Essay on 'Things Fall Apart' as a Postcolonial Novel

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For a long time, the colonial discourses have Africa and African humans very badly; they justify their colonial mission by way of portraying a faux image of African people. Postcolonial writers such as Chinua Achebe produced an anti-colonial discourse to withstand these colonial stereotyped pics and to show that Africans are equal to different nations and have a wealthy subculture and heritage. In his novel, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe depicts the pre-colonial Igbo existence by means of using African oral traditions, and relying on the English language to represent the hybrid identity, culture, and language of the precolonial African experience.

Consequently, Achebe's use of the hybrid narrative targets to subvert and face up to the dominant colonial discourses. This chapter is based totally on the textual analysis of 'Things Fall Apart' in phrases of language use and fashion to discover the Postcolonial hybrid nature of this novel. I- Things Fall Apart ' General Overview ' Things Fall Apart is a novel written by the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe in 1958. It plays a fundamental position in introducing African literature and subculture to the readers. In fact, Achebe's work is supposed to be an illustration of African records and the records of European colonization as well, but, it has been submitted from an African factor of view in a way that he modified the center of attention of the narrative to the colonized perspective as an alternative of the colonizer's one. The title of the novel has been borrowed from the poem of W. B. Yeats 'The Second Coming' in 1919. Forty-two Things Fall Apart is considered an example of a Postcolonial novel that tries to examine the effects of British colonialism on the Igbo people of Nigeria. It basically demonstrates the richness of African cultural traditions which is contributed to the correction of the unfair literary and historic views towards African lifestyle and society, it also characterized by its shrewd and sensible way of treating the tribal beliefs simultaneously with their psychological crumple and social dissociation. The novel sheds the mild on the pre-colonial existence and the coming of the white man in the course of the late nineteenth century in Nigeria. It deals deeply with the effects of colonialism on the native people of Africa, in addition to discussing the usual culture of the Nigerian villagers in the novel.

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Chinua Achebe in his novel treats the life of an Igbo leader man, Okonkwo, from his main period until he by chance killed a clansman which led to his banishment from the neighborhood for seven years. The story begins with introducing Okonkwo, the protagonist, as a celebrated wrestling champion, a very robust man who never suggests weakness. He decided now not to observe his father's shameful life that did not have the qualities of masculinity that a man ought to have in his village. In fact, Okonkwo wanted to build a totally self-dependent wealth, as his father Unoka's demise was shameful, and that he left many unpaid debts. This inspired him to be an effective and rich chief among his neighbors and to get a respected role in his community. One day, the elders of Umuofia have assigned Okonkwo to be the guardian of a boy 'Ikemefuna' whose father has killed an Umuofia woman as a reconciliation between the two villages.

Okonkwo added him to stay with his family, they were attached to each other and though Okonkwo used to be like a second father, he no longer showed his love to Ikemefuna in order not to appear weak. When the oracle of Umuofia announces that Ikemefuna ought to be 43 killed, Okonkwo is warned with the aid of the Escudo, the oldest man in the village to avoid killing Ikemefuna considering that he is regarded as one of his children, however, Okonkwo's fear of being feminine and susceptible amongst his society did now not prevent him from killing Ikemefuna. After Ikemefuna's death, things modified and began to be wrong for Okonkwo, he took various days to get rid of his feelings of guilt. Furthermore, his daughter Ezinma falls seriously sick and they are concerned she may also die. In Escudo's funeral, whilst they are making a gun salute, Okonkwo's gun mistakenly explodes and kills the son of Escudo. To appease the offended gods, Okonkwo and his family have been abandoned for seven years in exile. By the coming of the white man to Umuofia, Okonkwo was nonetheless away in Mbanta but, he knew that the missionaries introduced a new religion, Christianity, and that the quantity of transformed human beings was elevating whereas, the new authorities was constantly growing.

At that time, the Umuofia's have been divided into converters and resistors. When he returned from exile, Okonkwo noticed major adjustments in his village and its people, so he and other village leaders burned the new church which led to reformatory and humiliating them through the missionaries. When Okonkwo killed a colonial messenger he did not discover who stood behind him due to the fact of his divided villagers, which led to his suicide. This act violated the Igbo traditions of death, which prevented Okonkwo from getting an acceptable burial. The novel serves as a choice photograph to the stereotypical European representations of Africa, through which Achebe depicts vividly the sociocultural realities of the Igbo people, and therefore Achebe tries to obtain correct historical documents with the aid of recounting the records of Africa from an African perspective. In fact, the novel is considered a practical representation of the hybrid identity of Achebe and his society in the postcolonial era; it reflects the ambivalence of Achebe's identity and the consequences of forty-four colonial encounters. He lived in a multilingual neighborhood in which he was influenced by the English language. Accordingly, he used the English language in his novel because it is viewed as a second language for him, and he studied it in his childhood, the same factor his U.S. Nigeria experienced at that time.

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Essay on ‘Things Fall Apart’ as a Postcolonial Novel. (2023, December 13). Edubirdie. Retrieved April 27, 2024, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/essay-on-things-fall-apart-as-a-postcolonial-novel/
“Essay on ‘Things Fall Apart’ as a Postcolonial Novel.” Edubirdie, 13 Dec. 2023, edubirdie.com/examples/essay-on-things-fall-apart-as-a-postcolonial-novel/
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Essay on ‘Things Fall Apart’ as a Postcolonial Novel [Internet]. Edubirdie. 2023 Dec 13 [cited 2024 Apr 27]. Available from: https://edubirdie.com/examples/essay-on-things-fall-apart-as-a-postcolonial-novel/
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