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Submitted by: Sana Gul

Submitted to: Sir Ishaq Khan
Date: 16th December, 2020
Subject: Contemporary Post-Colonial
Studies
Program: MS English Literature
Semester: 2nd
Batch No: 4
Student ID: CUP-20SG-0322-11600
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Chinua Achebe as a Postcolonial Novelist

Among many postcolonial writers, Achebe has been a trend setter by the way of his

novel writing which showcases the world that a so-called third world writer can adapt and

excel in English. Through his writings, he demonstrates to the world that culture, customs,

religion and the native beliefs of the formerly colonized people can thrive in today’s world.

Throughout his writings, he encourages his people and instils in them the confidence to

discard the inferiority complex created by the Europeans. To inspire his people, he not only

writes novels but also tries to teach his people to shed the racial inferiority off. He once said:

“Here then is an adequate revolution for me to spouse to help my society regain its belief in

itself and put away the complex of the years of denigration and self-denigration”. Achebe

created a new style for his novel writing with his native Igbo myths, legends, folksongs,

proverbs, traditions, customs and beliefs which not only popularized his novels but also

challenged the derogatory image of the African and rejected the European attitude towards

the Africans. He was a practical man who attempted everything which is pragmatic in the

postcolonial world. Unlike many other postcolonial writers who have written their works

without any link to their previous work, Achebe has written all of his novels in sequence

which projects the early happy climate of Africa to the social, political and religious turmoil

during colonization and finally the aftermath and the disastrous effects of neo-colonialism

against which the present postcolonial countries struggle. Each of his work has different

themes from the other but when they are put together, they can be seen as different aspects of

human imperfection caused by the colonization. Hence, his novels can be divided into two

major categories: One category represents pre-colonial Igbo culture struggling against the

entry of the Europeans. Among his novels, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God fall into

this category. The remaining novels such as No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People and

Anthills of the Savannah are on people’s identity and economic crisis of Post-colonialism and
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neo-colonialism. Thus, Achebe has cleverly written all the novels coherently to make his

people realize the different political and social scenarios created as a result of colonization.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is often placed against Joseph Conrad’s Heart of

Darkness as a counter discourse. Achebe himself confesses that his intention in writing

Things Fall Apart was to situate it as a counter discourse. In his essay entitled “Named for

Victoria, Queen of England,” he fosters this view when he clearly states, “Although I did not

set out consciously in that solemn way I now know that my first book, Things Fall Apart, was

an act of atonement with my past, a ritual return and homage of a prodigal son” (Achebe,

1995, p. 193). In another essay entitled “An image of Africa,” Achebe takes issue with

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, accusing Conrad of being a “bloody racist” (Achebe, 2000, p.

328). “The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph

Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his

work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that

its manifestations go completely unremarked” (Achebe, 176). Things Fall Apart has

become an anti-orientalist discourse because of the authentic depiction of the Igbo life. The

life of the Igbo is romanticized and distorted by the Europeans in the colonial discourse.

However, by presenting a view of pre-colonial Igbo society in Things Fall Apart, Achebe

attempts to reclaim African history from an African perspective. One major purpose of his

writing the novel is writing back to the Europeans or the colonizers who have long been

misrepresenting Africa through their fabricated stories about Africa’s long-practiced

traditions and cultures. In this novel, Achebe has recovered the perspective, which is

exclusively a native perspective, through the characters possessing their own voice in the

novel. The characters reflect on their own socio-cultural values that are crumbled down after

the arrival of the Europeans in Igboland. They put forward their resourceful values that

consist of both accuracy and flaws, before the readers who judge how cruelly that values have
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been crushed by colonialism. Things Fall Apart recreates an oral culture and a consciousness

imbued with an agrarian way of life and exhibits, as Achebe himself says, that African people

had not heard of civilization for the first time from the Europeans. They had always been

civilized.

To conclude, Achebe and his works are great contributors in liberating Africa and its

people form imperialism and also in liberating African literature from the Europeans who

stamped it as “naïve”, “bush” and “young”.