Chapter-II

THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN

About the Author and its thematic Perspective

Ayi Kwei Armah’s post colonial African satire, The Beautyful One’s Are Not Yet

Born describes the life of an unnamed rail worker who is pressured by his family and

fellow workers to accept bribes and make an easy life and enrich his family with

sophisticated articles and high end living. However, the man expresses his deep

revulsion and prefers to lead his life with all sincerity and honesty. Having thoroughly

disgusted and vexed with the rotten and corrupt society even after the liberation from the

colonial rule in his mother land – Ghana, the novelist feels that only the rulers were

changed but not the corrupt values and the foul practices. Only the power was shifted

from the British colonialists to the hands of the Blacks, but the exploitative, inhuman, and

dominating value system was not. The police are the same. The staff, the merchants and

the employees in the offices are sailing in the same boat. All this bitter experience with

the ugly led the writer to society plunge to a pessimistic impression that The Beautyful

Ones Are Not Yet Born. To quote Armah; “New people, new style, and old dance” (The

Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born p.157).* Armah realizes that materialism has become

the new religion and money the new god of the people in the present era. So corruption

and bribery have become the convenient tools. How long the leaders of his nation would

be like this. When the beautiful things would appear to his eyes? Armah questions for

himself like this:

_____________________

*The lines from the text hereafter shall be mentioned with the page numbers.

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 How long will Africa be cursed with its leaders? There were men dying
from the loss of hope, and others were finding gaudy ways to enjoy
power they did not have. We were ready here for big and beautiful
things, but what we had was our own black men hugging new punches
scrambling to ask the white man to welcome them onto their backs
(p.157).

The so-called independence was grossly a farce. In the words of Armah, the

present rulers of his independent country are just Black Masters in White shadows. In

other words, Armah theorizes that in an independent country Ghana, life is different only

in the form but not in the content. Decolonization is applicable only to the geographical

regions but not to the corrupt mindset of the rulers. The glaring example that provoked

the writer was the native Nkrumah regime, which extended to the people of the country

only a neck deep corrupt administration. The history of Africa amply reveals the same

painful facts in their truest sense. As a committed academician George B.N Ayittey, in

his article “Africa’s Development in the 21st Century” in Social Research presented the

facts:

After independence, however, these same Pan-Africanists suddenly forgot

about these lofty principles and ideals (democracy, the vote, freedom of
the press, of assembly, etc.). They never built upon the democratic nature
of the indigenous institutions of the peoples of Africa. Only Botswana
did. Instead the rest copied from abroad alien and lugubrious systems
(one-party states) and alien ideologies (Socialism, Marxism, Leninism)
and imposed them on their people and continued with the same repressive
rule that occurred under colonialism. In traditional authority and even set
out to destroy the indigenous institutions, Africa’s postcolonial story is a
truculent tale of cultural betrayal (p.42)

The novel starts with the Man travelling in an old bus on the way to his place of

work located at a railway station. All the passengers including the Man were waiting for

the conductor to buy their tickets. The Conductor also got into the bus and began to

count the morning’s take. These were the days of the end of the month so, he expected

48
small coins, a lot of peswas, single brown pieces, with some five, a few tens and the

occasional twenty five. Armah tells us that he sits down with “his eyes wide open” to

cross check his money against the ticket stubs. From the Conductor’s gaze, one can read

one aspect of post independence Ghana: blind rush to materialism and hedonism in which

all eyes either bourgeois or proletarian glow in quest of gold. With the spider’s

painstaking gesture, the conductor looks for the last peswa that might be lurking

somewhere in the corner of the box. What strikes the metal eye is not the physical

property of money. It is not the glint of the peswas. The fascinating phenomena are its

value. The Conductor also says that during these days the passengers will hold the exact

fare in their hands. The Conductor satires upon them by saying that most of the people

hold exact fare and tried not to look into the receivers face where as during the fullness of

month, they give a fifty-pesewa coin and look into the conductors eyes to see if he

acknowledge their own importance. They do not look into their palms to see how much

change is there. The Conductor says, “Much better the swollen days of the full month,

much better.”(p.2). Settling himself on the hard step to examine the days takings he is just

sniffing ecstatically at the aroma of an old cedi note, as it smells rotten. The cedi evokes

the historical symbolism as it relates to the Ghanaian nation which though young and

fresh is already morally nauseating and decadent. The remaining passenger slumped in

the back seat apparently watching him. The bus Conductor is a one-man actor who

thinks he has no audience besides him to gaze at him and sneer at his infantile self-

jubilation. When the self feels that it is alone and is not watched, it comes out fully and

acts with complete freedom. The Conductor believing strongly that no societal eye is

watching him opens out and plays pranks with the Cedi. But that delusive valve is of

49
self-protectiveness is soon punctured when he finds out that he is being watched all along

by “A pair of wide open, staring eyes” (p.3). His soul then writhes with a sense of shame

and guilt. Prompted by his own uneasy feelings of remorse the conductor immediately

sets the Man ‘above himself’ in a judging position. Nervously, he approaches his

apparent accuser to conciliate him with a cigarette -- “you see, we can share” (p. 5).

When he notices a thin line of spittle, extending from the corner of the Man’s mouth

down to the torn plastic of the bus seat. The bus Conductor insulted the Man for dirtying

the bus with saliva, at the very back of the seat.

“You bloody fucking sonofabitch! Article of no commercial value! You think

the bus belongs to your grand father? Are you a child? You vomit your smelly spit all

over the place. why? You don’t have a bedroom?” (p. 6). The Man felt shame for his

absence of mind and he takes some small pieces of old tickets out of his pocket and

started wiping that seat, then conductor laughs at him a crackling laugh and scorns the

Man. “So country man, you don’t have a hand kerchief too. The Man did not answer.

As he got to the bottom step, the conductor sitting down on the seat next to one of the

window, looked out of the bus and shouted his farewell to him, or were you waiting to

shit in the bus?” (p. 6).

Commenting on the imagery employed in the novel Charles Miller in his Essay,

“The Arts of Venality”, Vol, LI, No.35, remarks:

This is literary talent? You bet it is that as one who finds most
scatological prose not only disgusting but badly written. It calls for no
small gift to expound on excreta and neither offends nor bore, even greater
ability if unlovely topic is to be made valued within the context of the
novel. Armah brings it off, by highlighting his protagonist’s
uncompromising ethical rectitude through personal fastidiousness (p. 24).

50
To the clerk, going to the toilet is a nightmare, not only because the public lavatories

which he uses happen to violate every rule of hygiene but because they also represent in a

very physical sense. The moral contamination, which surrounds him-sometimes even,

tempts him in its foul way—and against which he must always be on guard, Armah has

treated a most indelicate function with remarkable skill-and force. Charles Miller

comments that,

I register two small objections. Now and then, Armah’s lampoonery may
go below the belt. His portrayal of the old United Gold Coast Convention
Party (although it’s not identified by name), as an assemblage of Uncle
Toms strikes me as unfair to a group that did much to spearhead Ghanaian
independence. (It’s also an injustice to the party’s leader, Dr. J.B.
Danquah, regarded by some, myself included, as Ghana has changed for
the Nkrumah’s overthrow, nothing in Ghana has changed for the good. All
right, the country has yet to become a model of freedom, but it would be
very wrong to overlook certain impressive stride made by Ghana’s
National Liberation Council toward restoration of the constitutional
democracy that Nkrumah so callously dismantled. It would also be a
mistake to let these two shortcomings prejudice the reader against a valid
and uncommonly arresting view of the abuse of power in that part of the
world which may be least able to afford so outrageous an indulgence( pp.
24-5).

