Postcolonial Identity in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat and Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God

The negotiation of identity under colonial and anti-colonial pressure is a central preoccupation of East and West African postcolonial fiction, and a comparison of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat and Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God reveals how writers from different African literary traditions have engaged with the disintegration of pre-colonial communal selfhood. This study examined how both novels construct protagonists whose integrity is compromised by their entanglement with colonial power structures, and how each narrative uses betrayal as a central moral concept. A postcolonial critical methodology drawing on Fanon, Said, and Ngugi's own theoretical writings on decolonisation was applied. The analysis focused on the figures of Mugo in Ngugi's Kenyan novel and Ezeulu in Achebe's Igbo narrative as representative of the impossible position of the traditional authority figure in the colonial moment. Both characters attempt to preserve communal values while navigating a system that fundamentally undermines those values. Results showed that Ngugi constructs collective resistance as the only authentic response to colonial alienation, while Achebe focuses on the tragic internal collapse of a single man of traditional authority. The study concludes that both novels offer complementary perspectives on colonialism's assault on African communal identity and recommends the pairing for advanced undergraduate seminars at institutions in the South East and North Central geopolitical zones of Nigeria.

Keywords: postcolonial identity, Ngugi, Achebe, colonial betrayal, African fiction