Abstract:
This article examines the construction of national consciousness in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s early novels; Weep Not, Child (1964), The River Between (1965), and A Grain of Wheat (1967) within the context of Kenya’s anti-colonial struggle. While previous studies have explored these texts through postcolonial criticism, limited attention has been paid to how digital humanities and multimodal approaches can systematically illuminate their linguistic and semiotic patterns. The study, therefore, aims to integrate postcolonial theory with digital humanities tools and multimodal discourse analysis to provide a more methodologically grounded reading of national consciousness in Ngũgĩ’s early fiction. Using Voyant Tools, a corpus of 93,495 words was analysed to identify recurring lexical patterns and thematic emphases, which were then interpreted through close reading and multimodal analysis of cultural symbols, spatial metaphors, and ritual practices. The findings reveal a sustained emphasis on collective identity, cultural preservation, and political resistance, articulated through key lexical clusters, symbolic rituals such as circumcision and oath-taking, and spatial imagery of land, rivers, and forests. The article demonstrates that combining computational observation with qualitative literary analysis offers a more controlled and transparent account of how national consciousness is articulated in Ngũgĩ’s early novels, contributing to ongoing debates in African literary studies and digital humanities.
Keywords: Digital Humanities; Multimodal Discourse Analysis; National Consciousness; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o; Postcolonial Literature
