Abstracts

Here are two abstracts of critical essays that have to do with Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.  The first is an essay on Chinua Achebe and what influenced him as a writer.  The second has to do with the duality of individual/collective memory within Things Fall Apart.

Gikandi, Simon. “Chinua Achebe and the Invention of African Literature.” Things Fall Apart: A Norton Critical Edition. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2009. 297-303. Print.

            This article seeks to examine the context in which Chinua Achebe’s novel was written by outlining the circumstances in which the novel was written—what was going on in Nigeria at the time—and the outside forces that helped shaped its creation.  The essay first examines the challenges that faced Achebe when it came to publishing his novel—his only finished manuscript was sent to London and ignored for almost an entire year, after which Achebe sent it to William Heinemann who published it in 1958 after much speculation and misgivings.  Gikandi points out that only 2,000 copies were first published—which doesn’t seem like much given the popularity it has received gaining the title of the first African novel.  However, Gikandi highlights that many people think that Things Fall Apart was the first written/published African novel, but others came before him by writers such as Casely Hayford, Sol Plaatje, and Amos Tutuola.  What made Things Fall Apart so popular, and helped it achieve the title of the first African novel, was that Achebe had written it at a crucial time in Nigeria’s own history—the end of its domination by colonial rule.  Therefore, Things Fall Apart could be considered a testament as what to do after decolonization had begun, even though Gikandi says that unlike other African writers Achebe did not want to reject colonial history altogether.  Instead, Achebe saw the written word as a powerful colonial legacy to be used by the colonized—by fusing African oral storytelling traditions with the written European novel.  Gikandi points out that the Achebe’s own family history played an important role in colonial history—Achebe’s great grandfather was the first to receive Chirstian missionaries in the village of Ogidi.  The most important part of this article is where Gikandi highlights how literature shaped Achebe’s own view of the world, as well as his own view of his people.   Therefore, past and present helped shaped Achebe’s novel which would become the most famous novel to come out of Africa.

 Irele, F. Abiola. “The Crisis of Cultural Memory in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.”Things Fall Apart: Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Francis Abiola Irele. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2009. 453-91. Print.

Within this article, Irele Abiola gives an explication on the narrative discourse of Things Fall Apart so that one can understand that it functions on the principle of duality that exists between the individual/collective experience as well as the relationship between writer/society.By analyzing certain moral dilemmas that take place within the story, Abiola focuses on the fact of whether or not Okonkwo’s moral/ethical struggles are representative of one individual or whether or not they represent the collective consciousness of Igbo life and history. Abiola creates a clear distinction between Achebe’s personal beliefs and the beliefs the novel represents and or manifests through its characters—the novel almost works as a meta-consciousness or extension of the author’s own understanding of certain morals and ethics particular to his society which is critical to African oral tradition. In doing so, Abiola shows that reality becomes represented as fiction, and the struggles of the individual become symbolic for the collective African experience.However, what is curious to note is that Abiola points out that the African experience is not just particular to Africans. Instead Achebe reaches across the space of “cultural proximity” (a concept that is somewhat simalr to "cultural enunciation) to create a novel in which the human experience—moral/ethic struggles—can be understood as collective. The author concludes his essay by saying thatThings Fall Apart can be understood as a historical epic tragedy, and as such it challenges the concepts of space and time by examining the human condition—an act that that makes the individual experience part of the collective human experience.