Melamu’s Use of Absurd Humour as a Narrative Technique in “The Unweeded Garden”

Abstract

The article examines narrative techniques in Moteane Melamu’s ‘The Unweeded Garden’. It uses
the incongruity theory of humour to argue that the short story uses laughter not only to titillate the
reader but to comment on gender relations. Melamu was a scholar of Shakespeare, and in writing the
short story he would have been influenced by some of the characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The
influence is seen particularly in his choice of the title and the idea of procrastination which are some
of the common features in the play and the short story.