Research Paper Draft: Chinua Achebe
People in different country has different views or belief of magic and superstition, which of course varies on which culture they came from or choose to follow. When I started researching Chinua Achebe and his books, I noticed that all or most of his books talks about Africa and its cultures and beliefs. Achebe is most famous for his book called Things Fall Apart.
Chinua Achebe was born in Igbo town of Ogidi, Nigeria on November 16, 1930. His parents were Isaiah Okafo Achebe and Janet Anaenechi Iloegbunam Achebe. In the Igbo tradition, storytelling is part of the Igbo community and that is how Chinua Achebe starts to show interest in literature. In 1936, Achebe enrolled in St. Philips’ Central School even though he did not want to. This school is for religious classes for young children like Chinua, but he was a special child because he only spent a week in there and he was noticed by teachers and wrote down his progress. So, he was moved to a higher level class because of his knowledge or intelligence. One particular teacher saw him as a scholar student because he has the best handwriting and reading skills in class. When he was twelve years old, Chinua moved away from his village, Ogidi, to another village called Nekede and enrolled at Central School where his older brother name John was teaching. In the village, Nekede, Chinua gained respects to a traditional art form about god’s protection by symbolic sacrifices. For example, sculptures and collage.
In 1944, Chinua Achebe went to secondary school where he took an entrance examinations and was accepted at both the Dennis Memorial Grammar School in Onitsha and the Government College in Umuahia. Both the school language was English so other st...
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...have, even their house. My mom was not the only kid, there was six of them at the time. She realized that she had to grew up faster and try her best to take care of her siblings.
The one thing that Chinua Achebe believe is that cities, countries, or the whole world is ready to read a story about Africa and its people. Most people see Africa as one story, which is from the news on what they say about it. People does not even try to read about Africa, any authors just because one person says “Africa is barren and has cruel people.” Most Chinua Achebe’s novels have superstitious especially African people believes in supreme beings, spirits, and other divinities, use of magic, and traditional medicine. I think if people starts to read books about Africa, that there is more than cruel people and barren place but a beautiful cultures that have a lot to offer to the world.
As wise John Berger once said,“Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one”. A “single story” is the story of a culture that we learn from stereotypes and conspiracies developed throughout time in our society. In “Things Fall Apart”, Chinua Achebe defies the single story of African culture while still tying their native language in to show the importance between a physical differentiation of culture, and the similarities with morals and values they have in common. Through gender roles and proverbs used in the language of this book, we have a cultural insight of Nigeria through a new set of eyes given to us by Achebe that detures us from the single stories that we were taught to by our society.
Chinua Achebe?s Things Fall Apart is a narrative story that follows the life of an African man called Okonkwo. The setting of the book is in eastern Nigeria, on the eve of British colonialism in Africa. The novel illustrates Okonkwo?s struggles, triumphs, and his eventual downfall, all of which basically coincide with the Igbo?s society?s struggle with the Christian religion and British government. In this essay I will give a biographical account of Okonwo, which will serve to help understand that social, political, and economic institutions of the Igbos.
In his work Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe tells a story describing the decay and destruction of ancient African tradition caused by the invasion of white culture. His tone in the book seems to side with and sympathize with the Africans and their religion. Interestingly enough, though, he uses biblical allusion, as well as onomatopoeia and symbolism to bring the book to life and captivate the reader. The following will describe how he uses these. Even though it appears that he sides with Africans and their cultural beliefs, Achebe uses things from outside their religion, such as biblical allusions.
Nnoromele, Patrick C.. “The Plight of a Hero in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.” Chinua Achebe's
Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known. Chinua Achebe takes this idea into account when he wrote Things Fall Apart. He shows in this novel that unless you know about African culture, you can’t love it or hate it. He shows that Africans aren’t savages like the world thinks they are, and that the Eurocentric world that we live in isn’t correct.
middle of paper ... ... The "An African Voice. " Interview with Chinua Achebe. N.p., 2 Aug. 2000.
Achebe opens his lecture, "An Image of Africa," with the story of a student who sent him a letter saying how he was "particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe," not realizing that "the life of his own tribesmen in Yonkers, New York, is full of odd customs and superstitions" as well (1784). Western thou...
