Tradition vs. Change in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart"

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• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9783638265959
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: A (USA = 1), Southern Connecticut State University (English Department), course: The Contemporary African Novel, language: English, abstract: [...] Things Fall Apart is a story about personal beliefs and customs and also a story aboutconflict. There is struggle between family, culture, and religion of the Igbo people which is allbrought on by a difference in personal beliefs and customs. Finally, we see how things fallapart when these beliefs and customs are confronted by those of the white missionaries.According to Ernest N. Emenyonu, Things Fall Apart is a classic study of crossculturalmisunderstanding and the consequences to the rest of humanity, when a belligerentculture or civilization, out of sheer arrogance and ethnocentrism, takes it upon itself to invadeanother culture, another civilization (p.84).Chinua Achebe is a product of both, native African and European culture. Achebe'seducation in English and exposure to European customs have allowed him to capture at thesame time the European and the African perspectives on colonial expansion, religion, race, and culture. This has a great effect on the composition of the novel because he is able to tellthe story with an understanding and personal experiences in both cultures. He does notportray the African culture and their beliefs as barbaric. He simply tells it as it is and howthings happened. Chinua Achebe states that neither of the cultures were bad, but they simplyhad a difference in beliefs.In the first section of this paper I would like to outline some important aspects of thetraditional Igbo culture as presented in Things Fall Apart. Achebe argues that the white manhas destroyed Igbo culture out of ignorance of the people's way of life and the white man'sinability to speak the people's language. The second section deals with Christianity and thecolonizers. I will compare the Igbo systems to a certain ext ent to the new system the whiteman brought to Nigeria. Later on, I will examine the effects of the colonizers' arrival and theirreligion on the indigenous culture, giving special attention to Okonkwo, the main character ofthe novel.