Tradition And Modernism In Gooboora, The Silent Pool By Chinua Achebe

The three texts that will be discussed all possess the themes of both tradition and modernity, and although they are mainly used antagonistically, there seems to be a common conclusion that both are needed to work together to create balance. From the novel Things Fall Apart, which can take readers on a journey from traditional culture to an acceptance of defeat, “The Destination” which compares two different cultures, to the poem “Gooboora, the Silent Pool” which makes readers feel the author’s pain of a dying culture, all of these stories have the ability to make readers understand the need of both traditionalism and modernism. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart focus on both tradition and modernity, with a tight grasp on the traditionalism. Achebe seems to write Things Fall Apart in part as a glimpse of what Nigeria could have in store

It specifically states, “That awed the Noonuncals once numerous here” (Noonuncal 2). This line leads readers to believe that the tribe that is going to be described in the poem is a dying tribe. The line “And the clans departed to drift with the dead” is another line suggesting that the traditional group is being wiped out (Noonuncal 4). This is a direct example of modernity coming in to cancel out tradition. In the poem, it is not as clear as the novel and the short story, but it is easy to tell that the two are definitely working against each other. The end of the second stanza states “A whole happy tribe are all vanished away!” (Noonuncal 8). The author of this poem is using tradition, the Noonuncal tribe, as a protagonist and modernity, the whites, as the antagonist. The end of the poem states, “Gooboora Gooboora it makes my heart sore / That you should be here but my people no more” (Noonuncal 23-24). With this ending, it is clear that modernity came out victorious over the theme of