UNIVERSITY OF UYO JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES

There is abundant evidence that Francophone African Literary writers have employed child characters in their works, offering, sometimes, contradictory representation of childhood in their works. This study attempts a comparative analysis of the representation of childhood in Camara Laye's The African Child and Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah is not obligedby. juxtaposing the paradoxical portraiture of childhood in both texts. While The African Child offers an idyllic and pacific African childhood and marking “the closing stages of the colonial period” (Sow 2010, 489), Kourouma's Allah is not obliged chronicles the gradual degeneration of childhood within the post-colony. Notwithstanding the charge of writing “misery literature” targeted mainly towards Western consumption and the humanitarian industry leveled against the author, the novel clearly demonstrates post independence disillusionment by its portrayal of the progressive transformation of childhood innocence typified in The African Child to monster creatures in Allah is not obliged. Drawing from sociological and fictional accounts on childhood, this study underscores the gradual loss of good parenting and positive African values as well as Western materialism and values which Kourouma's text clearly depicts. The comparative analysis reveals a transition from innocence to beast as both writers clearly represent childhood from different historical periods culminating in the paradox which their novels evince

Open Full Text (PDF)