Feb

13

The Widening Gyre.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

February 13, 2008 |

This year, 2008, marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, which The Chronicle of Higher Education recognizes with an article on Achebe and his book. It’s a remarkable achievement in many respects; it’s a short, but extremely complex and powerful book by a first-time author (Achebe was a university graduate working at the Nigerian Broadcasting Company when he wrote it), and it’s a book that takes the perspective of tribal peoples without stereotyping, reducing, or idealizing them. They, and in particular an Igbo chief named Okwonko, are the central characters of the book. In fact it is Westerners who are, although not stereotyped, minimal characters, as the book deals with encroaching colonialism and the collapse of the tribal system. Although the whole tradition is sometimes ignored, Achebe’s book represents a small part of a rich and diverse literary tradition that spans the African continent, from the oral tradition which gave us, among other things, the stories of Anansi the spider from Western Africa, to Wole Soyinka, the first sub-Saharan African author to win the Nobel Prize, playwright Athol Fugard, who wrote Master Harold And The Boys, and novelists like Ben Okri and Yvonne Vera.

It might seem surprising now (when I first read the book it never occurred to me that there was something different in the way tribal people were presented), but this must have represented a kind of revolution in postcolonial literature: people considered primitive savages for much of modern history were treated as real people. Achebe says his characters “”have a dark side, if you like. But I dare you to say they are not human, in spite of that.” In fact by giving them depth, by giving us a warts and all portrait of Igbo people, Achebe made it easier to see them as human. He was criticized for a 1975 lecture in which he made a strong case for Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a racist work, but his criticism has since become canonical, and is now regarded as an important way to look at Conrad’s work. Achebe was not rejecting the West, of course; his first novel represents a kind of fusion literature, after all, and the title comes from the W.B. Yeats poem The Second Coming. He, among other authors, has helped widen the literary world. As for Achebe himself, he has continued to write, producing important novels including Anthills Of The Savannah and Arrow Of God, as well as writing poems, short stories, and, briefly, serving as ambassador of the tragically short-lived country Biafra.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. James on February 13, 2008 11:14 am

    It is a great book that takes the reader away from the traditional literary view of these people as savages and gives them character, depth, and feelings. A great reverse viewpoint of colonialism.

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