USAWIRI WA MOTIFU ZA KIMAZINGIRA KATIKA TAMTHILIA TEULE ZA SAID AHMED MOHAMED NA TIMOTHY AREGE: UHAKIKI WA KIEKOLOJIA

Abstract

The issue of climate change has recently elicited intense debate in both national and international forums. In this regard, many current literary works are focusing on environmental degradation, its effect, and the call for environmental conservation. This study investigated how environmental motifs are portrayed in the selected Kiswahili plays by Said Ahmed Mohamed and Timothy Arege. Literature is an important tool to educate and enlighten the wider public about their problems. Based on this, the emphasis was put on how Said Ahmed Mohamed and Timothy Arege in their selected Kiswahili plays focused on the environmental degradation, its effects and ways of conserving the environment. The specific objectives for the study were; to investigate how the environmental motifs have been portrayed in the selected Kiswahili plays, discuss how the stylistic devices have been used to portray environmental motifs and to evaluate the place of environmental motifs in environmental conservation as portrayed by writers of selected Kiswahili plays. The study was guided by Ecocriticism theory that was founded by Glotferty (1996), which analysis the literary works by examining the relationship and the interdependence between human beings and the physical environment. The research was carried out in the library where the selected Kiswahili plays were read. The researcher purposively selected two plays by Said Ahmed Mohamed and two plays by Timothy Arege for the study. Data was collected through close-textual reading of the selected texts focusing on different environmental motifs as portrayed by writers of the selected texts. Data analysis was done in descriptive prose based on the tenets of ecocriticism theory and categorized in reference to the three objectives guiding the study. The research findings indicated that the selected Kiswahili plays that were analyzed focused on various environmental issues such as environmental degradation and its impacts as well as indicating ways in which the environment can be conserved. This study is expected to be useful to literature scholars and critics by bringing to light the issue of environmental motifs in the context of ecocriticism theory. It also adds to the existing knowledge on environmental literature as well as benefiting environmental stakeholders and environmentalists in Africa and the world at large.