Without saying a word, the Man moves slowly on the road. On the way to his office, the

Man walks nearby decipherable box printed as:

K.C.C. RECEPTACLE FOR DISPOSAL OF WASTE

KEEP YOUR COUNTRY CLEAN

BY KEEPING YOUR CITY CLEAN (p. 7)

The people were told that a lot of money was used to install this box but words are

no longer decipherable because of the heap of rubbish poured nearby. Later, the Man

reaches at the place he takes debris of old tickets from the pocket and throws them to the

51
same heap. As he continues walking asleep, he is nearly knocked by the taxi the situation

that leads the driver to scold at him.

Towards the end it is seen that, the Man comes across the railway harbor

administration block. The Man observes material changes in the buildings that have

taken place soon after the independence to Ghana. Broad literature on Ghana and

Nkrumah emerged in the 1960s. Early scholarly writings included political histories of

the country and a plethora of biographical work. Other emphases have included the

nature of the hand over of power in Ghana; the emergence of political opposition to

Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP); the rise and nature of the one-party state

Nkrumah created in independent Ghana; and his economic policies from 1957 to 1966.

In his book, The Political And Social Thought Of Kwame Nkrumah by Ama Biney, the

following writings were observed:

There is a particular poignancy to the history of Ghana because it was the

pioneer. Kwame Nkrumah was more than a political leader; he was a
prophet of independence, of anti-imperialism, of Pan-Africanism. His oft-
quoted phrase ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom’ was not just a call for
Ghanaians to demand a voice in the affairs of state. But a plea for leaders
and ordinary citizens to use power for a purpose—to transform a
colonized society into a dynamic and prosperous land of opportunity
(p.17).

Similarly, Amilcar Cabral, the Guinea Bissau leader, characterized Nkrumah in

his eulogy as “the strategist of genius in the struggle against classic colonialism” (p.17).

Hodgkin observed that Nkrumah’s “radical Pan-Africanism had an influence on the

attitudes and behaviour of a substantial body of people” (p.13). In terms of the positive

impact of Nkrumah, the founding president of Namibia, Sam Nujoma, maintains,

“Ghana’s fight for freedom inspired and influenced us all, and the greatest contribution to

our political awareness at that time came from the achievements of Ghana after its

52
independence” (p.17). Nkrumah lost his wager with Houphouet-Boigny, failing to

transform Ghana in to an economic paradise. Whether this was an account of the

socialist shift he made in 1961 is debatable, for Ivory Coast was economically aided by

its Former colonial master, France.However, as Young argues,

the Nkrumah shift in 1961 appeared part of a much broader movement in

Africa” that was committed to creating a more egalitarian society on
socialist lines in achieving material prosperity. Along with Friedland and
Rosberg, he maintains that the ideological spectrum broadened during the
first two decades of African independence and socialism became an
attractive ideology to several African leaders. Similarly, Killick contends
that Nkrumah’s adoption of a socialist economic strategy was a part of the
general trend toward development economics adopted by many developing
countries at the time (pp.18-19).

It is observed later that, the Man entering into his office. On arriving the station,

he finds the night clerk falling indeed sleep. When he awakens he informs the Man all

the problems occurred over the night among others; the death of control telephone at

Kajokrom and other lines. The night clerk has not completed some of his responsibilities

like logging the date. Later, the Man completes the work instead of him. During this

time, a messenger came happier into the office saying that he won a 100 cedi in lottery.

The Man also smiled towards the lottery money but for which the messenger had little

hope. He is under the impression that some officials at the lottery place will take some

notes from that as a bribe and allows him to take the rest. “The Man is a mere watcher of

his society” (p. 7). He watches the differences which have taken place. When the man

was just settling into the ‘comforting loneliness’ of an evening’s overtime, when he was

still in his office, a stranger named Amakwa, a timber merchant came inside. He came to

offer bribe to the man because his timbers are rotting in the forest for lack of transporting

in the trains, but the Man replies him negatively as. “I am sorry and say I have nothing to

53
do with allocations, I have my job: the booking clerk has his job “don’t interfere with

him” (p.29).

The Man says to the stranger that he is not responsible with the allocation of

luggage train rather with passengers. Later, the timber dealer purposely shows up after

office hours. There is a propitious time to offer bribery to the Man who is the only

worker left behind when all the others must have gone home. Amakwa brings out of his

purse two cedi notes to bribe the Man and says, “take that one for yourself and give the

other to your friend.”(p.30). But the Man with all his innate qualities and fairness of

mindset, naturally rejected the offer made to him. But one cannot understand the

concrete reason for which the Man refused the offer. It is clear from the following

conversation; “But what is wrong?” the visitor asked the Man again “Wrong?” Yes my

friend. Why do you behave like that?’ “I don’t know, the Man said” (p. 31).

Charles R. Larson, rightly commented in “Saturday Review”, Vol. LV, No.10;

When Ayi Kwei Armah published his first two novels, The Beautyful
Ones Are Not Yet Born and Framents, many of his countrymen were
offended by the picture he presented of life in post-independence day
Ghana. Armah depicted an African Wasteland, where corruption in the
government was rampant and where the African intellectual educated
abroad, felt totally out of place, frustrated to the point of rage or despair
by his inability to make any changes in the system. Although Armah’s
criticism was specifically aimed at the sterility of contemporary
Ghananian life, indirectly it was pointed away from Africa especially at
western commercialism and neo-colonialism (p. 73).

In order to decipher, the reasons that operated in the mind of the Man, one needs

to understand the then existing socio-economic conditions of the colonial system and the

post colonial exploitative social order. The railway network was primarily developed by

the colonialists to export the wealth in a massive scale, the natural wealth and resources

54
of Ghana –timber, cocoa and gold. The Man perhaps has thought that allowing the

export to the colonialists would be a major crime than accepting the bribe.

Further, one can also view the historical fact that exposes the fleecing and selfish

nature of the colonial plunderers notwithstanding the grave necessities of the native sons

of the soil. Muein Wa Muiu in his article “Colonial and Post-colonial State and

Development in Africa” in Social Research wrote:

Whatever the colonial power needed from cocoa, coffee, peanuts, minerals
to rubber, the colony was forced to produce without any regard to human
rights. E.D. Morel has demonstrated the inhumane methods used by the
Belgains in the Congo to force the Congolee to produce rubber (Morel,
1969: 120). The need of the colony was not important. Trade relations
benefited the colonial power.

