Things Fall Apart
by
Chinua Achebe
(Postcolonial Novel)
Postcolonialism
in the larger sense represents not only a period but also a conflict within
one’s own self as there is an effort to step outside one’s colonial self and to
approach the past reality from a new perspective. Jasbir Jain in her essay, “Post
coloniality, Literature and Politics” in the anthology Contesting Postcolonialism
has focused on Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj as a major postcolonial text and pointed
out the close association between history, literature and theory.
In
broad terms, postcolonial can be said to cover all the cultures affected by the
imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day. When a nation
start conceiving and constructing ideas and practices to resist colonialism, its
ways, ideologies and legacies. The seeds of postcolonialism can be traced. To the
resistance and opposition that a nation or a people put up to the impositions
of the imperial forces. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart falls clearly in the
category of a postcolonial novel.
The
strain and tension of the colonized are reflected through the character of Okonkwo,
who symbolizes the position of the African under pressure in a rapidly changing
social situation. Through him Achebe builds a controlled tension between the
general and the particular by maintaining a balance between the social and individual
perspectives. At the societal level, Okonkwo symbolizes the traditional Igbo
past which the community wants to preserve. Okonkwo’s inflexibility, his insistence
on manliness and his rigid resistance to change are as much individual traits
as the traits of his culture. The novel can also be termed as a resistance
novel without being overtly political, it draws attention to the cultural imperialism
of the white men and portrays how a community falls apart because of the
collision between the imperialist powers and the local inhabitants.
Rather
than simply being the writing, which came after Empire, Things Fall Apart is a
novel which critically scrutinizes the colonial relationship and sets out to
exhibit in one way or another the resistance to colonial perspectives. The
novel traces the beginning of colonization, presents conflict and generates
multiple voices which makes it a multi-layered novel.
Comments