Abstract

The flow of argument in this paper augments the existing pre-requisites for measuring the degree of social commitment in African fiction. In achieving this objective, Meja Mwangi’s Kill Me Quick was examined with a view to establishing its social relevance and commitment. Though its social relevance was acknowledged, the work’s social commitment was suspect. Based on this finding, a discussion of what should have been was made. The views of a critic and a writer on the relationship between literature and the people were discussed as supporting influence of the focus of the paper.

Concluding, the paper believes that true commitment in African writing is achievable through:

-         persistent and consistent exposition  of all the shades of denigration in the social system;

-         prescription of attenable solutions to the highlighted problems; and

-         suggestion of means of maintaining and preserving the achievements.

Inroduction:

       Making a case for the social responsibility of the writer (Egudu 1978:2) quoting Kolawole Ogungbesan said that,

                                  the writer is a member of society and his sensibility

                                   is conditioned by the social and political happenings

                                   around him; for these issues form a part of the substance

                                   of life within which his instinct as a writer must struggle.

    The concern of this quote is obviously that of the need for art to make human relevance one of its fortes and the necessity for the writer to reflect socio-political uncertainties in his works. In other words, a work of literary merit that relegates to obscurity, the unpalatable and perhaps the palatable socio-political experiences of its society will end up being inconsequential.

     Still on the responsibility of the artist to society, (Ngugi 1988:38) believed that,

                                  …literature should be used deliberately and consciously as

                                   a weapon of struggle in two ways: first by trying as much as

                                   possible to correctly reflect the world of struggle in all its stark

                                   reality and secondly by weighting sympathies on the side of those

                                forces struggling against national and class oppression and

                                exploitation….

           He further opined that,

                                 …the more conscious a writer is about the social forces at work in

                                 his society and in the world, the more effective he or she is likely to

                                 be as a writer.

           The need for the writer to be sensitive to his society’s predicaments, shortcomings and gains is not a later-day phenomenon. Glimpses of this onerous task are inherent in the

pronouncements made by great thinkers of antiquity. For instance while Socrates was defending himself on one of the charges leveled against him, he said that,

                               I am that gadfly which God has attached to the State; and all day long

                               and in all places, am always fastening upon you, arousing, persuading

                               and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and

                               therefore, I would advise you to spare me.

          This declaration contains enormous, yet justifiable and attainable commandment for the writer because his relevance involves his ability to suppress his puny ego and mould his works to capture and reflect in a pulsating dimension issues that are of public concern and intimacy. In other consideration, ‘arousing, persuading and reproaching’ the populace should constitute the responsibility of any serious artist who is concerned with uplifting the social consciousness, broadening the social perceptive and intimating the masses with every facet of their socio-political denigrations.

        It is with this consideration that supports the need for creative works to play a reflective role on the predicaments of the hoi-polloi that we should examine Meja Mwangi’s Kill Me Quick.

Kill Me Quick: An Examination.

        In the novel, the author articulates the gradual degeneration of the hope, aspiration and the will to live of the educated but jobless person into despondency and desperation which culminates into the transformation of these enlightened jobless members of the social system into a social nuisance. It is the plight of these people, their quotidian subsistence and the possible attendant consequences of such social neglect that the author makes infer from the dramatics of being killed quick. In achieving this end, he uses the literary device of dialogue, description, authorial comment and action embellished with humour. This paper examines bits and pieces of the plight in an attempt at evaluating what makes fiction to be on the side of the oppressed.

       The novel is prefaced with a one-stanza poem which captures the essence of life as experienced by the protagonists: here are two adolescents conscious of what their society has taught them to regard as a feasible appendage to their indigenous upbringing-- western education. They had it, at least to the level which their parents’ purse could afford. And, in answering a traditional demand of the African society—the offspring being responsible to his extended family once he attains certain social status—the protagonists aimed to repatriate part of what they hoped to earn as wages to help subsidize feeding, clothing and other miscellaneous expenses of their parents and siblings.

        However, and in spite of their overt determination, the prevailing situations prevented them from realizing this dream. The failure of the protagonists to correctly decipher the dynamism of the system is the tone of despondency in the poem. The helplessness and passive tolerance with which the protagonists treated the emerging psychological destruction awaiting them is in the initial lines of the poem:

                                      Days run out for me,

                                      Life goes from bad to worse,

                                      Very soon, very much soon,

                                       Times will lead to the end.

          The stoical fortitude with which the protagonists fought destitution, the sheer will to survive, the unrepentant tenacity to living according to the dictate of the backstreets were differentiated from the snuffing socio-economic and exploitative environment they found themselves in. The dichotomy informed the conditional ambivalence towards the end of the poem,

                                         If the sun must set for me

                                         If all must come to an end

                                          If you must be rid of me.

             Having exploited all available options at surviving to no avail, the protagonists were conscripted into the world of crime and we realized that they have human trail blazers,

                                         As you have done with all my friends.

                Overwhelmed by the wind of crime, the protagonists conditionally let themselves be swept away by the tide of criminality thereby giving us the first hint of the systematic cynical living which forms part of the substance of the novel:

                                        If you must kill me

                                        Do so fast,

                                        KILL ME QUICK.