Colonial powers imposed unfavorable terms and strongly skewed

economic activities towards extractive industries and exportation of
primary goods. These conditions stimulate little demand to improve skills
and educational levels of the work force, a situation that continued into
post-independence states (p.1314).

Throughout the novel, the Man behaves in the same vein with a hunger for moral

and ethical impulses. The Man and the Conductor have opposing attitudes to gold; the

former is confusedly withdrawn from it, the later pathologically drawn to it. The colonial

history of his own mother country was severely and brutally oppressed by the imperialist

forces, which the humankind cannot afford to forget. Mere words are not sufficient to

describe the heinous way the people of the land were subjected to torture both physically

and mentally. One needs to look at the writings on the History of Colonial Africa and try

to see the facts; According to Robert W. July, in The Origins of Modern African Thought:

Africa and Europe were inextricably bound up with each other, for it was
Europe which had brought the uplifting influence of Christianity to west
Africa and it was Europe which have to assist in raising African
civilization from its barbarous ways. War and plunder, kidnapping and
pillage, slavery and extortion had devasted the land depopulated whole

55
 districts. People were brought and sold like cattle, captives were
incinerated when no slave markets was found for them, the victims of the
constant warfare-women, children. The aged-expected no mercy from
their conquerors, the sick and wounded committing suicide, mothers
killing their babies to prevent captures or abandoning them in the bush in
their headlong flight from death and slavery. Of the various colonial
powers (England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain), the first
goal was to take over the economic control of the colonies by controlling
not only the raw materials but the markets as well. At the heart of this
control was African labour, which was essential for any success of the
colonial venture (p. 260).

Armah with all his academic, intellectual and patriotic fervor has come down very

heavily on the barbaric practices of the colonialists and the exploitation and plunder of

the natural resources and labor power by the British. A reader of the novel will be able to

superimpose the true patriotic portrait of the writer Armah onto his explorative

personality.

Next it is seen, the Man finishing his work hours and starts returning to his home.

On the way to home he meets Koomson and his wife Estella as they are going to

nightclubs. He talked with him for some time and promised the Man that they will visit

his home on sunday. His excellence Joseph Koomson, Minister, Plenipotentiary, Member

of the Presidential Commission, hero of the socialist labour was the Man’s classmate at

school. Through the party he has risen from the dockyards to the villa in the upper

residential area, equipped by the State Furniture Corporation with the latest of everything.

The Man himself is troubled, as he admits when he visits the villa by envy and self doubt.

At the bus-stand there are merchandise women selling slices of bread. One woman

asks Koomson to buy more bread for his girl friend but Koomson refuses by saying that

he does not have any girl friends. This surprises the woman as she says, “have you ever

seen a big man without girls?” (p. 37). Soon the bus arrives and the waiting people slide

56
towards it, but the conductor walks away down the road. In a few moments, the waiter

could hear the sound of his urine hitting the ‘clean-your-city’ board. After urinating, the

conductor goes to the bread sellers and returns while eating a shiny loaf of bread. With a

full mouth, the conductor shouts at those who have already climbed inside the bus.

Across the aisle on the seat opposite, an old man is sleeping and his mouth is open to the

air rushing in with many particles. On the way back to his home, the Man came across

Koomson who is in a white suit which is gleaming in that night. In this context, Armah

introduces Koomson as the black-white man. After the journey is over the Man gets

down the bus and arrives to his home and explains to his wife, his meeting with

Koomson, and his wife Estella. Oyo is not showing any interest towards his husband’s

words. But again the man started saying that “they were going to ‘Atlantic-Caprice.’ I

shook hands with his wife, and I can smell her still. Her hand was wet with the perfume

stuff” (p. 42). Gareth Griffiths narrates in “Structure and Image in Ayi Kwei Armah’s

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yey Born” in Studies in Black Literature, about Koomson:

“The black-white man is invisible because he is merely a caricature. He has no social or

economic reality, no personal identity. Solely the objects with which he surrounds

himself, and from which he builds his personality define his reality. Now the Teacher is

clearly identified with the old sources of African culture”(p .2). As Gareth Griffiths

again narrates “Teacher is symbol of a kind of experience, a symbol of the timeless, non-

technological, romantic and anthropological African experience. He is juxtaposed to

Koomson, the black-whiteman, the modern elitist, the hatchet man of the consumer

revolution” (p. 9). Oyo is not at all happy with his message from her husband as she

replies, “Mummmm – Life has treated her well” (p. 42). He also informed to Oyo and

57
her mother that they would come to see their family next Sunday. Mockingly Man tells

his wife, “These were the socialists of Africa fat, perfumed soft with the ancestral,

softness of chiefs who had sold their people and able celestially happy with fruits of the

trade” (p. 131). The man also tells her about how he has declined the offer from

Amakwa. But rather than being highly praised his wife sarcastically refers to him as

Chichi dodo bird, “Ah, you know, the Chichidodo is a bird. The Chichi dodo hates

experiment but feeds on maggot, and you know maggots grow best inside the lavatory.

This is the Chichidodo. The women was smiling” (p. 45).

It is observed that the Man visiting the Teacher. On his way, he reminds one of

his old friends named Rama Krishna, who attempts to live without corruption, he led his

life very simple by eating only honey and vinegar. In spite of his efforts, corruption and

decay overtake him. This shows that the Man is in a state of suspicion to fight against

corruption and decay. This uncertainty makes him weak, unheroic opponent of corruption

and remains him just as a ‘watcher’ till the end of the novel.

Ama Ata Aidoo, in “An Introduction to The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born”,

strongly criticized the vision of Armah upon the post-independent Ghana. She said:

One could say that perhaps Mr. Armah has allowed his revulsion at all this
to influence his use of visible symbols to describe the less visible but
general decay of the people and the country. Even a “bad” Ghanaian (one
who does not believe in the national uniqueness in all things) could find it
difficult to accept in physical terms the necessity for hammering on every
page the shit and stink from people and the environment. Whatever is
beautiful and genuinely pleasing in Ghana of about Ghanaians seems to
have gone unmentioned in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.

Yet, what kind of beauty is that which is represented by a human being

like that avaricious tinsel of an Estella? Or what could be pleasing in the
heartless betrayal of a people’s hopes? And can there be anything at all
beautiful about that, when an atmosphere is polluted any way, nothing
escapes the general foulness? (p 12).

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 The Man came to the Teacher with great disappointment and distress upon

himself. In fact, the man had great hope on the Teacher and believed that he would

console him. First he started discussing his problems which he is facing with his wife.

The man also expresses how Oyo and her mother are no longer listening to him rather his

Excellency Josephn Koomson. He also explains how Koomson has fooled them claiming

that he would buy them a fishing boat, so they are using boat to despise and hit man on

the head. “My wife and her mother think he is about to make them rich” (p. 56).

