THINGS FALL APART AS A RISK NARRATIVE

And the Centre Refuses to Hold: Homage to Things Fall Apart @ 60, 2018

Things Fall Apart has the air of concrete facticity, and therefore has usually been taken to be a realist work, with complete coincidence of sense and meaning. Leveraging on the fact that fiction normally deploys a narrative eye, which then works like a spotlight, it is made out in this paper that as a light-bearer, literally, the principal character of a tale inevitably sets off patterns of association and resemblance to other literary light-bearers and the sequences and patterns of denouement conventionally associated with them. While it is usual practice to see Okonkwo and Things Fall Apart as rooted in a unique and stable social system, the horizontal plane which connects to personages seen in literature of other places and times should not be ignored. This paper will build on the latter viewpoint. Thus it is possible to see Okonkwo as typical-which means that he is more than what is seen at the textual level. He is a 'dreamer' and also an 'intoxicated one', and being a very important member of Umuofia, these personal traits are working out their logic-and destabilizing impact-within the heart of Umuofia, down to its foundations. The white man will enter Umuofia in the midst of all this and catalyze the process into a premature denouement. The 'dreamer' and the 'intoxicated one', however, are mythical images frequently encountered in high mimetic literature.

Research in African Literatures

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A first reading of the novel reveals the fact that what fall apart in Things fall apart are Igbo’s cultures and traditions. Accordingly a lot of readings have been done on the novel with almost similar disclosures; considering it as a postcolonial novel and as Achebe’s response to the white racism embedded in European literature, which presented Africa as a primitive and socially retrograde nation. Hence, reading Things Fall Apart from a new and distinct perspective with the aid of trances from reader response criticism, this study aims to answer the question of; what really falls apart (in Things Fall Apart) and how? Through a close and transactional reading of the novel this study demonstrates that Igbo’s culture and religion didn’t fall apart but changed and in fact, what falls apart in Things Fall Apart is Okonkwo, the protagonist of the novel. By studying and comparing his conducts, before and after killing Ikemefona it reveals that his mortal sin parts him beyond the limits of his cultural conventions, in the process of gaining his individual purposes, which later leads to his downfall.

Trakya Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, 2019

Twenty-first century Africa is currently a continent of culturally diverse groups of people, many opposing governments, and fragmented identities due to its long history of colonization and the drastical changes following its independence. Accordingly, the study of post-colonial African literature cannot be complete without the study of Africa's colonial past and the ideology behind a text. Chinua Achebe is one of the significant writers of African culture who in his novels aims to provide an erudite exegesis of the texts and introduce readers to important contextualizing historical and cultural perspectives it defines. His novels not only represent the history and culture of Africa, but also serve as a direct response to a whole canon of Eurocentric writings presenting Africans as inhuman savages. Particularly, in his Things Fall Apart Achebe paints a grim picture of the colonization of Nigeria by the British and the political turbulence following its colonization. The primary purpose of this paper is to shed light on Achebe's various ways of representing the self-sufficiency of African nations with a strong sense of cultural identity, and the catastrophic changes in an African society brought along by colonialism, resulting in the distortion of its cultural identity.

All African writings, specially novels, are at once literary pieces, a social protest and a medium of political reassertion. The African writings portray the post-colonial African reality in all its varied colours and texture. Writers like Chinua Achebe, in their works, have delineated the characters of their fictional heroes as leaders of the struggle against colonial and neocolonial forces stubbornly obstructing the process of social regeneration and political nativization. Literature occurs under the glow of certain socio-phychological impacts upon the author. Chinua Achebe confirms the validity of this observation most forcefully in the sense that his novels faithfully mirrors the post-colonial colours that shadow the hopes and aspirations of the community that he belongs to. The present paper attempts a critique of post-colonial discourse of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. The cross-currents that enrich the texture of the novel consists of the emergence of neo-colonialism along with the lingering shadows of old colonialism, the resistance of the post-colonial struggle of maintaining the native originality on the one hand obsessional hand washing of the old tyranny on the other, the agony of the exile, the longings of diasporic looking back into once own native past, the emotional trauma of being a witness to the structure of one's own dream falling apart and, above all, the agony of one's being misunderstood by one's own kith and kin. The post-colonial milieu of the novel Things Fall Apart finds a poignant treatment by Booth James, in such a way that the readers feel the true spirit of the post-colonial ways of life. It is relevant to reproduce the observation of Booth James regarding the post-colonial shadows that cover the efficacy of the Nigerian progress and development ; With the six years of independence Nigeria was a cesspool of corruption. Public servants helped themselves freely to the nation's wealth … Elections were blatantly rigged… The national census was outrageously stage-managed; Judges and magistrates themselves were manipulated and corrupted by foreign business interest. 1 The literary construction of post-colonialism within the force of a novelistic discourse produces the necessity of fore grounding of the quests for identities, the voices of resistance and the conditioned mind of the subjugated swinging between it's innocent individual learning and the compulsive obligations of the social expectations. To set the thesis initially, it would be proper to quote the following conceptualizations of post colonial conditions by Homi Bhabha ; … a range of contemporary critical theories suggests that it is from those who have suffered the sentence of history, subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement-that we learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking. There is even a growing conviction that the affective experience of social marginality… transforms our critical strategies. 2 Achebe views the novel as an exercise in self discovery. It is through writing, he believes, that an African can determine and establish his identity by exploring and rediscovering his roots. This reflexing and self defining nature of the novel is singularly important to post-colonial writers who have been confronting an erosion of their traditional values owing to the overpowering exposure to European culture which has already made insidious advances upon the native way of life and local customs, modes and habits in many countries. Things Fall Apart is a typical Igloo novel which describes Okonkwo's rise and fall. He was well known throughout the 'nine villages and even beyond.' 3 (p.3) His greatest achievement at the age of eighteen was 'throwing Amalinze the Cat.' Amalinze, the great Wrestler was called the cat because his back would never touch the earth. But Okonkwo threw the cat at last. It was said that Okonkwo never used his words, when he was angry he used his fists instead. His father Unoka owed every neighbor some money, from a few cowries to quite substantial amounts. In the first part of the novel various ceremonies of the triables are narrated. From the very beginning of the first part, Okonkwo's place in the Iglo society is highlighted. It is Okonkwo's will, determination and boldness which take him to the rank of one of the lords of the clan. He is a prosperous man, one who is acclaimed by the nine villages as a great warrior. In one year the harvest was unsatisfactory A farmer committed suicide in Okonkwo's village but Okonkwo tried not to lose his head. His

