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Green Leaves As Post Colonial Work Ogot
Green Leaves As Post Colonial Work Ogot
The story of The Green Leaves begins with the hero, Nyagar
who awakes from his dream by the sounds of movements of
feet of a group of villagers. A small group of people is found
chased by a larger group of people. It comes to the fore of
Nyagar gradually that the small group consists of three thieves
who are pursued by the native villagers as they have stolen the
cattle of the villagers. Two thieves have managed somehow to
escape from the clutches of the villagers while one has failed in
his endeavor to do so. Villagers have overrun and caught him.
He is beaten mercilessly. The condition of his life becomes so
severe that he is about to die and they leave the thief to "give
up his ghost" by himself. Thus, they return to their respective
cottages after covering the body of the thief with green leaves.
They also decide that they will meet there again in the morning.
Nyagar is one of the wealthy and happy villagers. He has a
happy family with children and wives. Nyagar gets the idea that
the cattle thief might just have some money on him, and he
goes back at night to search, thinking that the thief will
certainly be dead by then. His greed leads him to his own
downfall. Here, before placing his hands in the pocket of the
thief, mentally he is found perturbed for sometimes as he is
engrossed in the thought of the fact that he should remain
satisfied with what he possesses. He is pleased to find a bag
around the man's neck, but as he is taking it, he receives a blow
to the eye that kills him. He falls a sheer victim of greed. What
Ogot attempts to portray here that the native people
internalize in their pure hearts the sense of greed from their
Colonial Masters who used to transport various resources from
their colonies to their own country due to their greed which is
better known as Colonial Greed.
Nyagar is found to waver and the good angel of his soul tells
him "What do you want to do with the money? You have three
wives and twelve children. You have many cattle and enough
food. What more do you want?" On the other hand, the bad
angel of his soul suggests to him “Don’t deceive yourself that
you have enough wealth. Nobody in the world has enough
wealth.”
The next morning unreal drums were beaten and the clan
leader Olilio gathered people in the center of the town and told
everything to the villagers that happened yesterday night. Now
he thought that if the British government comes to know about
this then they will punish the murderer so the clan leader tells
the villagers that if we stand united then the government
cannot do anything to them. In their culture killing a thief is not
a crime but according to the British government, it is a crime.
He sends ten selected people from their village to inform the
British government that they have killed a man. Meanwhile,
Nyagar’s wife is in search of his husband but she can’t find him.
Apart from this incident, the resistance of Nyamundhe, the
wife of the hero, Nyagar, of the story as noted earlier, to the
urge of the White officers of taking the body of Nyagar away to
Kisumu for postmortem. Nyagar’s wife starts crying then the
British officer drags the body of Nyagar his wife stops the
officer but the officer ignores her She doesn't allow the police
to take away the dead body of her husband "She struggled
wildly with the police who carried the corpse of her husband
and placed it at the back of the lorry to be taken to Kisumu for
a postmortem." She pays no heed to the police who try to
comfort her. She says "If you say you will give him back to me
alive then, l will listen."