Koomson is Oyo’s ideal person and she points out her husband’s inability to earn money

like Koomson. He also explains to the teacher how Oyo tries to use philosophical ideas

to persuade a man to take corruption, “Life was like a lot of roads, long roads, short roads

. . . wide and narrow, steep and level all sorts of roads and the human beings were like so

many people driving their cars on all the roads” (p. 58). “Those who wanted to get far

had to drive fast . . . Accidents would happen but the fear of accidents that never keep

men from driving, and Joe Koomson had learnt to drive so faster” (p. 58). She bluntly

tells him: “may be you are like crawling that we do, but I am tired of it. I would like

to have someone drive to me where I want to go” (p. 44). Listening to his wife’s words

the Man gets irritated towards her and says, “I am asking myself what is wrong with me.

Do I have some part missing?” (p. 60).

Prof. K. Damodar Rao rightly said that,“the social oblivion Teacher has imposed

upon himself has much to do with dissatisfaction with the post-independent situation.

The degradation in all walks of life as a result of the ‘easy slide’ towards the ‘blinding

gleam’ which forces him to adopt lonely posture”(p.7). The Teacher realizes that he

cannot redeem it, and so reduces himself in his own way by not participating even in the

59
normal social activity. He withdraws into his shell of isolation in which his freedom is

indistinguishable from its non-existence. “It (freedom) makes no difference. If we can’t

consume ourselves for something we believe in freedom makes no difference at all. You

see, I am free to do what I want, but there is nothing happening now that I want to join”

(p. 61).

While conversation with the Man, Teacher remembers in a flashback of his two

old friends who shared his revolutionary fervour - Maanan, the prostitute and Koffi Billy,

the dock-worker who had lost his right leg beneath the knee while doing work. Instead

he was commented by his boss that he deserved it because he had been playing and he

was dismissed from the job without any compensation. Due to this frustration Koffi Billy

makes friendship with sister Mannan to smoke ‘WEE’. They smoked ‘Wee’ together and

‘swallowed all the keen knowledge of betrayal’. He decided to live alone without family

because of frustration. It was Maanan who enthusiastically greeted the ‘new one’

(Nkrumah) and saw a new ray of hope in him. But soon their expectations are belied and

Teacher is forced to comment: “How could this have grown rotten with such obscene

haste?” (p. 88). Koffi Billy committed suicide, Maanan turns mad and Teacher withdraws

into his shell with the realization that there is no difference then. No difference at all

between the white men and their apes, the lawyers and the merchants, and now the apes

of the apes, our party men.

In “Ayi Kwei Armah in Two Moods” in Journal of Commonwealth Literature,

Vol. XXVI, No.1. 1991, Tabon Lo Liyong maintains that, “‘The Beautyful Ones Are Not

Yet Born’ cannot make a convincing case against Kwame Nkrumah and his Ghana.

Armah charges Nkrumah with clinging to power beyond his youthfulness; overstaying

60
his welcome and usefulness; frustrating younger Ghanaians who wanted to take over;

running a corrupt government; letting the colonial heritage full to pieces” (p.1).Liyong

wants to see all these odd characteristics in most of the rulers in the rest of the world and

hence finds no fault with Nkrumah. Hence Liyong remarks:

There are no specific charges against Nkrumah himself.True, we would

have liked Ghana to have been born beautiful, healthy as a baby, and have
gone through the natural stages of growth. Armah charges that the baby
was as ugly and unnatural as aboliga the frog. True, Maanan felt that
Nkrumah was to be the man to satisfy her; but, just because she did not
know of the machinations of the CIA dirty boys, she does not have to be
sent into a sea of madness. After all, she was aware that they had mixed it
all together.

Everything she should have recruited Kofi Billy and they should have
gone to fight those people who had “mixed” us so badly. But Armah
leaves them - Mannan and Billy, Still mixed up

Dealing with his opponents by locking them up in ‘preventive’ detention,

the most traditional, cruel method of the British Raj, there is no Nkrumah
gate, there is no Luwere Traiangle, there is no tonton macoute, there are
no accidentalizations of opponents in car accidents. Unless, of course,
permitting ministers to send their children to overseas schools, ministers
buying fishing boats in the names of their wives, and arranging for hard
currency to be pilfered to England are deadly sins (p. 2).

The Teacher also told to the Man that, he has alienated himself from his home

because he knows that he cannot take care of his family. He decided to live alone,

listening to music and reading. The Teacher says that he can see things but he don’t feel

anything.

Teacher shares a common view point with the man; his means of expressing it is,

however different. The one major tendency they have in common is a marked preference

for austerity; when the man goes to see him he finds teacher stretched naked in a dark

61
room listening to Congo music on the radio. Yet for teacher this austerity is the outward

form of an inner dedication which is only partly moral.

If the Man is every man, beset with temporal concerns, then Teacher is an artist

with an artist’s special plea to be heard. Commenting on the lovely sadness of the lyrics

he has been listening to on his radio, the Teacher contrasts his own attitude to such

songwriters as ‘poets who have failed’ to the inevitable general verdict that, on the other

hand poets are bandleaders who have failed.

In this context, one has to refer the historical record by a historian, Ama Biney, in

his book The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah referred the following

context:

In his campaigns, Nkrumah had promised voters that he would establish

an economic “paradise.” This presence of Africans from the diaspora was
significant, as many African Americans and West Indians considered
Nkrumah a kindred soul, having studied in the United States, revered
Marcus Garvey, and, as Walters maintains, “shared the pain of American
racism.” Also, in his visit to the United States in 1951. Nkrumah had
made a Pan-African call to African Americans to return to Africa to assist
in the continent’s development. Once again he extended an invitation to
Africa’s descendants to celebrate the birth of a new African nation.
Nkrumah’s address gave a glimpse of his vision for not only a new Ghana
but a new Africa. He announced with great emotion, “From now on,
today,

we must change our attitudes, our minds! We must realise that from now
on we are no more a colonial but a free and independent people! I am
depending upon the millions of the country, the chiefs and the people to
help me to reshape the destiny of this country.” Nkrumah warned that
respect from the world would be earned through hard work. He declared,
“we can prove to the world that when the African is given a chance he can
show the world that he is somebody.” His continued reference to the
“African” placed Ghana, a small country of six million people, at the very
center of the African stage (p. 193).

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 In strident tone, Nkrumah stated that ‘since then, there was a new Africa’ in the

world, and that new African was ready to fight his own battles and the black man was

capable of managing his own affairs. Nkrumah wanted to demonstrate to the world and

to the other nations, that they are prepared to lay their own foundation. The psychological

confidence and self-esteem Nkrumah’s words stirred African people colonial dependent

territories in Africa, in the United States and the Caribbean, cannot be overestimated.

Nkrumah’s words at this particular historical juncture inspired Africans the world and

they gave hope to millions that what had been accomplished in a transformed Gold Coast,

could be attained elsewhere.

