Abstract
Young, African francophone anticolonial literature was on the move as was the African society going through many social and cultural changes during colonial and postcolonial times. And the literature expresses the suffering of the society.
Does the young African francophone anticolonial literature die along with the colonial African society it describes? That will be the main question to which this paper will give an answer, analysing the different road portrayals in the novels of African francophone authors published during the second half of the 20th century. To answer to this question, this paper will work with passages from different novels that each ascribe a different meaning to the road belonging to fictional Africa.
There are three different issues connected to the road. It represents the exile of African people to the new world (to other African colonies or Europe or a country/city exodus), which is in every case connected to cultural alienation, a loss of origins, identity problems or physical suffering.
The road also represents a terrible burden that the colonial system puts on the colonized people. It is its means to controlling them, punishing them and breaking them.
And the last image of the road represents the continual danger faced by African societies: the symbol of the white colonizer, the disappearance of the cohesiveness of tribes and the disturbance or destruction of traditions, habits and old African customs. The misfortune-riddled image of the road is present in African francophone literature even after 1960, the supposed withdrawal of European colonizers.
It keeps the ill-fated roles it plays in the lives of Africans. The road continues to represent the painful separation between the old and young generation of Africans, the meaningless and frustrating search for identity anchorage, and the violation of African space.
Such aspace cannot maintain the unity of the African community any longer, fragmented by many crossroads representing many fatal decisions.