Devil on the Cross

Devil on the Cross opens and closes with The Gĩcaandĩ Player, a traditional storyteller, who acts as both narrator and prophet. This framing device connects the narrative to Kenyan oral traditions, lending cultural authenticity to the story and elevating Warĩĩnga’s personal struggles to a level of broader social significance. The novel also employs multiple layers of storytelling; within the main narrative, characters often tell their own stories or recount tales. For example, Warĩĩnga relates the hypothetical story of Kareendi, which is implied to be her own story, in order to distance herself from her painful past. As a consequence, this technique allows the narrative to contain a multiplicity of voices, showing the different sides of Kenyan society from a multitude of sources, from the exploited to the exploiters.

Additionally, the central event of the novel, the Devil’s Feast, is structured around storytelling. Competitors take turns relating their personal stories of theft and robbery, using narrative as a means of boasting about their exploitative practices. In combining traditional storytelling practices with a contemporary obsession with money and status, the novel explores how neo-colonial structures can incorporate traditional behaviors and values to further integrate themselves into a post-colonial state. However, the stories told by the thieves and robbers at the Devil’s Feast serve as a form of satirical critique of capitalist and neo-colonial practices. Through these exaggerated narratives, the novel exposes and ridicules the logic of exploitation.

Finally, storytelling also functions as a form of resistance. When Mũturi and others give speeches to the crowd at the end of the Devil’s Feast, they use storytelling to inspire and mobilize the workers against their oppressors. Warĩĩnga, too, uses this technique on an interpersonal level, bringing her own exploitation to light to deepen her relationships. Throughout the novel, stories are used both to reveal truths (as in Warĩĩnga’s backstory) and to conceal or manipulate (as in Mwaũra’s testimony at the trial). This dual nature of storytelling reflects the novel’s broader concerns with truth, deception, and perspective.