The leader of a newly independent Ghana spoke of the need to create their own

African personality and identity. In the context of nation-building in post-independent

Africa, there was a for the demand for restructuring of political office and the state by

some ‘big men’. Against popular expectations of the people, the politics became a zero-

sum game in which the redistribution of wealth was replaced by a looting of the state’s

coffers. The systems for the allocation of goods, benefits, contracts, licenses, salaries,

appointments, and various other spoils in the postcolonial states have been became

corrupt. These institutions and systems demonstrate the authoritarian nature of the post-

colonial African state. Characteristics of such a corrupt state in the post-colonial period

have been the result of failure to redistribute wealth; the anarchic employment of

compulsion and violence by African rulers to retain power. In a manner not so dissimilar

from their colonial predecessors; and the emergence of new conflicts between the poor

and the powerful, continued even during the post-colonial Africa.

63
 In short, the failure of the African state to provide food and shelter sufficiently for

its citizens has continued the pattern of dominated and the dominant hustlers unchanged.

The consequence of such failed states has been a “disengagement from the area of the

state” (p. 190). The 1960s was a decade of ‘developmentalist authoritarianism,’ whereby

countries such as Ghana under Nkrumah attempted to modernize the inherited colonial

state and failed.

The colonial state of the 1950s was widely described as ‘the era of the activist

state’ that intervened in the affairs of colonial subjects like public labour and health and

technical expertise. According to Cooper, “the African state of the 1960s, just took over

the interventionist aspect of the colonial state to intensify it, in the name of the national

interest and to pose to the voters that the state was improving their lives” (p. 18). It

seems that Nkrumah’s own brand of ‘developmentalism authoritarianism’ had the added

imprint of Soviet central planning, which he adopted from 1962 onward. This,

influenced the restructuring of the Ghanaian economy with negative results.

Nevertheless, Ghana was not alone in such political and economic experimentation.

The aim of these references is to understand Nkrumah as a complex character

rather than as a one dimensional, larger than life figure. Much of the scholarly writing

has paid attention to Nkrumah as a shrewd political operator, a nationalist figure and a

politician but he remains an unpredictable character to define. Perhaps this is due to the

fact that he erected an almost impenetrable barrier around himself and maintained a

jealously guarded separation between his public and private life.

Robert Fraser comments; “Ultimately the Man is subdued by the realization that

he faces his dilemma alone. He is stuck with an ethical fastidiousness, which in his

64
position is completely inappropriate. He can only steer a devious course between half

hearted, dryly witty protest and tactful complicity” (p. 48).

It is observed that the Man and the teacher recollecting the days of fighting

independence to the country. He says that when the war was over, the soldiers come

back to homes broken. Later, they had gone on marches of victory. The liberation

movement seemed to offer a new beginning, but that too was subject of decay. It

remained to the Ghananian people just as an illusion.

There were men dying from the loss of hope and others were finding colourful

ways to enjoy power they did not have these men who were to lead us out of despise.

They came like men already grown fat and cynical with the eating of centuries of power

they had never struggled for old before they had been born into power, and ready only for

the grave. They also remembered the days of independence by referring to one of the

speech, which spelled in Asamansudo. The Man says that there was power in the voice

that time. What they promised that time is not visible today.

Its again from the words of Ayitte, whom one can draw the reference from Social

Research that:

Most postcolonial African leaders wield unchecked power and cannot be

held accountable, democratically or legally, for their actions. Only 16 out
of the 54 African countries are democratic and can vote out of office an
incompetent head of state. The leadership treats their countries as their
own personal property and the national treasury private preserve. The rule
of law is a farce; bandits are in change, their victims in jail. Since the
bench is packed with their cronies and allies, they can plunder the national
treasury and commit flagitious acts of repression with impunity. It is no
accident that the richest people in Africa are heads of state and ministers.
Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo once charged that corrupt
African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion from their people in the
decades since independence (pp.1204-05).

65
 After the attainment of independence, the party men lived luxurious life, fucked

women, and changed them like clothes, they even smuggled whiskey especially for the

men who make the laws.

The Teacher says that there is no difference at all among the white men and their

apes, the lawyers, the merchants and the party men. He also says that how Koomson

come to them and see the old friends, leaving all the luxurious life provided to him. He

comes to Atlantic-Caprice only for enjoyment.

It is seen that the Teacher ends his speech by saying some encouraging words.

The Man also talked about Zacharias Lagos a Nigerian working for a sawmill, and lives

like a rich, despite his small salary per month. He used to live near the cape cost. The

Man also recollected that, once while going towards the cape coast remembered that the

policeman stopped their little bus and asked the driver for kola (corrupt) because he does

not have license. This shows that even Kola gives pleasure in the chewing. The bus

driver gave him twenty five Peswas and the policemen permitted the bus finally.

It is understand that Zacharias is also a corrupt man in this society. He used to

send lot of healthy wood secretly in a company’s truck and used to sell it later. Once

when he was caught, people called him a good, generous man, and cursed the jealous

man who had reported his secret dealings. African historian Robert W. July, in The

Origins of Modern African Thought explained clearly about the various policies and

systems implemented by Nkrumah during his regime, which paved the way for his

downfall.

Outdated social and economic custom would have to go Nkrumah went

on. The extended family encouraged nepotism and a system of gifts and
bribes which rewarded indolence, retarded productivity, opposed savings
and discriminated against the energetic and resourceful. Polygamy was a

66
 further impediment as were laws of succession and inheritance designed to
stifle the creative urge.

Customs governing land holding would have to be revised to strengthen

title and enables owners to raise owners to finance commerce and light
industry in the rural areas. A desire for systematic savings, long
discouraged under traditional patterns of family responsibility, would have
to be instilled in the interests of capital accumulation. Corruption and
bribery were to be stamped out replaced by integrity in public life equal to
he task of national development (pp. 469-470).

The Man also shared about one more person called Abednego Yamoah who uses to

sell government petrol for himself, but so cleverly there is always someone else a cleaner

or a messenger to be jailed instead of Abednego. The whole world used to say that he is

a good man and felt that why they were not like him. Finally, the Teacher departs the

Man by saying the nature of nations crisis, he says: “Life has not changed. Only some

people have been growing becoming different that is all. After a youth spent fighting the

white man, why should not the president discover as he grows older that his real desire

has been to be like the white governor himself, to live above all in blackness in the big

old slave castle?” (p. 92). Koomson and his wife arrive at the Man’s house. Estella,

Koomsons wife, does not want to drink the local beer that the Man offers her. She says,

“Really, the only good drinks are European drinks. These make you ill” (p. 132). Armah

provokes in him the need to ease himself. ‘Nature is calling’ Koomson says’, He

requests for a ‘toilet,’ an iconic object of the gleam but the Man replies with sustained

sarcasm: “We have a place all right . . . Only it isn’t anything high class. It isn’t a toilet,

you see. Just a latrine” (p.134). He is subsequently led there. Somebody else at that

particular time is using the only latrine available. Therefore Koomson will have to wait

at the door. This delay will also make him survey the stinking environment of the latrine.

