Things Fall Apart

AbstractThe Christian missionary as the harbinger of colonialism in Africa has been given critical attention in Chinua Achebe studies. On its part, Alice Walker's The Color Purple has been seen as bearing the experiences and existential vagaries of African Americans in America. However, the complementary nature of Christian missionary activities as represented in both works has missed critical interest despite that in The Color Purple, we are offered in a substantial measure textualised missionary activities, which to readers is an unexpected and curious version of the diasporan involvement in the presumed purely white civilizing and Christianising mission to Africa. Through postcolonial and close readings that focus on the categories of outside/inside perspectives of origin and identities and the problematic of sameness within contrast involving the narrators and some characters, the relationship of complementarity of the Christian missionary venture in both texts is bared. It ...

While Western student readers of Things Fall Apart complain that the novel is "sexist"-meaning usually that they find Okonkwo misogynistic-African student readers are more likely to praise Achebe and chastise other Igbo writers like Buchi Emecheta for not being as authentic as Achebe in portraying traditional Igbo women. Both comments imply that some truly objective, unbiased version of traditional life exists and that the writer's duty is to deliver it to readers in a way that engages our sympathies for the "right" causes and stimulates our imaginations in the "right" directions. Achebe probably had an agenda in writing his novel quite different from that of either the Western or the African readers who now study it. The son of a village catechist and the winner of scholarships to secondary school and then to the newly established University College, Ibadan, Achebe belongs to the first generation of African writers to be familiar from early childhood with Western and indigenous traditions. The eloquent oral traditions of the Igbo community as well as the compelling prose of the King James Bible imbued him with a love of language and an appreciation of the timing and cadence of a well-wrought sentence. The texts that formed his vision of Africa, however, were novels like Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, texts Achebe says he read with resistance (see "Image"). Like his modern African readers, he could see the ways in which his Christian family's values differed from or coincided with those of more traditional Igbo families. Like his Western readers, he must have been

At first glance, the role of women in Chinua Achebe's " Things Fall Apart " may appear to be unfairly limited in terms of their authority and power. People have not paid much attention to it beyond going along with the assumption that this novel presents women as a sadly oppressed group with no power. This assumption may appear to be right, but upon delving beneath this deceiving surface, one can see that the women of the clan hold some very powerful positions. Thus, this article is an attempt to show the important role of women both in family and in African patriarchal society. The women's powerful positions in the clan deal with their functions, i.e. spiritually as the priestess, symbolically as the earth goddess, and literally as the nurturers of the Ibo people, the caretakers of the yam crops and the mothers and educators of the Ibo children.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart has been revered ever since it was written for its familiar way of explaining an unknown culture. However, from a structuralist viewpoint, none of the cultural impacts it has affects its literary value, because structuralism argues that no quality of any novel is more important than the patterns in it that make it part of the literary world. This argument stems from the fact that all creation-including the written arts-is based on structures built upon myriads of other small structures that create meaning. In basic terms, in structuralism meaning can only be created by the smaller structures, and the fact that the big structure can be interpreted differently should not obscure the meaning the smaller pieces give to a literary work. When Things Fall Apart is analyzed for the patterns that give it a structural meaning, it can be seen that Achebe built his novel as pieces of small stories that both follow the traditional plot structure and incorporate similar literary devices.

"In this essay I analyze the way acts of cultural and political violence in this novel are interrelated. Achebe’s depiction of violence speaks to the debate over the use of violence in African liberation movements, specifcally with respect to the arguments of Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth and of Bill Sutherland
and Matt Meyers in Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation in Africa. Things Fall Apart reveals an ambivalence towards violence by representing the practice of violence in relation to the principles of culture. Through my reading of the novel, I will problematize
Fanon’s privileging of violence as a means of struggle."

This essay is an attempt to a deconstructive interpretation of Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's " Things Fall Apart ". It begins by reviewing literary comments on Chinua Achebe and later dovetails an explication of the meaning of deconstruction as a way of enabling to grapple with the realities of this post structuralist critical formulation. This essay observes that Okonkwo is not only a brutal cannibal but also a barbarian. This refers to the backdrop of his penchant for killing as shown in the novel. This opinion is buttressed by Okonkwo's ruthless habit of drinking from his first human head, which is a tilled smack of cannibalism. Based on the theory of deconstruction, it concludes that the scientific reading relies only on the text which functions as the real mirror of society which literature is all about.

