis of Armah's later novels is to clearly focus on the idea of returning to traditional African culture
as a model for the future .
Why Are We So Blest? is a more fragmented novel than Fragments, jumping between three narrators with
no obvious narrative line, though we eventually discover that Solo, a failed revolutionary ,is using the notebooks of
Aimee a white American ,and Modin, a Ghanaian, intercut with his own text. The savage irony of the title is sustained
throughout the novel, which lacks the cynical comedy of the two previous works and is much more overt in its
distortion of reality .All the white women in the novel prey on the black men: Modin, a student who drops out of
Harvard to go to Laccaryville in North Africa as a would-be revolutionary, is used primarily by Aimee, who
epitomizes the sexual sickness of all white women. She is frigid when she meets Modin, and uses him as an object to
stimulate her sexual fantasies of intercourse with a black servant. Modin's attempt to liberate her into a fuller
sensitivity destroys him. The horrific scene, in which Aimee is raped and Modin castrated by white men, fully enacts
Aimee's fantasy. She is sexually aroused and kisses Modin's bleeding penis, asking him to say that he loves her. Solo
sees Modin as an African who does not know “how deep the destruction has eaten into himself, hoping to achieve a
healing juncture with his destroyed people.''
Two Thousand Seasons (1973) covers one thousand years of African history and approaches epic
proportions in its compressed meanings, descriptions of battles, and use of folk mythology. Armah condemns the
Arab “predators” and “ destroyers” and calls for the reclamation of Africa's traditional values.
The Healers (1978) is a fictionalized account of the fall of the Ashanti empire to the British .The novel
dramatizes the struggle for African unity. The colonial invaders attempt to manipulate Africa's divisiveness while the
healers in the novel attempt to strengthen Africa through inspiration and unity. Later works, such as Two Thousand
Seasons (1973) and The Healers (1978), have a more obviously African focus, and have been characterized by some
Western critics as inferior to his early novels. However, they have received a better reception from African critics.
Armah's first three novels are generally praised for their artistry. S.Nyamfukudza calls them “intricate in
from and distinguished by a highly wrought prose style using violent imagery.'' While lauding Armah for his artistry
and innovation, however, critics often lable him a pessimist who offers little hope for the future. Greater critical
understanding and acceptance of his agenda were realized with the publication of Two Thousand Seasons and The
Healers, although his detractors continued to fault his fictional portrayals of a new socio-political order in Africa as
vague and unrealistic. Some reviewers complain of Armah's change in tone in later works, and accuse him of being
too idealistic to inspire real change. A few reviewers also note a lack of detail in his vision for Affica's future. Adewale
Maja-Pearce said “Armah is a visionary writer in the strict sense. This much at least must be conceded, even if the
details of what is effectively promoted as a blueprint for a social and political arrangement are far too vague and
simplistic to be convincing at any but the most hopeful level' Some critics contend that Armah presents racist,
simplistic views in his works when he portrays all that is black as good, and all that is white as evil and corrupt.
Despite these criticisms, Armah is widely appreciated for the strength of his convictions and his desire to promote
proper reconstruction of African culture.
Golden Research Thoughts | Volume 4 | Issue 2 | Aug 2014
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.Armah, A Birght Star Of Dark World
REFERENCES :1.Ayi Kwei Armah 1968. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
2.Boston: Houghton Mifllin.
3.______. 1970. Fragments Boston : Houghton Mifflin
4.______. 1973. Two Thousand Seasons, Nairobi: East African Publishing House,
5.______. 1978. The Healers, Nairobi : East African Publishing House.
6.______.1972. Why Are We So Blest? Nairobi : East African Publishing House
7.Fraser, Robert. 1980. The Novels o Ayi Kwei Armah London: Heinemann Educational Books.
8.Ogede, Ode. 2004. Ayi Kwei Armah, Radical Iconoclast, Ohio University Press.
9.Loomba,Ania.1998. Colonialism /Post Colonialism Routledge Publication London.
Pradnya D godwadikar
Asst. Professor , Department of English , Baliram Patil College, Kinwat , Tq. Kinwat
Dist. Nanded.
Golden Research Thoughts | Volume 4 | Issue 2 | Aug 2014
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