While standing there peering into the darkness around the bathroom hole, he can hear the

67
grumblings of the intestinal disorders and anal blasts of the user within Thrown out of his

social orbit by infinitely, nauseating symbolic patterns of experiences, Koomson is sick at

his heart. When the user “a small boy,” comes out and Koomson is shown the door and

asked to go in for his own turn, with just a single glance into the entrails of the latrine, he

turned back. B.M. Ibitokum in his essay “Visual Iconology in Armah”, narrates that:

This scene is a perfect example of the Lancon mirror image in which

the child looks at the self in the mirror. As far as the reader is
concerned as far as the deep unconscious of Koomson goes, Koomson,
despite his dainty apparel is the embodiment of moral shit. The shit of
the latrine hole from which he shies away is the concrete expression of
what he is the self is repudiating the self. The maggoteeming “entrails”
of the latrine signify depth and centrality of decay. By glancing at
these, Koomson is in reality glancing at his own innermost maggoty
self (p. 26).

Armah narrates, “It was awful, was it not, that the rich should have this effect on

the poor, making them always want to apolozise for their poverty. At all time sacrifice

future necessities just so that they could make a brief show of the wealth they could never

hope to have” (p. 131).

Robert Fraser commented in this context as;

When Koomson visits the Man’s home, the latter’s family hang on his
every word. Yet all he has to offer are cheap jokes at the expense of the
intelligentsia, together with an avowed propensity for alcohol preferably
imported. Materially he is morally bankrupt, a complete contradiction of
every thing for which the party officially stands. However, it is
Koomson whom the people envy not the man, a preference, which tells us
much about the state of the national consciousness. To many reviewers
the portrait of Koomson has seemed simply a means of slandering the
leadership (p.113).

In their dealing with Koomson, the Man and his family do not get anything

profitable. There is of course, no real change in their lives. Occasionally Koomson sends

them fresh fish, but the registration of the boat in Oyo’s name has not brought the riches

68
she and her mother expected. The Man gets so much disgusted over the hypocrisy of

Koomson that he rejects even to eat fish sent to him by Koomson. The Man realizes that

the net has been made in the special Ghanaian way that allowed the really big corrupt

people to pass through it. “A net to catch only the small, dispensable fellows, trying to

their anguished blindness to lead and to attain the gleam and the comfort the only way

these things could be done” (p. 154).

When the new regime comes there is no false optimism. The net of reform will

once again be made in the special Ghanaian way the allowed the really big corrupt

allowed the really big corrupt people to pass through it. The cloak of anonymity has been

allowed to drop to a marked degree. This is Ghana, this is Nkrumah, and this is the

actual and the here and now. The wheel has turned full circle. From the anonymous

corrupt universe of the man’s private life, of his body and his immediate surroundings,

the metaphors have circled out like stones dropped into a pond. Extending the pattern of

images until now the body of Ghana and that of the Man are continuous, his landscape

the landscape of the nation, his sufferings and sufferings of the Ghanaian people. In a

corrupt universe the only reality is one’s own consciousness. Nkurmah is only a name.

He represents nothing. To name him is merely to reinforce the sense of namelessness, the

falsity which such particularization reinforces in a world where over thrower and

overthrown are engaged only in a formal reversal of role.

“Look, contrey, if you don’t want trouble, get out.’

‘If two trains collide while I’m demonstrating, will you take the responsibility?

69
 ‘Oh,’ said the organizer, ‘if it is the job, fine, but we won’t tolerate any

Nkrumaists now, ‘you know,’ said the man slowly, you know who the real Nkrumaists

are.” (p.186)

At work presumably some months later, the Man learns that there has been a

coup, and when he gets home later that day, he finds Koomson there, fleeing the police

and the military who have taken over the government. Koomson is now in the darkened

room of the Man’s house. He is now thoroughly corrupt and the foul smell elevating

from his body indicates his spiritual rottenness. Here it is noticed that Armah cannot

resist repeating a motif and narrates. “His mouth had the rich stench of the rotten

menstrual blood” (p. 163). The man held his breath until the new smell had gone down

in the mixture with the liquid atmosphere of the partyman’s farts filling the room. At the

same time, Koomson’s insides gave a growl longer than usual, an inner fart of personal,

corrupt thunder which in its fullness sounded as if it had rolled down.

Prabhu Guptara, a well-known economist wrote in his article that:

British intervention in India started by being as corrupt as any other in our

history (whether by our own rulers or by other outside invaders). In the
17th and 18th centuries, the British looted us as much as the French, or our
own Thakurs and Baniyaas, or the Persians, or the Turks, or anyone else.
However, a religious revolution in England, called the Evangelical
Revival, led by a tiny group called the Clapham Circle, succeeded in
cleaning up within only one generation the whole of England. What had
been one of the most corrupt countries in the world became what someone
called “a moral lighthouse to the world”. Naturally, that country did not
become morally perfect, but it had become the least corrupt country in the
world. Speaking objectively, the advantage that India secured was that,
while Britain continued to be a colonial power, it became also a
developmental power in India, bringing in roads and railways and airports
and hospitals and schools and colleges and universities, the administrative
system which had been corrupt till then, was cleaned up. That is why,
though our national movement had many things against the British,
corruption was not one a major complaints before Independence (p. 97).

70
African historian Robert W. July, in The Origins Of Modern African Thought narrates

thus:

For Kwame Nkrumah, the search for modernization was the starting point,
not only for domestic policy, but for much of his strategy in foreign
affairs. If his slogan, Neo-colonialism’, reflected fear that there were
newer and more insidious forms of colonial domination, his African
personality’ meant that the African valued his freedom to work out of his
destiny in his own way, not in ways imposed upon him by either malign or
well-meaning outsiders. If Pan-Africanism, expressed a reason able to
desire to develop political and economic strength through unity, positive
Neutrality ’and Non-alignment’ were doctrines which sought to utilize that
unity to preserve past, present and future gains for an independent Africa.
Modern warfare and Arms race were obviously expensive and highly
dangerous phenomenon. Nkrumah insisted. Such a positive and articulate
programme enunciated by an attractive, energetic leader, the first to
engineer political independence in the West Africa’s post-war world, had
strong appeal to Africans and captured the imaginations of European
observers as well (pp. 471-472).

Nkrumah emerged not as an architect of African modernization, but as an idealist

corrupted by delusions of infallibility, not as a cool head capable of giving stability to

new independence but as a romantic who confused his personal judgement with absolute

truth and self-esteem with universal public approval. The result was a steady

deterioration of Ghana’s political and economic affairs and a growing isolation of

Africa’s first pan-Africanist by Africa’s own leader. This lead to the fall of Nkrumah’s

power early in 1966.

Out in the hall, Oyo tells her husband, “I am glad you never became like him”

(p.165). It is noticed that this is a change in Oyo and it is one real note of change in the

story - the relationship between man and his wife: “In Oyo’s eyes there was now real

gratitude. Perhaps for the first time in their married life the Man could believe that she

was glad to have him the way he was” (p. 165). Though the readers of this novel are

aware of Koomson’s corruption. They do feel some sort of sympathy for him as he

71
struggles like a frightened animal to squeeze his enormous body through the putrid

lavatory hole used by the night soli man. The struggle through the putrid hole enables

Koomson to experience the conditions of the life of ordinary men and women whose trust

he has betrayed. The lavatory is really the place where Koomson walk “along the latrine

man’s circuit through life” (p. 170). Heading toward the ocean and to the boat registered

in Oyo’s name, the physical, psychological, and moral degeneration of Koomson is

brilliantly brought out in the rapid transformation of his bearing. Nevertheless, there

exists a human side to this political figure that has been marginalized in the literature.

