The reason being is because Achebe is trying to divert from a Westernized perspective and instead go for an Africanized perspective to show more authenticity and reality. Also, by doing this, Achebe shows his opposition on the way the West views Africans, in particular in the novel “Things Fall Apart” where European colonialist used derogatory terms to describe the Igbo and glorify their actions of conquest and conversion of
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” This quote embraces the theme of both short stories “Story of an hour” and “Excerpts of the awakening”; both by Kate Chopin. In Kate Chopin’s story, “Story of an Hour”, the main character, Louise Mallard, is a woman that had recently been informed that her husband had passed away in an incident. At first, after she had been told about the incident, she felt great grief. Eventually, she began to think deeper into the possibilities that the tragedy could bring.
Many stereotypes of African culture have emerged due to western literature and media and first hand accounts of explorers. Things Fall Apart offers a view into the truth and reality of African cultures, which are often misconceptualized by these stereotypes. Acebe shows how African society functions well without assistance from foreign travelers. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe counters the imperialist stereotypes of Africa by keeping certain words in the Igbo language, as opposed to translating them into English, to fight back against the spreading western culture and to embrace their own way of life. He also counters the imperialist stereotypes of Africa by using Igbo proverbs to show how their culture values many of the same things that western
The tripartite novel “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, published in 1958 focuses on the changes taking place in Nigeria, as a result of colonization during the 20th century. Chinua Achebe’s pragmatics when writing the novel focused on changing the perspective of Western readers with regard to African society. He mainly wanted to falsify the assertions in books such as “Heart of Darkness” which he claimed gave people of African descent a dull personality. Social status is one of the novels’ main themes. Chinua Achebe successfully incorporates the importance of social status, giving readers the impression that for the Ibo society, social structure consists mainly of a hierarchy of both skill and strength.
And the novel repeatedly tells us that these crimes--not the casual brutalization of black men and women, not the denial of political and economic rights to the overwhelming majority of the population-are the big problems in South Africa” (AUTHOR NAME AND PAGE NUMBER?). This shows that Europeans are titling blacks as thieves, prostitutes, and murders. They are pretty much titling them as their downfall to society. They are blaming all of the bad stuff that happens in there everyday life on the Blacks of South Africa. They are not seeing the big picture which is that the white forced themselves into their land and caused them to become poor and are forcing them to scramble for money.
As such, it can be said that the novel seeks to represent the Blacks of Africa as lowlife beings, prehistoric barbarians and savage creatures that have no rights to say anything for themselves. However, Conrad also shows a flipside to the typical ideology of Whites being superior to Blacks by representing the Blacks as a strong and restrained group of people, confined only due to helplessness. In the novel, the natives of Africa are first introduced with the use of animal imagery. The sentence “A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants,” describes the Africans that were building the railroad.
The racial prejudice by such scholars and the negative portrayal found their way to the public and thus lead to even more negative views. In the 17th century, an argument emerged, characterizing Africa as a place of famine, war, disease and poverty. This argument was further used by anti-abolitionists to make slavery in foreign countries a positive escape. Colonialism in Africa went even further to promote the negative portrayal of Africa and the colonial powers convinced themselves that they were redeeming “the land of fantastical beats and cannibals, slaves and backward races.”
The authors he writes about are not ignorant people; they have taken it upon themselves to document a piece of humanity. Wainaina makes the point for authors to emphasize their “love” of Africa, and that the continent would be “doomed” without their book (544). The people writing about Africa are not perpetuating a false narrative out of malice, but rather because they do not know better. Their entire lives have been spent inside Western culture, images of foreign nations already imprinted in their brain. Kincaid touches on the same unawareness when she writes that it was “people who look like her” that taught the English people the “unpleasantness” of prejudice (427).
