Larry Ndivo

Aesthetics & Textual Cohesion: Organic Unity in Alex La Guma's Time of the Butcherbird Larry Ndivo

Alex La Guma has been widely studied but more specifically as a revolutionary writer. Scholarly works on La Guma pay tribute to the author's creativity in depicting the indigenous people's struggle against deprivation, subjugation, oppression and outright disregard for basic human rights such as the right to ancestral land. The writer's deft hand in underscoring such pertinent matters is best exemplified in his literary texts both the short stories and the novels. Social and political consciousness is considered as a key thematic concern for La Guma. In this study, Larry Ndivo examines the unusual departure by the writer from his structural norm in the earlier texts. He seeks to demonstrate that La Guma adopts a deliberate physical and artistic move aimed at earning the writer's last novel its aesthetic beauty and textual cohesion. He discusses how the writer achieves organic unity by creatively synchronizing the text's form and content.