A Civilization Falls Apart

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Most of what we know to be African Literature, talks about the changes from an un-dignified "lion-chasing" culture to that of a semi-dignified European society. The novel Things Fall Apart by Nigerian-born author Chinua Achebe, tells the story of a Umuofian villager named Okonkwo, and how Okonkwo has to come to grips with the changes that are happening in everyday Ibo life. The novel Things Fall Apart is not your typical "tall African tale." The novel is a story, a story not just about one person, but about an entire civil-society circa 1890's that becomes overwhelmed with the ideas and beliefs of the European colonizers, or as some like to refer, "the white man." Author Chinua Achebe witnessed this "invasion" first-hand, so who better to tell the story of Nigerians than a Nigerian. It is Achebe's Nigerian perspective that brings the reader face to face with the truth, and not just another "white man's" idea of what the truth should be. It is Achebe's view that kills the notion that the Nigerian Ibo weren't just a bunch of cultureless and godless savages, as some European colonizers might have you believe. Despite the view of European colonizers, the Ibo of Nigeria possessed a culture and a civilization long before colonization began.

Chinua Achebe wanted to correct the "superficial picture" of Nigeria provided by non-Nigerian authors, and so he resolved to write the novel Things Fall Apart, that viewed

his country and the people of Nigeria from the inside. "As a representative of Nigeria's intellectual elite Achebe has been especially concerned about the definition of a new African identity in the post-colonial situation. Achebe's concerns can be discovered in the novelist's literary programme:

."..as far as I am ...

... middle of paper ...

...y truly made a culture of tradition, religion, government, and friendship fall completely apart.

Iodence 6

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, Ó1997.

Achebe, Chinua, and G. D. Killam, Eds. The Role of the Writer in a New Nation.:

African Writers on African Writing. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University

Press, Ó1973.

Nduka, Obaigbena. Western Education and the Nigerian Cultured Background. Oxford,

Eng. UK: The Oxford University Press, Ó1964.

Obiechina, Emmanuel. The Destructive Clash of Cultures in The West African Novel.

Cambridge, MA: The Cambridge University Press, Ó1975.

Things-Fall-Apart.com. Online. 12 January 2005. http://www.things-fall-apart.com.

The Paper Store Enterprises, Inc. Ó1994

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