Using a play I Will Mary When I want, assess features of style with citations

The play is written in verse, and the language tends to be accessible and informal. The text oscillates fluidly between dialogue and song, adding a musical quality to the entirety of the play. The authors also sometimes incorporate Kenyan words to create an impression of authenticity, such as when Kiguunda recalls how he used to “sing and dance the Mucung’wa dance” (10). These Kenyan words often accompany fond memories of the character’s pre-independence days, incorporating elements of Kenyan culture throughout the play. The songs that periodically split up the dialogue are also easy to follow and contain simple refrains, enabling the audience to participate and empathize with the characters. The simplicity of the lyrics also allows the audience to experience the characters’ memories with them, even though they do not physically take place in the present.

While the dialogue of the elite is written in the same accessible, informal style as the dialogue of the workers, the authors incorporate prayer into the dialogue of the elite rather than music, highlighting the deep religiosity of the elite. These prayers, while simple in language, do not contain the same memorable refrains as the songs that the workers sing, rendering them less relatable for the audience. The fact that the elites turn to prayer rather than song also underlines their loss of culture; they have adopted the religion of those who colonized them instead of retaining the native songs of their country.

Gicaamba sometimes adopts the language that the elite use in their prayers to reveal their hypocrisy, such as when he and Njooki sing a song with the lyrics “believe in God and He’ll take care of all your problems, he will show you all the good things and remove all the evils from you through Jesus you’ll get your share in heaven” (58). They sing this song just after Gicaamba rants about his poverty and the plight of the worker class, highlighting the emptiness and hypocrisy of the elites’ constant invocation of religion as a means to solve all of the workers’ problems