The "Abiku" In The Kaleidoscope

Ben Okri is a contemporary writer in Nigeria, who has been referred as one of "the four guardian warriors" in postcolonial literature by the magazine TIME. His work The Famished Road explored the national culture heritage with modern consciousness, and mixed the heterogeneous culture elements with grand historical text. It is recognized as a superb novel in latest 20th century Africa. The protagonist of the novel is the representation of African cultures. From the perspective of image, culture and space, this thesis tries to interpret the rich connotation and unique artistic charm of the great work.This paper is composed of five parts in total including:preface, three chapters and conclusion.The introduction introduces the author, sums up the full text, carding and reviews the research status of Ben Okri’s The Famished Road.The text includes three chapters of discussion.In the first chapter, we compared the western literature, which has picaresque image as the central idea with African literature mode. From the dimension of the shaping image, this chapter analyzes the inheritance relationships between the local image "Abiku" with western picaresque image "Lazaro" and returning hero Odysseus, and combined the physical wandering with spirit roaming to demonstrate the irony and the consciousness of identity in this image.In the second chapter, we discuss the African aesthetics, which is constructed by magic realism. Ben Okri’s reproduces the existing situation of Nigeria from the realistic view of ecological disaster and violence, and all the magical factors are marked with a deep Yoruba culture. From the technique of expression, this chapter analyzes the Western logosism and discipline consciousness in the ecological disaster and violence. At the same time, it explains the primitive religion and non-rationality thinking. It discusses the effective strategy of the decomposition of logosism by African cultural awareness.In the third chapter, we discuss the third space by the hybridity of heterogeneous culture and its significance. With Homi K. Bhabha’s third space theory, it analyzes hybridity of Azaro’s body. At the same time, it discusses the parody of traditional mask and intertextuality between western text and oral literature to explore the unique aesthetic space in the text.Conclusion:The picaresque image of the novel reflects the variation of Western literature patterns; The African aesthetics is constructed by magic realism; The third space is constructed by the hybridity of Western cultures, parody and intertextuality. They are showing a kaleidoscopic cultural schema. From the perspective of image, heterogeneous culture and the third space, Ben Okri expressed his concern for contemporary Nigeria present situation and the thoughts of national destiny and the exploration of African independent cultural attributes. The novel express the author’s expectations about communication and negotiation with different cultural in an equal way.