Chinua Achebe Analysis

Introduction

Chinua Achebe was born in 1930, at Ogidi, Nigeria. He is celebrated as one of the brilliant contemporary writers of Africa. Achebe’s literary career spans about fifty years and he is often referred to as an author at the cross-roads. Achebe’s literary oeuvre comprises five works of long fiction, a collection of short stories and of poetry, children’s fiction and acute critical and political commentaries. He has explored, in his short stories, the internal cultural conflicts due to exclusionary practises, the formation of hybrid identities due to disruptions induced by colonialism, the emergence of different classes, and particularly the ruling elite, in the new national culture and the problems related to the Biafra war, and its

He also presents the ensuing problems of the post-colonial Nigeria African writing in English evolved primarily as a result of the Euro-African colonial encounter and its aftermath, and each of Achebe’s novels marks a significant moment in the growth of this relatively young body of literature. It is important to understand how Achebe relates and deals with the phenomena of change in language and culture as they occur and its role in the history of an African literature which is almost always driven by the desire to imaginatively capture the key moments of African history from the beginning of colonialism to what is now known as postcoloniality. Chinua Achebe’s fiction chronicles different phases in the development of modern Africa. Each of his work is wholly different in character from the other, but together they legitimately can be seen as aspects of piled-up sequence of human imperfection. Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964) represent a pre-colonial Igbo culture struggling against all odds to retain its integrity against the

There is this perceived need to stand up for African and other previously colonized indigenous cultures. In this project, I endeavour to critically analyse Chinua Achebe's exploration of colonialism and its impacts on the African society, particularly referring to his first novel, his seminal work, Things Fall Apart. The Igbo society, as depicted in the novel, going through the throes of change due to colonialism becomes symbolic of the entire Africa itself. Analysing the novel closely, I shall look into the contradictory sets of critical views that have come the writer's way, where some critics look at his novel as a simple depiction of a certain society without providing any critique whatsoever while the others appreciate this very style of writing as critiquing the hitherto set Western ideas regarding literary works and their reception. I have also tried to understand Achebe's novel better by studying his non-fictional discourse on colonialism--- essays and interviews, for instance, which have been discussed further in the chapters mentioned. I think the findings regarding Achebe are significant even today because literature gives us a different perspective on reality. Achebe believed that literature has social and