Before the arrival of the Europeans, Achebe did a excellent job portraying how the life of Igbo was before they were forced to oppose their own culture. To support this theme, Achebe included detailed descriptions of social rituals within each family, the justice system, religious practices and consequences, preparation and indulgence of food, the marriage process and the distributing of power within the men. Achebe shows how every man has an opportunity to prove himself worthy to achieve a title on the highest level, based merely on his own efforts. One may argue that the novel was written with the main focus on the study of Okonkwo’s character and how he deteriorates, but without the theme that define the Igbo culture itself, we would never know the universe qualities of the society that shaped Okonkwo’s life. The lives of the Igbo people was no different to the actual lives of the Ibos people back in the early days of Africa. Just like in Things Fall Apart, in actual African tribes there was never a ruler. “Very interesting thing about these villages is that there is no single ruler or king that controls the population. Decisions are made by including almost everyone in the village” (AfricaGuide). Using the theme, Achebe educated readers on by mirroring real African life in her
Achebe’s main point is as much of Joseph Conrad’s racism but more of Western society’s need for change. We need to look beyond the stereotypical image that which the West holds “to its heart.”[pg.8] We must look in today’s society, today’s media and books read in schools. We must realize that “offering bribes to the West in return for its good opinion of Africa” [pg.9] is preposterous. He sees now as the time for change. He doesn’t but blame of Conrad but on western society. “The victims of racist slander who for centuries have had to live with the inhumanity it makes them heir to have always known better than any casual visitor even when he comes loaded with the gifts of a Conrad.”[pg.9]
Osei-Nyame, Kwadwo. "Chinua Achebe Writing Culture: Representations of Gender and Tyranny in Things Fall Apart" Research in African Literatures Summer 1999.
... middle of paper ... ... With Achebe?s words, we?re inclined to appreciate the Igbo culture in spite of it being different from our own. Achebe?s intention is not to justify western dominance over Africa, but to present Africa in such a way that we can respect it for its strengths and despite its weaknesses.
In 1958 Chinua Achebe published his first and most widely acclaimed novel, Things Fall Apart. This work-commonly acknowledged as the single most well known African novel in the world-depicts an image of Africa that humanizes both the continent and the people. Achebe once said, "Reading Heart of Darkness . . . I realized that I was one of those savages jumping up and down on the beach. Once that kind of enlightenment comes to you, you realize that someone has to write a different story" (Gikandi 8-9); Achebe openly admits that he wrote Things Fall Apart because of the horrible characterization of Africans in many European works, especially Heart of Darkness. In many ways, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart can be seen as an Afrocentric rebuttal to the Eurocentric depi...
Literature is the world ways of recording their insights and perceptions on the human experience. Africa didn’t start with actually writing down their history, they used other forms of literature to preserve their culture and history. They engaged in oral traditions when passing down knowledge of Africa’s past. Africa used myths, fables and proverbs, and riddles as ways of teaching and remembering their cultures historical events.
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 to Isaiah Okafo and Janet Achebe in the very unstable country of Ogidi, Nigeria. He was exposed to missionaries early in his childhood because Ogidi was one of the first missionary centers established in Eastern Nigeria and his father was an evangelist. Yet it was not until he began to study at the University of Ibadan that Achebe discovered what he himself wanted to do. He had grown appalled at the "superficial picture" of Nigeria that many non-Nigerian authors were providing. That is when Achebe resolved to write something that viewed his country from "the inside".
According to David Whittaker, Achebe’s work “proved to be an immensely influential work for African writers, becoming the progenitor of a whole movement of fiction, drama, and poetry, which focused on the revaluation of Africa’s history and cultures, and on representations of the culture conflicts that has their genesis in the colonial era.” This novel became a pivotal point of realization not only for Africa, but also for the world. All at once the world, afraid of what change may bring, pushed the same question to the back their mind: “What if we have it all wrong?” Suddenly, the culture of Africa was influencing the culture of America, Asia, Europe, Australia, etc. Achebe’s novel was a catalyst in the process of nationalist renewal and decolonization of African culture as a whole (Whittaker). A principle in this novel’s thematic course is the inter-generation conflict faced by not only the village as a whole, but also, on a microscopic level, in Okonkwo’s household. As the culture in Umuofia begins to shift, the predecessors of the current generation heavily rely on the cultural norms initiated by their father’s fathers. While tradition should be honored in a society, it should also be modified; this concept is not fully grasped by the older generations of