African novel and the bildungsroman tradition: Habila’s literary vision in Waiting for an Angel

Abstract

The novel as a literary genre is one of the most popular art forms that Africans gladly inherited from their colonial masters. Since its inception on the African horizon, the novel has been experimented with in its variegated forms and styles by African novelists, who have always modelled their works after their European counterparts. Thus, African novelists have adapted the Bildungsroman tradition of the English novel, but not without some “bending” to suit their social realities. One thing that is not clearly defined, however, is the poetic vision – the novelists’ intention – for writing those literary adaptations. This work investigates Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel to ascertain its novelistic form. It also interrogates the author’s poetic vision – what he intends to achieve by that structural experimentation. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is adopted. The study reveals that the novel, Waiting for an Angel is an autobiographical novel of developmental trajectory of a character, envisioned to pull down all oppressive tendencies that hinder development, freedom, aspirations and the general well-being of the protagonist, and indeed, ordinary members of the society. Therefore, it is revolutionary since it demands, ideologically, destruction of all forms of subsisting military autocracy against the citizens, and the dawn of a new social, economic, and political order in Nigeria.