The ordinary interests, pastimes, and activities he engaged in contribute to a roundedness

of character in addition to his weaknesses and strengths and underpin what is intended to

be an intellectual biography of Nkrumah. Thirty eight years since his death, the ideas and

issues that Nkrumah lived for and wrote about continue to reverberate across the

continent. In his controversial book, Neo- Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,

published in 1965, Nkrumah denounced the rampaging nature of multinational

companies, Africa’s dependency on aid, debt, and increasing poverty in the absence of

greater continental economic and political integration. As Mazrui points out,

“Nkrumah’s book, like Lenin’s more famous Imperialism: The Last Stage of Capitalism,

identified the negative side of the current phenomenon of globalization that prevails. For

Nkrumah, African unity was neither the dream nor the fantasy that his detractors and

enemies accused him of. He considered African unity a precondition for the survival of

Africa and Africans” (P.24).

72
 After understanding the central theme of Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not

Yet Born, every reader will definitely understand that Armah has chosen the theme based

on the political and historical background of his own Nation.

The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born penned powerfully by the famous African

Novelist Armah has won laurels worldwide in the English literary world. Armah is

known across the globe for his patriotic fervor and intellectual sincerity. His post-

colonial historical fiction has attracted the attention of the scholarly critiques very much

in the contemporary society. One can find a unique contribution in the style, form and

content that Armah maintains in his writings. B.M. Ibitokun (Essay Date Spring/Fall

1993) says that:

Visual iconology in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born is an aesthetic
construct to aid understanding. The tableaux which appear rather to our
eyes than our intellect readily stick to our memories. Words, besides the
figurative ones, are easily forgotten; images remain. The artistic merit of
this novel is that it is a novel of images directed not only at sophisticated
readers but also at the generality of African readers. Armah’s use of the
visual here is an important aspect of his populist aesthetics drawn rebels
against the Gutenberg syndrome of wittiness, alphabetism, and
logocentrism (p.13).

In this particular historical fiction under reference, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born,

the Writer Armah focuses on the post independence scenario in respect of the social,

political and economic lives of his own country Ghana. He focuses specially on the

aspects of bribery, corruption, joblessness and backward mode of living among the

people of the country during the post colonial Ghana. Similarly, he also concentrates on

the colonial mindset of the people and the rulers. According to Taban Lo Liyong, in his

Essay, “Ayi Kwei Armah in Two Moods,” in Journal of Common Wealth Literature

narrates:

73
 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born was written as a criticism of
Nkrumah and his Ghana, the charges do not stick. Ayi Kwei
Armah could be fairly charged of poor judgement, or political
naivete. Fortunately, it did not matter much whether it was
Nkumah who was in power in Ghana then. It did not have to be
Ghana for testing and elaborating on the thesis. Any independent
African nation could have done. Ghana, under Nkrumah, happened
to have been the place and person Armah was more familiar with.
The failures, shortcomings of independent Africa, as visualized by
Fanon in the wretched of the earth had indeed manifested
themselves. And Fanonoist Armah chronicled these in the
Ghanaian experience. Armah chronicled these in the Ghanian
experience (p. 118).

Armah got the firm and uncompromising opinion that in the post independent Ghana,

only the rulers have changed; but not the mode and method of rule. He remarked

frequently that only the power was transferred form the white man to the hands of the

Blacks. The most heinous, uncivilized and barbaric practices of bribing, corruption,

cheating and the like have continued to stay in all walks of life. The ordinary man in bus,

in the railway station, and even in the market place is robbed and exploited conveniently.

The office staff like clerks and bus conductors too is accustomed to fleece the common

man. The Man the Hero of the novel feels hurt and get deeply humiliated over these

saddest events that he oversees and experiences personally.

The hero of the novel is observed to be just a passive spectator throughout and he

never tries to retaliate against any corrupt person, though not against the entire system

itself. Usually, the hero in any fiction or in the real history tries to make an outright

endeavour to weed out the evil and cleanses the dirt accumulated to the system.

Surprisingly, the fiction writer has attracted comments and sharp criticism over this

historic silence maintained by the Man.

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 According to Taban Lo Liyong in his Essay, “Ayi Kwei Armah in Two Moods,” in

Journal of Common Wealth Literature narrates:

The Man is a silent watcher, dispassionate, uninvolved. Not for him the
hustle and bustle. Medin before him had crossed oceans, transcended
continents, in search of frantic involvement. Baako before him had been
driven to madness by too much caring for the demands of his family, by
adopting a mental attitude against them. The man is now wiser. He makes
way for others to hurry past him, in the evening the then shares his
experience with Oyo, his wife; of Teacher, his philosophical mentor who
looks like a man in need of a teacher himself. Although Oyo wishes that
for the things of the world other fellow wives were having, she is a normal
housewife. She demands what is reasonable and a man who has no wife at
all. At the end of the novel, when the temporary world of the Koomsons
came tumbling down, she compliments her husband for having kept his
cool. Oyo’s mother is something else. She is the bullying mother-in-law.
Perhaps Akan matriarchy, where the husband comes to live with his wife’
people; become a newly recruited son to his mother-in-law, gives her
immense powers over her son-in-law (p. 18).

In contrast Chinua Achebe, the famous African novelist who in an essay, “Africa and Her

Writers” criticized on Armah’s fiction.

Achebe calls The Beautyful Ones a “sick book,” it deals not only with the
sickness of Ghana but with the sickness of human conditions. Ultimately
the novel failed to convince me. And this was because Armah insists that
this story is happening in Ghana and not in some modern, existentialist no
man’s land. He throws in quite a few realistic ingredients like Kwame
Nkrumah to prove it. And that is a mistake. Just as the hero is nameless, so
should everything else be; and Armah might have gotten away with the
modern, “universal” story. Why did he not opt simply for that easy
choice? I don’t know. But I am going to be superstitious and say that
Africa probably seized hold of his subconscious and insinuated there this
deadly, that is, to universality pretentious-to use his considerable talents in
the service of a particular people. Could it be that under this pressure
Armah attempts to tell what Europe would call a modern story and Africa
a moral fable, at the same time; to relate the fashions of European
literature to the men and women of Ghana? He tried very hard. But his
Ghana is unrecognizable. This aura of cosmic sorrow and despair is a
foreign and unusable as those monstrous machines Nkrumah was said to
have imported from Eastern European countries. Said, that is, by critics
like Armah (pp. 41-2).

75
 Achebe also comments that, Armah is clearly an alienated writer, a modern writer

complete with all the symptoms. Unfortunately, Ghana is not a modern existentialist

country. It is just a Western African state struggling to become a nation. So there is

enormous distance between Armah and Ghana. Armah is quoted somewhere as saying

that he is not an African writer but just a writer. Some other writers have said the same

thing. It is sentiment guaranteed to win applause in western circles. But it is a statement

of defeated than when he is running away from himself.

