Chinua Achebe was thirty years old when Nigeria gained its independence from Britain in l960. He had been born on November 16, l930 and named Albert Chinualumogu Achebe. However, two years prior to independence his first novel, Things Fall Apart, was published in l958 and it propelled him along with his nation into the consciousness of the world. Things Fall Apart remains the most widely circulated book in modern African literature. By the time of Achebe’s death on March 21, 2013 he had achieved a mythical stature as the greatest storyteller of his generation.
Achebe grew up in the Igbo-speaking region of Nigeria in the town of Ogidi where he proved himself to be an outstanding student always impressing the headmaster with his voracious reading habits and quick understanding of issues. The colonial experience of his youth had caused him to question the values of Europeans and to seek the source of his own deep foundations. No wonder he became interested in religion, African traditions, and the clash of cultures, the fact is that his family moved from the traditions to the new protestant faith. An avid reader and student this would cause Achebe to seek as much knowledge about religion and ethics as he could. At the University of Ibadan, at that time an associate college of the University of London, he excelled as a student and found many books that provoked his consciousness of culture. Working for the Nigerian Broadcasting Services brought him face-to-face with the reality of ordinary stories of Nigerians. Soon he would publish No Longer at Ease in l960, A Man of the People in l966, and then Anthills of the Savannah in l987. By the time of his later books he had already achieved fame as a novelist.
Achebe defended his use...
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...r memoir in 2006, You Must Set Forth at Dawn. He cancelled a keynote address in Bangkok in 2006 to protest the military coup in that country. Calling for the cancellation of the Nigerian elections in April 2007 Soyinka cited fraud and ethnic and religious violence. Back in the United Kingdom in 2009 after the attempted bombing of a flight to the United States by a Nigerian student, Soyinka questioned the openness of societies that allowed apocalyptic religions to preach violence against the very societies in which they live.
Recognized as one of the world’s great writers, Soyinka has honorary doctorates from Leeds, Harvard, and Princeton. However, it is as the Iloye, Akinlatun of Egbaland, that he has all the rights of Yoruba cultural aristocracy. To many of his readers, this is the prize that speaks to his acceptance in the history of the Nigeria and the world.
As wise John Berger once said,“Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one”. A “single story” is the story of a culture that we learn from stereotypes and conspiracies developed throughout time in our society. In “Things Fall Apart”, Chinua Achebe defies the single story of African culture while still tying their native language in to show the importance between a physical differentiation of culture, and the similarities with morals and values they have in common. Through gender roles and proverbs used in the language of this book, we have a cultural insight of Nigeria through a new set of eyes given to us by Achebe that detures us from the single stories that we were taught to by our society.
Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi eastern part of Nigeria, on November 16th, 1930, then Nigeria was still a colony of Britain. He was born into a Christian family, even though he is intrigued by the local religions during childhood. His success wasn 't overnight, he worked his way up by lots hard work and practice, good reading habit he developed when was young was one is the most accomplishment he had, as it really helped him become a better. Another important aspect of his life was his passion for humanitarian aid, he was a true activist. He wrote fiction and non fiction novels such was his critically acclaimed book Things Fall Apart.
Chinua Achebe?s Things Fall Apart is a narrative story that follows the life of an African man called Okonkwo. The setting of the book is in eastern Nigeria, on the eve of British colonialism in Africa. The novel illustrates Okonkwo?s struggles, triumphs, and his eventual downfall, all of which basically coincide with the Igbo?s society?s struggle with the Christian religion and British government. In this essay I will give a biographical account of Okonwo, which will serve to help understand that social, political, and economic institutions of the Igbos.
The "Encounter with Chinua Achebe." The Christian Century, New York State Writers Institute. The "Chinua Achebe" Internet. The Internet. The Internet.
Achebe writes Things Fall Apart to revise the history that has been misplaced. He writes to the European and Western culture. This fact is evident because the book is written in English and it shows us the side of the African culture we wouldn’t normally see. Achebe is constantly ...
middle of paper ... ... The "An African Voice. " Interview with Chinua Achebe. N.p., 2 Aug. 2000.
Nnolim, Charles E. "Achebe's Things Fall Apart: An Igbo National Epic" Modern Black Literature. ed. Okechukwu Mezu New York: Black Academy Press, 1971, 55-60.
