Things Fall Apart

In his On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, Jonathan Culler (1982) addresses these concerns and forms several interesting conclusions. What does it mean to read as a woman? Culler’s answer is concise and comparatively challenging: “to read as a woman is to avoid reading as a man, to identity the specific defenses and distortions of male readings and provide corrective”. http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v5/v5i2a2.htm - enl. Though Culler fails to sketch out these resistances and distortions, he does provide some basic instructions for such a reading.

Achebe weaves a complicated story of the downfall of traditional African cultures through the story of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart. An image that comes of African women

These “dumb”

Many people notion is that woman is usually a person who has great role in the family because the harmony of a household is mostly determined by women. This notion is created by male dominance. By simply using this notion many males are escaping from their responsibility. In this way they are deconstructing the identity or individuality of the particular woman. They are allowed to open their in public to share their ideas.

In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, we find some roles of women are seen as primary educators for their children, as the caretakers of their children and as a slave to their husbands, child bearers. Due to the phallocentric notion that women must produce many tough, male babies to be valued within their community, Ekwefi is considered a annoyance woman because after ten live births, only one child, a daughter named Ezinma survives. In the Igbo people, the condition of weakness is strongly associated with the state of being female.