The Fragmented Soul and Social Conventions in Ngugi’s Petals of Blood and Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with a specific type inherent in the complexity of the individual, which is the fragmented or split personality. This issue has been treated in modern literature both in the Western world and by African postmodern writers as Modern Times gave the individual a sense of displacement engendered by extraneous forces because of the rejection, namely the violence of colonization and the legacy of war. One of the modern African works of fiction dealing with this shadowy aspect of human identity is Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood. In this novel, Ngugi presents an interesting, though problematic, aspect of the characters. Likewise and though emanating from different reasons and backgrounds, the modernist American novel Tender is the Night by F.S. Fitzgerald deals with a protagonist’s psychic disintegration