ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses how the symbolism of human relations projects ethnic violence in Kenya as portrayed in Kinyanjui Kombani’s The Last Villains of Molo (2004), Muroki Ndung’u’s A friend of the Court (1994), and Ogova Ondego’s From Terror to Hope. The chapter posits that the positioning of a character (or characters) within a given text can render them the status of a symbol (or symbols) and hypothesizes that the corroborated result of the characters’ interactions (symbols interacting with symbols) point to certain symbolic outcomes whose authorial rendering deems favoured over others. Based on these suppositions, this chapter explores the portrayal of ethnic violence in the selected novels showing how, through the characters, a unique authorial rendering is provided towards the forms of ethnic violence depicted in the novels. Content analysis has been employed in interpreting the symbolic roles of specific characters in the three texts by following up on their development from their entry to their exit as players in the narrative of ethnic violence.
