A Comparative Psycho-Stylistics’ Critique of Le Clezio’s Onitsha and Amaka’s Rose and the Burma Sky

Abstract

Two novels produced in a retrogressive narrative, and the impact of such retrogressive view on 
the narrators cum the writers – in a posteriori stance – make the writers’ identity and concern for 
their identity one of the themes of the novels. Their expressive patterns give room to relate the 
theme to identity assertion in a world in which the powerful nations make abstraction of identities 
that are not subservient to theirs – English, French and Italian, navigating African identity or being 
haunted by it refers. Onitsha  - written by a male, J.M.G. Le Clézio, Mauritius French, is narrated 
by a female, the wife of the main character Geoffroy an Englishman; herself Italian French. Rose 
and the Burma Sky henceforth Rose, written by Rosanna Amaka, is narrated by a male from the 
perspective of grandmother’s experience. So, both novels are travesty of identities and characters, 
and to an extent anachronistic. However, the expressions or ego-laden thought patterns in them 
are shrouded in paradox and innuendo which prompt psycholinguistics and stylistics survey of the 
two writers. Their oblique style of writing is either to relate an identity of theirs that is not getting 
attention as it deserves in the troubles of the world imposed on them by the powerful nations who 
are in ‘hallucination’ of supposed glorious identity or civilisation quest riddled with war 
mongering – First and Second World Wars, moving to Third World War. Our psycholinguistic 
and stylistics analysis of the contents of the two novels reveals that their imaginary projection, 
covered in paradox and innuendo, is to reprobate the so called civilisation of the so called powerful 
nations as extremely naïve of what it takes to live a purposeful life; nay a civilisation that is more 
humane than theirs; that leads to the unity of the sub-races; working for centripetal culture that is 
panhuman.