Synecdoche and Allegory in the filmic record of the memory of African Genocide in John Le Carré’s The Constant Gardener
Masemola, Kgomotso; Makoe, Pinky
This article shows that the filmic depiction of the death of Tessa Quayle, a social
activist portrayed by Rachel Weisz, is a memorialised historical allegory of genocide
caused by deliberate and lethal clinical trials of drugs conducted throughout Africa.
Although the film is set in Kenya, it tells the real story of the clinical genocide
committed in Nigeria. The authors of this article do not delve into the academically
naïve question of whether or not the film (released in 2005) is a faithful
representation of the 2001 novel, for the discrepancies – whether glaringly obvious
or tastefully subtle – follow Fernando Mireilles’s style and interpretative variorum as a
director who is capable of signature adjustments to the face of death. In this case,
the death of one white woman (Tessa Quayle) is a synecdoche of the multitudinous
African deaths caused by genocide. It is in this sense that the setting (Kenya and not
Nigeria) lends credence to the paradoxical representation of the silent genocide in
other parts of Africa, beyond Nigeria, through allegorical memorialisation. The
authors conclude that the discovery of Tessa Quayle’s death is, therefore, a
discovery of continental genocide revealed through allegorical representation.
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