The Green Leaves: by Grace Ogot's Full Summary and Analysis With Background Topics Linked Helpful For Exams

The green Leaves
By Grace Ogot’s
Full Summary and Analysis with Background
topics linked
Helpful for Exams
Grace Ogot
Characters:
1 Nyagar (protagonist)
2 Nyamundhe ( wife of nyagar)
3 Omogo (whose oxen was stolen)
4 Thieves
5 Omoro (who shoulder was pierced by thieves and bleeding )
6 White Police officers
7 Olielo (leader of the clan)
Grace Ogot’s
short story
“The Green Leaves,” from her 1968 collection of short stories
called
Land without Thunder
, was published by the East African Publishing House in
Nairobi,Kenya. Many of the stories in this collection are loosely
based on tales that her grandmothertold her as a young girl
growing up in rural western Kenya. More than simply folk tales,
Ogot’s s
hort stories also reflect, through the traditional genre of the
folk tale, a number of
recent developments in Kenya’s history, in particular its colonial
past and subsequent
national independence movement, its changing gender roles,
and its economic and urbangrowth.As a writer coming of age at
the time of Kenyan independence in 1963, Ogot turned to
theconflicts that occurred between the Luo people and the
colonialists as a source for her
stories. In particular, the early stories of Ogot, such as “The
Green Leaves,” reveal the
tenuous grasp that many indigenous cultures in Kenya had on
their traditional ways of life
with the takeover of Kenya’s political and economic
infrastructure by British colonial forces.
This is rendered in the scene in which tension flares between
the clan leader Olielo and the
white policeman over the “right” way to deal with robbery. The
two different systems of
justice are brought into conflict with the traditional way, that
of murdering the thief, beingseen as barbaric and outdated.Not
only does Ogot reflect on the injustices of the colonial system in
Kenya, but she alsocontributes to an aspect of literature that,
for the most part, was overlooked by manyAfrican writers who
at the time were predominantly male: the experiences of being
a blackAfrican woman. Specifically, her stories often reveal the
limitations of men and the inabilityof women to make a cultural
impact due to being disempowered by patriarchy within
bothtraditional and colonial societies. Thus, Ogot brings a dual
perspective to her works thatcenters on issues of oppression
due to gender and complicated by nationality andcolonialism.
Written in 1968, Grace Ogot’s short story “The Green Leaves”
takes place over the course of
one night and the following morning. Yet within this short time
frame, Ogot effectivelyillustrates the negative effects of
colonialism on indigenous people in East Africa. She does
this by developing a number of different conflicts that are both
internal, as seen in Nyagar’s
conflicted emotions, and external, as rendered in the verbal
exchanges between the
European police officer, the clan leader, Olielo, and
Nyamundhe, Nyagar’s wife. Ogot uses
third-
person omniscient point of view as a method of revealing the
clan’s vulnerability to
colonization due to deteriorating communal values. What were
once beliefs and values thatthey assumed to share are now in
flux. These changes disrupt the clan and create conflicts
among them. Ultimately, “The Green Leaves” is an indictment
of the British colonia
l periodin Kenya that divided communities and introduced
values and customs that conflicted withindigenous ones.Ogot
very cleverly uses third-person omniscient point of view to
illustrate the changingattitudes that the clan is undergoing due
to the introduction of Western values by colonialpowers such
as Great Britain. Often these values were imposed on
indigenous groups byprohibiting the practice of local customs,
including using vernacular languages, legalsystems, and non-
Christian religious beliefs. In this way, indigenous people were
forced tolearn colonial customs and habits even though this
often generated divisions among them.However, the
intentional weakening of traditional communities served to
strengthen thecolonizing presence, making them less
threatening and more easily assimilated into thecolonial
system. This strategy is acknowledged by the clan leader,
Olielo, when he tells theclan members of his plan for all of
them to take responsibility for the thief s death because ,

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