The Christian missionary as the harbinger of colonialism in Africa has been given critical attention in Chinua Achebe studies. On its part, Alice Walker's The Color Purple has been seen as bearing the experiences and existential vagaries of African Americans in America. However, the complementary nature of Christian missionary activities as represented in both works has missed critical interest despite that in The Color Purple, we are offered in a substantial measure textualised missionary activities, which to readers is an unexpected and curious version of the diasporan involvement in the presumed purely white civilizing and Christianising mission to Africa. Through postcolonial and close readings that focus on the categories of outside/inside perspectives of origin and identities and the problematic of sameness within contrast involving the narrators and some characters, the relationship of complementarity of the Christian missionary venture in both texts is bared. It concludes that the complementary nature of this venture in re-informs and questions at the same time the discourse of (post)colonialism through offering a paired and somewhat alternative view to a conventional African representation of the missionary question in African literature, ascribed to the white man alone.

At first glance, the role of women in Chinua Achebe's " Things Fall Apart " may appear to be unfairly limited in terms of their authority and power. People have not paid much attention to it beyond going along with the assumption that this novel presents women as a sadly oppressed group with no power. This assumption may appear to be right, but upon delving beneath this deceiving surface, one can see that the women of the clan hold some very powerful positions. Thus, this article is an attempt to show the important role of women both in family and in African patriarchal society. The women's powerful positions in the clan deal with their functions, i.e. spiritually as the priestess, symbolically as the earth goddess, and literally as the nurturers of the Ibo people, the caretakers of the yam crops and the mothers and educators of the Ibo children.

Oral tradition i.e. folktales, songs, proverbs, or stories are frequently used in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. It is important in the African culture. Achebe uses primarily 3 types of oral traditions to explore igbo culture.Things Fall Apart is also arranged in the way of traditional igbo storytelling as it is not told chronically.
In Things Fall Apart, Umuofian children sing in the harvest time or during the peace week. Songs are a manner of transmitting knowledge.

The present article is devoted to analyze how the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe presents the Ibo socio-traditional organization in his novels Arrow of God and Things Fall Apart. It stresses on the way the author of these two selected novels, shows his literary talents by using fiction and the Ibo traditional society. Achebe demonstrates that the Ibo people have their vision of the world which maintains close relationships with spiritual entities. Their daily life is influenced by superstition and supernatural forces. They are deeply religious people believing in their ancestral gods and spirits of their ancestors. Additionally, the village is considered as a totemic entity, an ideological entity, and a religious entity. Economic activities have an undeniable impact on their lives. Thus, certain economic activities, the most important, are reserved to men and some other activities to women.

This paper attempts to highlight the interpretive implications of the employment of historical frameworks and facts, as well as the mere reflection of a historical consciousness, in fiction. In other words, the argument is that the use of a specific historical event or character in art (as in Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka) or the reflection of a general historical theme or consciousness (as in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall apart and Arrow of God) involves critical perspectives that are actually interpretations and re-interpretations of the history that has informed the artistic undertaking.

Chinua Achebe, the novelist and visionary critic, has given us a subtle critique of
the function of prisons in the colonial context, and his trilogy refracts the haunting
carceral-colonial reality for Igbo society in remarkable ways. And yet, commentators
and critics have overlooked it. What I will argue is the following: 1) the prison within
the context of colonial law is a key trope in Achebe’s novels; 2) Arrow of God makes
a case for the traumatic effects of a prison sentence; and 3) Achebe’s sharp critique
of the colonial practices not only invites a reading of penal abolitionism but also a
strategy of resistance of a ludic Ubuntu. This paper argues that the prison is the central
organizing tool of oppression, whereas most commentators focus on the “clash
of cultures” engendered by the advent of Christianity. In fact, Arrow of God invites
a reading of Christianity as an ambivalent good. The formidable clash of cultures is
unveiled in the realm of traditional versus colonial juridical discourses.

Chinua Achebe, the novelist and visionary critic, has given us a subtle critique of the function of prisons in the colonial context, and his trilogy refracts the haunting carceral-colonial reality for Igbo society in remarkable ways. And yet, commentators and critics have overlooked it. What I will argue is the following: 1) the prison within the context of colonial law is a key trope in Achebe’s novels; 2) Arrow of God makes a case for the traumatic effects of a prison sentence; and 3) Achebe’s sharp critique of the colonial practices not only invites a reading of penal abolitionism but also a strategy of resistance of a ludic Ubuntu. This paper argues that the prison is the central organizing tool of oppression, whereas most commentators focus on the “clash of cultures” engendered by the advent of Christianity. In fact, Arrow of God invites a reading of Christianity as an ambivalent good. The formidable clash of cultures is unveiled in the realm of traditional versus colonial juridical discourses.