Unit 11

English 203: Literature of the NonWestern World

Introduction:
Reading: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 2931-94 (part 1).

A list of Characters, Places, & Terms in Things Fall Apart:

Achebe says that as a student he was shocked to read "the distortions of [Joyce] Cary's novel Mister Johnson," & wrote Things Fall Apart to correct the impression of what life was like in precolonial Nigeria.

Our text says that Achebe's novel "was recognized immediately as an extraordinary work of literature in English" (2932-3).  That is vague.  What the editor means is that Achebe's novel was quickly recognized as an authoritative & artistically respected description of the colonial experience (in English) by someone who grew up in the colony.  It is not so much the case that other postcolonial writers have imitated Achebe.  Rather so many postcolonial novels are similar to Things Fall Apart because the colonial experience was much the same in West Africa, East Africa, South Africa, India, Hong Kong, the Caribbean, & the Americas.

Like Nadine Gordimer's short story, Achebe's novel is highly didactic.  Achebe knew exactly what he wanted his novel to illustrate & you can see that the novel conforms to an obvious outline or plan.

Notice that Chinua's father was "a teacher for the Church Missionary Society," perhaps resembling the character Nwoye (2932).  In any case, Chinua had personal experience of the Christian mission subculture that he castigates in the novel.

Finally, I will remind you that in this course we study literature, not history or anthropology or sociology.  Even in these social science studies there is never an objective view or set of objective facts.  An anthropologist enters the society she plans to study already possessing ideas about what is normal or important in life.  The description of a place or a character or a culture is always the product of someone's judgment whose outlook has been shaped by her formative culture.  This is all the more true of literature, which does not seek to present a factual account.  You may not appreciate Achebe's portrait of Christian missionaries as subversive, ignorant, & belligerent.  It may not be your view.  It is Achebe's view based on his experience.  Moreover, Achebe's view is not idiosyncratically personal.  Quite the opposite, he speaks not only for colonial Nigerians, not only for Africans, but for millions of "3rd world" people who were not Christians & who lived under colonial domination that told them everything in their native culture was superstitious, childish, & evil.  Achebe illustrates that a large part of the colonial enterprise was religious warfare & domination.
 

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Explication