Critical Analysis of Chinua Achebe's Things F...

Critical Analysis of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Author Name : V V Haleshappa

INTRODUCTION

Everything is falling apart has created African literary history. No African novel has sold in such large editions - only the English edition has been published in about 3 million copies - and it has been translated into forty-five languages.

The novel tells the fable of the Turtle who reached the sky because the birds lent it their feathers. The fable forms a pattern for the whole novel: just as the Turtle reaches the sky with the help of the birds, so Okonkwo reaches one of the foremost positions in his clan with the support of the population.

But just as the Turtle plunges to the ground and crushes his shield, so Okonkwo falls from power when he loses the support of the people and the gods.

The plot takes place in the fictional Ibo village of Umuofia in Iboland in eastern Nigeria in the late 19th century, just before and after the first white people arrive in the area. The theme is tradition as opposed to change, the dissolution of traditional African society as it cannot withstand the forces of white civilization. The first part of the novel depicts life in the traditional Ibo society, its social and religious structure, its rites and customs. It is a society where the individual is to a large extent subordinate to the collective and it is through the collective that the individual reaches his goal and life gets its meaning (Whittaker and Msiska, 2007).