IJARESM, 2021

The novel tells the fable of the Turtle who reached the sky because the birds lent it their feathers. The fable forms a pattern for the whole novel: just as the Turtle reaches the sky with the help of the birds, so Okonkwo reaches one of the foremost positions in his clan with the support of the population. But just as the Turtle plunges to the ground and crushes his shield, so Okonkwo falls from power when he loses the support of the people and the gods. The plot takes place in the fictional Ibo village of Umuofia in Iboland in eastern Nigeria in the late 19th century, just before and after the first white people arrive in the area. The theme is a tradition as opposed to change, the dissolution of traditional African society as it cannot withstand the forces of white civilization. The first part of the novel depicts life in the traditional Ibo society, its social and religious structure, its rites, and customs. It is a society where the individual is to a large extent subordinate to the collective and it is through the collective that the individual reaches his goal and life gets its meaning (Whittaker and Msiska, 2007).

International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 2018

Literature, as an impersonation of human activity, often portrays a picture of what people think, say and do in the society. In literature, we find stories intended to depict human life and activities through some characters that, by their words, actions and responses, transmit specific messages for the purpose of education, information and stimulation. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is probably the most authentic narrative ever written about life in Nigeria at the turn of the twentieth century. When it was first published, Achebe declared that one of his motivations was to introduce a real and dynamic society to a Western audience who perceived African society as primitive, naive, and backward. Unless Africans could recount their side of their story, Achebe believed that the African experience would forever be "mistold," even by such well-disposed authors as Joyce Cary and Joseph Conrad who have described the continent as a dusky place dwelled by people with stolid, primitive minds. Achebe, perhaps the most authentic literary voice from Africa, he wrote not only to record the African, especially Nigerian, life but to analyze the reality experienced by the native people in different times and situations. The novel Things Fall Apart describes the Igbo people at a truly seminal stage in their history and culture: as colonial forces apply pressure, their entire way of life is at stake. These looming colonial forces basically declare the end of everything they know, representing huge changes to the way they exercise religion, their family unit, the roles of gender and gender relations and trade. Colonial forces don’t just mean foreign control; rather there’s an impending doom which is instantaneous and calamitous and which is something that Achebe examines head on. In this regard, the paper is an attempt to show Achebe’s endeavor to portray the post-colonial African reality in all its varied colors and textures and to find out the extent to which this novel faithfully mirrors the postcolonial impress that shadow the hopes and aspirations of the community that he belongs to.

2018

Being a postcolonial narrative, Things Fall Apart experiences a wide critical acclaim. From the pen of Chinua Achebe, the Igbo cultural complexity has come into being a theme that opens up a historical account of the clash of two cultures. Okonkwo, a very well-known public figure in his community falls under the threat of a new culture brought by the white missionaries preaching the gospels of the Christianity. After the arrival of the Christian culture, the first collision that takes place is the division at the individual, and then at the societal levels. When a number of the Igbo people, including Okonkwo's son, change their religion, it creates chaos and confusions throughout the community. Although the Igbo people have a well-established way of life, the Europeans do not understand. That is why they show no respect to the cultural practices of the Igbo people. What Achebe delivers in the novel is that Africans are not savages and their societies are not mindless. The things fall apart because Okonkwo fails at the end to take his people back to the culture they all shared once. The sentiments the whites show to the blacks regarding the Christianity clearly recap the slave treatment the blacks were used to receive from the whites in the past. Achebe shows that the picture of the Africans portrayed in literature and histories are not real, but the picture was seen through the eyes of the Europeans. Consequently, Okonkwo hangs himself when he finds his established rules and orders are completely exiled by his own people and when he sees Igbo looses its honor by falling apart.

Various factors lead Achebe to write Things Fall Apart, which has acquired the status of a classic; among them, the most noteworthy one is his indignation at European representations of Africans in fiction. One such European representation of Africans in fiction was Joyce Cary's novel Mr. Johnson which depicts exterior picture of Africa. Hence, Things Fall Apart is a counter discourse and the project Achebe adopts in it explains his position based on the interiority of original local contexts. Achebe has declared that he wrote Things Fall Apart "in order to reassert African identity and as part of the growth of Nigerian nationalism" (O'Reilly 2001: p. 61). The present study intends to analyze Things Fall Apart from the perspective of the various issues of a postcolonial text.

The Jamia Review, 2022

For decades, the tales about the colonies were known solely as told by the colonial masters, where the aboriginal people were seen as Kipling wrote - “half devil, half child”. But this was altered for good when the 28-year-old Achebe “wrote back to Europe” with his epoch-making novel - Things Fall Apart, bringing a true story from the heart of Africa.