Ngugi Wa Thiang’o’s Early Studentship: The Role of Education in the Making of a Great African Literary Writer

Abstract

Do you know that most prolific or acclaimed writers the world celebrates have detected their talent since their prime? Do you also know that some renowned writers taught themselves or were taught by their masters at home prior to when they began to write? Do you know that some of them have not acquired profound formal education up to the university? Yet, it should be known that there are innumerable others, who greatly vary, for they have deeply studied instead. Writing is a natural prodigy; hence it requires no profound literacy to blossom. Take some immediate common instances in mind: Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Sembene Ousmene, Wole Soyinka, Aye Kwei Armah, Naguib Mahfouz, Ngugi wa Thiong’o to name just but a few. At any rate, education is the fulcrum and the nucleus to writing no matter how little it is acquired. This is the focus of which this paper is concerned about. Its prime goal is to unveil how Ngugi’s early educational sojourn from the primary school through to the university has rolled out the writing carpet for him to step on as a novice writer, and to keep striding on it with varying degrees of artistic, strength and vigour, which subsequently cleared the challenging path for him to emerge as a legendary and dynamic African writer.