The Image of Africa and Africans in selected Anglophone Expatriate Novels

Abstract

The spate of tremendous catastrophic upheavals in the world today, the high rate of pockets of ethnic and sectarian violence and a retrospective insight into the first World War (1914 – 1918), second World War, (1939 – 1945) and the September, 11, 2001, bombing and total destruction of the World Trade Centre (WTC) and the Pentagon in the United States of America by Osaman Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group that led to great loss of lives and property, (all the deadly actions perpetrated by people whose skin is not black) necessitate a compelled revisit to Expatriates’ novelists perception and depiction of Africa as a dark continent, a cursed geographical region infested by deadly animals and Africans as mature devils, half-wits, adult-children and sub-human beings who are bound to violence; and as people who lack comprehensible language, authentic history, workable economic and political system and whose religion is a compendium of paganism, atheism, polytheism, animism and necromancy; people who are often found quarrelling, laughing, crying or fighting. This study therefore reveals the unbelievable, shocking and derogatory perception and depiction of Africa and Africans in selected expatriate novels. It shows that Africans do not possess the monopoly of violence and animalistic tendencies.