Kukathas is a freelance writer and a student in the Ph.D. program in philosophy at the University of Washington specializing in social, political, and moral philosophy. In the following essay, she examines how the narrative technique of Petals of Blood is used to underscore its theme of alienation and soften the didacticism of its political message.

Many critics who have offered analyses of Petals of Blood have called attention to the novel's unusual narrative structure. In the work Ngugi uses multiple points of view to weave together the tales of his four main characters and the people around them. Fragmentary bits of information are revealed by two narrators and persons of varying backgrounds, and the reader must fit together characters' confessions, reminiscences, reports, musings, and sometimes dim remembrances to understand the truth of the story. The cumulative effect of the many-sided narration is that the reader...