Thus, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, with its predominantly urban setting

in which the anonymous hero passively protests against the deterioration in value –

systems in the society, belongs to the analytical stage. The ‘black skin, white mask’

syndrome, which infected every walk of life, was so appalling that the novelist invested

the surroundings of Ghana with all the conceivable images of decay, rot and corruption.

These images leave behind a nauseating experience making the desire for change all the

more intense. The shock treatment is a technique employed chiefly for the purpose of

celebrating, what should have been the real aspirations of the community. Armah’s

preoccupation with the dislocation of ideals in the after math of independence adds to the

novel a political and in the larger perspective a historical dimension to the dialectical

processes at work. The Nkrumah regime in Ghana which started off on a note of

promise, slided into a mire of corruption and degeneration.

Ama Ata Aidoo, while commenting that ‘the details in the novel are incredible’,

She says that “this type of purgative exposer, however painful it is, is absolutely

necessary, depending upon whether or not one believes that truth as represented in

writing can be in any way effective in helping social change”(p.7). She is of a opinion

76
that “the novels tone is a positive one. What Armah does proclaim is that he thinks of us

. . . Perhaps the beautiful ones, when they are born and let’s prey it will be soon, will take

care of every thing and everybody once and for all time. The least we can do it is wait”

(p.7).

What Ayi Kwei Armah sets out to show in The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born

is the experience of living in a corrupt universe. The world outside the individual reflects

the world within. The novel operates through a series of remarkable metaphorical links,

which institute a set of correspondence between the body of man, his society and his

landscape. The novel dwells obsessively on the process by which the body converts food

into excreta, reflecting the obsession with which society “consumes” goods, the shining

things, which it covets. But just as food must issue in excreta, so such caption and

consumption must issue in briber and corruption, the excrement of an aggressive drive for

the new life. The novel pictures vividly the process by which in the colonial period, the

envy and aggression of the colonized people finds expression in a self-destructive process

in which each turns upon his fellow. The increasing sense of the universality and the

inevitability of the corruption process culminate in the third section of the book in the

visit of Koomson, now deposed and fleeing arrest. Koomson terrified and broken is a

literal body of corruption provides a return to the initial birth.

Ayi Kwei Armah who grew up in those revolutionary years in America was

committed firmly to the liberation of the black race. He told us what he hated in The

Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born presidential clinging to power, corruption. Ineptitude,

the general temptation of the populace to sins for whatever little gains they may get, and

forgetfulness about what independence was all about.

77
 The years following the fall of Nkrumah were very rich in terms of the production

of Ghanaian literature. They were especially fertile years for the growth of the novel, and

roughly three times the number of novels, popular and elite came out in this period, as in

all the other periods combined. In 1968, Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

came out, and then in 1971. Awoonor’s This Earth, My Brother appeared. How very

different from their predecessors these novels seemed more in line with post-modernist

fiction in Europe than developments in Ghana. Where earlier Ghananian novels followed

an objective and realistic mode of representation with a strictly linear chronological

structure, these novels followed a more subjectivity and impressionistic mode of

representation with a very fragmented chronological structure.

In fact, the movement the movement away from temporal time takes us in the

direction of myth, and both writers seem to shape their work around symbolic structure of

myth and ritual. Yet these two works are also more overtly political than most Ghanaian

novels of the period, and they offer some scathing commentary on post-independence

problem. A number of critics have seen This Earth and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet

Born, their abundance of scatological images, as constituting depressing nay-saying

commentary on all that is in Africa. In This Earth Anwoonor writes of the protagonist

dashing through traffic across a senseless roundabout which used to be named for the

man they through out, now for the abstraction for which they threw him out. For the

protagonist of Anwoonor and Armah history is, in the Joycean sense, a nightmare from

which they are trying to escape. The best of the past, in myth and ritual, is put forth by

both the writers as the source of positive vision and will enable their society to transcend

the nightmare.

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 Armah presents his vivid scenes through the use of imagery and symbolism,

among other devices. In The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born Armah articulates his

repugnance against social and political corruption in high and low places by exploiting

symbols of filth, human excrement, and obscenity. There is what had once been a

gleaming white waste container, still bearing the legend ‘Keep Your Country Clean By

Keeping Your City Clean’; the container attracts the worst kinds of filth and, within a

very short time, gets buried under the weight of filth. There is the recurrent image of the

public latrine with the rows of cans encrusted with old shit; the latrine (in the man’s

house) with the wooden box seat encrusted with old caked excrement, the shit-hole

through which both the man and Honourable Koomson pass. “The latrine becomes a

symbol for the Ghanaian body politic, decayed, and stinking with corruption, just as the

latrine reeks of excrement” (Palmer, 1972: p.135). The nation itself is symbolically

presented as a rickety omnibus whose decayed parts are held together by rust: What

happens in the bus is a parable of what happens in the country as a whole. The bus, like

the State, is in a state of decay, its pieces only held together by rust. The passengers

represent the ordinary citizens, and the driver and conductor are authority, conniving to

defraud citizens and, if caught, to bribe them into silence.

The novel under reference a powerful write up of Armah is an uncompromising

and powerful attack on the colonialism and political corruption in Ghana in specific and

the third world countries in general.

The title The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born was very aptly coined by the

novelists Armah in such way that the readers realist clearly that whatever beautiful things

that the people under Colonial Ghana dreamt of were not yet born even during the post-

colonial regime. Ghana became an independent country on 6th March 1957. Serious

problems like corruption, Slavery, racial discrimination and nepotism were not vanished

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and equal justice and freedom were not offered to people under the leadership of their

own rulers. On the other hand, the days of post-independence resulted a lot of

disappointment to common man. Rich becoming richer, poor becoming poorer, lot of

corruption had spread over the administration. Only Materialistic changes have taken

place but not at the ethical levels. Previously, it was the whites who looted the people

and thereafter it was the turn of their own native leaders who are doing the same job. It’s

like a old wine in a new bottle. Thus the Armah’s title The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet

Born is quite fitting and charming.

As was narrated in the aforementioned paragraphs, the novelist Armah had very

beautifully reflected the real history of Ghana into fiction form. Armah had taken up the

history of Ghana as the place of description in his fiction. He had also taken up the role

of Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana in his fiction and described his mode of anti-

people rule during the post-colonial Ghana. So the novelist had lived very closely to the

reality.

Similarly one can observe the corrupt history and bitter experiences of the

victimised people of Ghana through the characters of the Man and Teacher. During the

Nkrumah’s most inefficient and unpatriotic rule several corrupt officials followed the

footprints of the leader. Armah had very succinctly and lucidly illustrated the evil

practices of such evil sheep through the characters like the bus Conductor and Minister

Koomson. In nutshell, the novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born stands a

monumental and scholarly work penned by a great personality, Armah who could

successfully resembled the real history of Ghana in the fiction a most beautiful way.

*****

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