Interpreting The Socio-Cultural Symbols in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow and Ben Okri’s StarBook

Abstract

African literary writers use African socio-cultural values and elements in writing African literature. These values and
elements help them to restore, recreate, and/or reclaim the long socio-cultural practices and histories of African nations.
One of these is the socio-cultural symbolic elements that epitomize nationhood or peoplehood. The main purpose of this
paper is to investigate the African nations‟ socio-cultural and political experiences by interpreting culturally significant
novels, which are written by national-oriented writers. Ngugi wa Thiong‟o‟s Wizard of the Crow from Eastern Africa
and Ben Okri‟s Starbook from Western Africa are purposively selected based on their culturally symbolic features they
employ. Extractions are included to make the interpretation textually evident. From the interpretation, we can
conclude that both Ngugi and Okri depend on their respective community‟s culturally symbolic elements to retrieve and
reclaim the African nation‟s culture and history. In this regard, birds, insects, and ogres are the most important
creatures that are represented in the novels to signify the socio-cultural meanings that the respective country‟s culture and
tradition provide to them. Similarly, they use the novels to depict the national socio-political predicaments. They also
signpost the way out of the troubles of the African nations. They specifically indicate that Africans' wit and wisdom
need to be reconsidered for their socio-political healing.