Weep Not, Child Reflection

Weep Not, Child Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s interesting work contains historical values, the
spread of events from the past to the present, and also conveys to us what is going on in
Africa. In the book, you can find inspirations from difficult times of Africa, strikes,
friendship, death, depression, suicide, that is, many things about a person. For these reasons,
the book makes you experience being human in this blurred atmosphere. It is really very
valuable fort hat geography that African issues such ass family structure in Africa, labor,
exploitation and struggle are observed by an African author, and that an effort is made to
write a book. Because the person who suffers a problem knows best. My favorite Character in
the book is Boro because of his features such as rebellion. The themes in the book death,
mourning, love, civil war, land values, the concept of family, women and women in society..
That’s why Ngugi wa Thiong’s book Weep Not, Child is one of the must-read boks to
understand a person in a different geography and the structures there.

The general themes covered in the book can be divided into branches such as death,
mourning, love, civil war, land values, the concept of family, women and women in society.
These themes are prominently covered in the book. Themes and facts merge as events revolve
around the characters. In addition, these themes directly affect the treatment of events anda re
cleverly linked together. These make it easier for us to connect to the characters. It is very
easy to understand the effect of all the concepts from both the experiences and the behaviors
and minds of the characters. Apart from this, the fact that the problems of today’s world are
also covered in the book, it is suprising to encounter these social problem seven in Kenya’s of
1950-1960s and that these problems still continue.

As fort he characters, the characters are beautifully placed and rendered in the story.
No room for unnecessary charecters. As I said, the themes are handled both abstractly and
concretely through the characters and their experiences. To tell you, the theme of love felt
strongly between Njoroge and Mwihaki, and in the book, it is also put in your face that love
can not really offer a solution to everything. The mourning theme is obviously handled
through Boro. The loss of his brother Mwangi in World War II and the loss of his country’s
lands to the whites by his ancestors make him feel in the book that he is in deep mourning and
anger. Thus, you can get the themes indirectly through the characters with more human
feelings.
 Now let’s come to one of the important parts, the plot. It makes a nice feel of the story
built around themes and characters. The events that you can see all over the world are hanfled
much more locally and more strikingly here. Events that we would take for granted in our
own geography, such as beng the first person in the family to g oto school, are welcomed
there as a source of pride. If we are adapt to region in the story, we should not forget how an
African looks at a White person. Mr Howlands’ attitude towards his workers during the strike
and this whole strike clearly shows how hard it was for people caught in the midst of events
like the war. At the end of the book, the commiting of suicide can actually be considered as an
allegorical narrative after all the events, because of the thought that everything should come to
an end and must die can be understood in this way.

If we come to the conclusion, Weep Not, Child is such a beatiful tool of

enlightenment, an enlightening look at the Africa of the past from a present point of view. A
book that I see as a beatiful result of looking fort he traces of the pas in the future with a look
at the White man from afar. I would like to end my thoughts on the book with an excerpt from
the book. ‘’ That’s why you at times hear Father say that he would rather work for a White
man. A White man is White man. But a black man trying to be a White is bad and hars’’.