Lewis Nkosi’s “Mating Birds”. A Character Analysis of Ndi Sibiya

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 2, University of Vienna, language: English, abstract: "I am lost. [...] Doubly lost. [...] I believe in nothing" - that is how Ndi Sibiya, the protagonist of Lewis Nkosi's novel Mating Birds, describes himself in his (fictional) memoirs that he writes from his prison cell in Durban while awaiting death sentence. And indeed he is a lost figure: not only torn between his awareness of race laws being what they are in Apartheid South Africa and his desire for a white girl, but also an outcast among his own people, he constantly runs the risk of falling apart because of the social and cultural conditions he is living in - and thus his downfall seems to be predictable right from the beginning. The major part of my essay will focus on the character of Sibiya, the fictional writer and first-person narrator of Mating Birds. After giving a brief survey of the literary context of the book, as well as a short summary of what critics have said about it and its historical background, I am going to analyze what Sibiya's character is shaped by and to what extent he himself eventually causes his downfall at the end of the book. The following questions are going to lead me troughout the whole essay: Is Sibiya depicted as a stereotype or rather an individual person? What are the reasons for the special position he takes in the black society of South Africa? What makes him become so obsessed of Veronica? And in what way is he a victim and in what way the offender?