Pitfalls of Anti-Colonial Cultural Nationalism inThe Breautyful Ones Are Not Yet Bornand The Interpreter: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Ayi Kwai Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Wole Soyinka's The Interpreters, the novels of disillusionment, question the nationalist movements of Ghana and Nigeria respectively amongst a dampening of political and social optimism in those countries in the mid 1960s. Both novels explore the obsession of African ruling class and intellectuals with the West, local elitism and intellectual laziness, which ultimately suppress the subaltern politics. The texts criticize such an obsession that hinders substantialization of common people's hope and aspiration emerged during the anti colonial national movements. The Beautyful Ones dramatizes the conflict between common people's hope for change and betrayal of that hope by the nationalist leaders and serves as stinging indictment of the Nkrumah regime. Similarly,The Interpreters presents a story of five intellectuals who discover the corruption and pretension of national elite rulers and fail to take a political action succumbing to selfishness, egoism and aimlessness.