Censorship of the Creator and His Creation: a Postcolonial Reading ofMongo Beti’s Perpetua

Abstract

The liberty to express one’s self either in speech or in writing, since antiquity, has
always been curbed by repressive governments. Even leaders of the nations who
boast of freedom of expression for their citizens today were once bastions of
gruelling repression against anyone who dared criticize any of their actions.
African nations have not been spared from this very negative phenomenon most
especially when one considers the aftermath of the quest for and gain of
independence that manifested in the early nineteen sixties. In this paper we delved
into a postcolonial analysis from two perspectives: censorship of the creator and
his creation. The creator in this case, Mongo Beti, suffered greatly under the yoke
of censorship which eventually led to self-exile from his home country, Cameroon.
In one of his literary works, Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness chosen for
this analysis, we examined how Beti uses symbolism, fictional characters and
setting to surreptitiously depict real individuals and places in Cameroon thus
attempting, though unsuccessfully, to escape the censor’s eagle eyes. In order to
effectively drive home our point, we depended on post colonialism as a literary
theory.