THE PROLETARIAT IN AFRICAN PROLETARIAN NOVEL: A SOCIOLOGICAL READING OF PETER ABRAHAM'S MINE BOY AND FESTUS IYAYI'S VIOLENCE

Abstract

Workers have been the most marginalised aspect of the human society. The rise of capitalism ensured the dehumanisation of the working class. Writers over the years have captured the plights of the working class with such verisimilitude that the genre “proletarian novel” has come to represent all works depicting the existential condition of the working class in the entanglement of capitalism. This paper seeks to investigate how writers in Africa have captured and represented the lives of the proletarian class in their fictions. Furthermore, using the principles of sociological criticism, the material condition of the workers of Africa as represented in Festus Iyayi's Violence and Peter Abrahams' Mine Boy is investigated. The novels, it is observed, were written at different phases of African history. Mine Boy was written in the epoch of colonial hegemony while Violence was written years after the deconstruction of colonial structures. However, uneducated and unskilled workers in the novels share similar fate and survived under similar existential conditions.It is concluded that, African proletariat share common fate, especially unskilled labourers who try to etch a living amidst crunching poverty, illiteracy and the scythe of capitalism. In calling the attention of the world to the abject situation of the proletariats, proletarian novelists move towards bettering the lot of the workers.