Exposing Corruption through Grotesque Image: A Reading of Ngugi wa Thiong ‘o’s Devil on the Cross

Abstract

This paper examines the use of the grotesque images in the novel Devil on the Cross by Ng?g? wa Thiongo.Through Grotesque images, he portrays corruption in post-colonial Kenya and its crucial consequence on the living condition of the mass in Kenya.  Ng?g? displays thedegraded and deformed shapes to draw the image of lust for wealth, power and corruption. The grotesque images parody the crime of authoritarian people byderiding their corrupted mentality. Ng?g?is an award-winning Kenyan writer who writes in the Gikuyu language and then translatesinto English. Devil on the Cross is one of his novels which delineates the character War??nga, a young woman who has lost her job and boyfriend and decides to commit suicide to escape from distressed modern Kenya. This study aims at unearthing the moral and political corruption through the grotesque image, the humanbody as an index. The grotesque in literature focuses on the human body, draws its power from the combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar, or the familiar distorted.