Osei-Nyame, Kwadwo. "Chinua Achebe Writing Culture: Representations of Gender and Tyranny in Things Fall Apart" Research in African Literatures Summer 1999.
Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, is a story of a traditional village in Nigeria from inside Umuofia around the late 1800s. This novel depicts late African history and shows how the British administrative structure, in the form of the European Anglican Church, imposed its religion and trappings on the cultures of Africa, which they believed was uncivilized. This missionary zeal subjugated large native populations. Consequently, the native traditions gradually disappeared and in time the whole local social structure within which the indigenous people had lived successfully for centuries was destroyed. Achebe spends the first half of the novel depicting the Ibo culture, by itself, in both a sophisticated and primitive light describing and discussing its grandeur, showing its strengths and weaknesses, etiquettes and incivilities, and even the beginning of cultural breakdown before the introduction of the missionaries. The collapse of the old culture is evident soon after the missionaries arrived, and here Achebe utilises two of the primary missionary figures, Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith, to once again depicts both sides of the Ibo culture between them, with Mr. Brown depicting the sophisticated and Mr. Smith depicting the primitive aspects.
In the book Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, we are able to read about the social changes the white missionaries had on an African tribe. Mr. Achebe describes the way of life before the missionaries arrived and then records some of the changes, which occurred due to the changed belief system introduced by these missionaries.
Chinua Achebe gave us a different outlook on Africa through his writing. His life was very much dedicated to his career. Although he might have thought of it as a passion, Achebe’s impactful literature led him to many educational accomplishments that influenced many.
Literature as a reflection of society and culture with respect to Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People
In 1958 Chinua Achebe published his first and most widely acclaimed novel, Things Fall Apart. This work-commonly acknowledged as the single most well known African novel in the world-depicts an image of Africa that humanizes both the continent and the people. Achebe once said, "Reading Heart of Darkness . . . I realized that I was one of those savages jumping up and down on the beach. Once that kind of enlightenment comes to you, you realize that someone has to write a different story" (Gikandi 8-9); Achebe openly admits that he wrote Things Fall Apart because of the horrible characterization of Africans in many European works, especially Heart of Darkness. In many ways, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart can be seen as an Afrocentric rebuttal to the Eurocentric depi...
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 to Isaiah Okafo and Janet Achebe in the very unstable country of Ogidi, Nigeria. He was exposed to missionaries early in his childhood because Ogidi was one of the first missionary centers established in Eastern Nigeria and his father was an evangelist. Yet it was not until he began to study at the University of Ibadan that Achebe discovered what he himself wanted to do. He had grown apalled to the "superficial picture" of Nigeria that many non-Nigerian authors were providing. That is when Achebe resolved to write something that viewed his country from "the inside". (Gallagher, Susan, The Christian Century, v114, 260) His first novel, Things Fall Apart, achieved exactly this. Things Fall Apart is based on Nigeria's early experiences with the British. It is the story of an Ibo village and one of it's great men, Okonkwo, who is a very high achiever being a champion wrestler, a wealthy farmer, a husband to three wives, and a man with titles. Okonkwo's world is disrupted with the appearance of the first white man who tries to inflict his religion on the Umuofia natives. Okonkwo, a high tempered man, later kills a British employed man and eventually takes his own life.
According to David Whittaker, Achebe’s work “proved to be an immensely influential work for African writers, becoming the progenitor of a whole movement of fiction, drama, and poetry, which focused on the revaluation of Africa’s history and cultures, and on representations of the culture conflicts that has their genesis in the colonial era.” This novel became a pivotal point of realization not only for Africa, but also for the world. All at once the world, afraid of what change may bring, pushed the same question to the back their mind: “What if we have it all wrong?” Suddenly, the culture of Africa was influencing the culture of America, Asia, Europe, Australia, etc. Achebe’s novel was a catalyst in the process of nationalist renewal and decolonization of African culture as a whole (Whittaker). A principle in this novel’s thematic course is the inter-generation conflict faced by not only the village as a whole, but also, on a microscopic level, in Okonkwo’s household. As the culture in Umuofia begins to shift, the predecessors of the current generation heavily rely on the cultural norms initiated by their father’s fathers. While tradition should be honored in a society, it should also be modified; this concept is not fully grasped by the older generations of