Foregrounding Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: A Postcolonial Study

Abstract

Chinua Achebe (1930- ) took to the writing of novels and short stories in order to instill socio-cultural and historical awareness among his readers which had a subtle under-pattern of great validity in changing the life condition and outlook of men and women with a modicum of consciousness and sensibility. He was very much concerned about the fate of a society moving inexorably toward thoroughgoing denigration and the self abasement, which accompanied it. It is in this context that Achebe cautioned his native readers to note that the restricted colonial livelihood was not enough. He held that urgent need was some form of Negritude among the colonized Africa. With this perspective in mind, in this article the treatment of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, as a literary preserver of the African social-cultural and historical values, is undertaken to be examined.  This article also argues that through this novel Achebe extrapolates the pride in the cultural and religious aspects of the African postcolonial heritage.

Key words: Africa; Achebe; Negritude; Identity; Colonizers