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本文是一篇英语论文范文，笔者认为在漫长的创作生涯中，古尔纳始终没有放弃对成长小说的偏爱，只不过古尔纳在非洲殖民、后殖民语境下，挪用了经典成长小说，反写了这一文学体裁，形成了独特的非洲反成长小说。

Chapter One Disruption of Childhood and Trauma

1.1 Colonial Economic Plunder and Yusuf’s Trauma in Paradise

In his analysis of Memory of Departure and Paradise, Okungu argues that Gurnah’s depiction of childhood seems to “question the idea of foreign powers as the destabilisers of African families and polluters of the hitherto pure children bred within moralizing African traditions” because the factors impacting on childhood presented in his two novels are much more internal, “not directly related to colonial incursion” (36).  

In fact, there are no imagined or idealized “pure children bred within moralizing African traditions” (Okungu 36) in Gurnah’s fictions. It is true that Gurnah never attempts to blame the colonizers for all the problems of the African continent. In his writing, Gurnah “does not idealise Africans as they were before the full impact of colonization” with a sense of nostalgia (Bardolph 81). In Maslen’s words, when describing the complex East Africa, Gurnah “restores the brilliance and wealth of its varied cultures and traditions, the good and the bad in all their human diversity” (55). 

However, neither does Gurnah ignore the impact of colonization on the development of African children. Especially in Paradise, Gurnah emphasizes the impact of colonialism on Yusuf’s family and his development by the subtle change of the third person narrator. In Paradise, Okungu’s argument does not focus on the impact of colonialism on the protagonist Yusuf’s family, which indirectly interrupts Yusuf’s childhood and leads to severe psychological trauma.

1.2 Violence, Numbness, Colonial Oppression and Hassan’s Trauma in Memory of Departure 

Memory of Departure tells the coming-of-age story of Hassan Omar, an African teenager living in a twisted family. Eldred Jones, in his study of African literature, underscores the impact of paternal cruelty and harshness on children’s development: “far from being merely nostalgic yearnings for a lost paradise, many of the treatments of childhood have exposed a grim reality of cruelty, harshness (particularly paternal) egocentrism and extraordinary bruising of the vulnerable child psyche” (7). Gurnah’s Memory of Departure depicts a protagonist who is “the recipients of parents’ misconduct as well as the carriers of their failings” (Okungu 108) and suffers from severe phycological trauma. In his early childhood, Hassan suffers from his father’s violence and mother’s numbness in the twisted family. At the same time, Gurnah suggests in detail the impact of colonization and incomplete independence on the protagonist’s growth. 

1.2.1 Violence and Numbness in Hassan’s Family and Colonial Oppression

In Hassan’s family, the father, Omar bin Hassan, is a tyrannical figure who “seemed to be capable of any cruelty” (MD 14). According to Hassan’s observation, “[w]hen he was younger, my father was a troublemaker. When he came home at night his stick was covered with blood and hair, and there was never a mark on him” (MD 13). He always hangs out at night and beats his wife and children, bringing misery and suffering to his family. 

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