Not only did Okonkwo face the new idea of Christianity, but so did Chinua Achebe. During Achebe’s interview with The Paris Review, Achebe says “My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria” (Brooks). He saw the effects of the Christian religion moving through his village, something that Okonkwo couldn’t bear to live through. Religion is a major topic in the novel. Chinua Achebe uses religion to show the reader the God in the Igbo culture, their belief in reincarnation, and the colonization of Christianity.
Have you ever read a novel about African cultures and traditions from African point of view? The novel Things Fall Apart, a tragedy by Chinua Achebe, centers on one tragic hero in Igbo village of Umuofia in Nigeria and the effects of European arrival on his life and Igbo clan. Throughout the novel, Achebe introduces Igbo customs to the reader by creating several occurrences and how they react on them to claim that the Igbo is civilized before the Europeans arrive. The significant difference between Igbo and Western cultures is the way wisdom is passed on: Igbo oral traditions transmit values and knowledge orally by allegorical tales, while Western literary traditions educate people through generations by written texts, just like the novel itself.
Africa in this novella is portrayed as “the Heart of Darkness” the place where the men’s inner evil is exposed, this is done through their thoughts and actions. The contrast between the Thames River and the Congo River is also made evident in the novella. The Thames River is described as calm and peaceful. It is viewed as a city of light that is not mysterious.
“Things Fall Apart”, a novel written by Chinua Achebe about Africa through the character Okonkwo, a man who Achebe uses to illustrate the complexity Igbo culture, contrary to what the Europeans portrayed Africa as. One main focus of the book is to counter the single story, which is the idea that an area is represented by one story, similar to a stereotype. However, differing from a stereotype a single story often completely misrepresents something, and in this case Africa. Europeans had been the only ones writing about Africa, describing all the culture as problematic for being different, rather than looking at what African culture really is. Achebe was one of the first to write about African culture for westerners to read about, making Things Fall Apart a true innovation in writing.
Colonialism had brought a lot of social, economical and political changes to the colonized country, and these changes could be positive or negative. Chinua Achebe deals with both the good and bad sides of colonialism in Things Fall Apart. He neither blindly justifies colonialism, nor does he utterly disapprove it. Colonialism is evil when its purpose becomes looting the economy and hijacking the culture of the people. The title of the novel itself strikes a negative note as it indicates falling apart of things.
Achebe’s article professes that almost everything within Conrad’s novel is an act of pure racism. This, however, is not the case, as Conrad was just telling the truth of what occurred within Africa during the time of European colonization. Hugh Curtler refutes Achebe’s statements in his literary criticism “Political Correctness and the Attack on Great Literature”. This article takes a practical viewpoint about the book and stresses the point that Conrad was trying to explain the events that occurred during his time in Africa in a style of writing for the people at the time. Literary critics like Achebe label Conrad as complete racist, however, he is, in fact, the complete opposite as he utilizes this story as a way to paint a picture of the cruel actions that occurred at the time.
S. Naipaul and J. M. Coetzee these Post-colonial writers have all dealt with Africa in their own individual and unique ways. Achebe does not treat the African culture and ways of life as something hybrid, complex, dependant for its significance on the Western style of perceiving things or neither has he shown Africa to be existing only in relation to its difference from or consonance with the Western form of religion, culture, identity, and discourse. The major theme of the novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ centers around the destruction of Africa’s intricate, almost incomprehensible but unique way of life and culture in the wake of British colonization and forced or maneuvered conversion to Christianity. The administrative as well as religious changes that the British tries to impose upon the native Africans has the disastrous effects of uprooting the indigenous people from their original root and tradition and can be seen as some instruments of subjugation, subordination and subservience which starts with creating distrust, doubts and insecurity in the minds of people for their Igbo tradition, and its cultural and religious practices and ends with making them internalize the Christian way of life and British administrative apparatuses. Another theme that is explored in this novel is the inherent fault of the central character Okonkwo, who is ambitious, industrious, honest, masculine but is rash, and unthinking and his sense of self and identity is wholly dependent on the approval of others in his community and he thinks of anything that intrudes into it as a threat and he tries hard to be a man though in a flawed manner.
