Referring to Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Related to the novel’s invocation of Christian imagery is its emphasis on the act of storytelling. Many of the characters in the novel tell long, extended stories, often in the form of a parable. Most notably, the parable is a form of storytelling often associated with Jesus Christ, who often used simple stories to illustrate a larger moral principle or lesson for his readers. Thus, the novel employs the parable as a means of highlighting the moralistic aspects of the story. Moreover, the novel uses the parable to give a kind of fairytale-like quality to the novel. For example, in Part I, Guthera opens her story about the young girl caught between her earthly and heavenly fathers with language familiar to many readers: “First let me tell you a story...Long ago, there was a virgin. Her mother had died at childbirth” (28). The language here is akin to a modern telling of Cinderella, or some other fairytale. And yet, Guthera’s story embeds a larger, deeply political question about the role that Christianity plays in the fight for equality, economic sovereignty, and social mobility after independence.