Palangyo's Dying in The Sun as a Solution to The Neomodernist Mind Style

Abstract

This essay studies the dialectics of modernist, postmodernist and neomodernist mind-style as exemplified in Peter Palangyo's novel, Dying in the Sun (DITS). Set in East Africa, the novel, especially, its first half with its tragic vision replete with harrowing images of sickness, suffering, despair and death, has often been described as an example of African neo-modernist writing. But this study appropriately locates it within the context of the 'anti-modernist' temper of postmodernism. The research investigates the author's and main character's narrative mind style referred to in modernism as stream of consciousness, its historicity and landscape imagery as symbols of the defeat of despair and cynicism as well as the resurgence of hope which dominates the second half of the novel. It considers the development of the character's perception as well as the narrator's point of view from cynicism and death to hope and understanding, and concludes that Palangyo's visionary mind style in the novel is an African solution to modernist cynicism and nihilism.

Keywords: Modernism, Postmodernism, Neo-modernism, Mind Style, Cynicism, Solution.