I have prepared the slides on the Novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, now you can understand this novel in very easy way.

1. Prepared by
UMER HAYAT
NOVEL THINGS FALL APART
BY CHINUA ACHEBE

2. Postcolonial study of
Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart

3. Introduction
• Chinua Achebe, the contemporary Nigerian novelist, poet,
professor, and critic, is considered as one of the prominent
figures in African anti-colonial literature.
• Arrow of God, A Man of the People, Things Fall Apart are his
major works.
• In June 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Brooker
Internatinal Prize and in 2010 The Dorothy and Lillian
Gish Prize for 300,000 one of the richest prizes for arts.

4. • The novel Things Fall Apart published
in 1958 depicts the picture of late
1890’s Ibo society. This novel has sold
about twenty million copies around the
world and has been translated into sixty
languages.
• Achebe presents native African
culture in this novel. Colonizers
destroyed their family relationships,
friendships and also made tribes fight
against themselves.

5. • Colonialism is a practice by which a powerful country
controls less powerful countries and uses their resources
to increase its own power and wealth. It justifies the self -
ascribed racial and cultural superiority of the Western
world over the non-Western world.

6. • Post colonialism is a framework and theory that emphasizes race, class and
cultural oppression. Post-Colonialism is the study of impacts of colonialism in
the colonized society.
• Post colonialism is a period after a nation attained independence from
colonial powers. It is restricted to the literature of Asian, African, and South
American nations.
• By 1952 the period of colonial rule in Nigeria was entering its final phase
after almost 100 years of colonial rule.

7. Main Features in Postcolonial Literature
• Hybridity
• Ambivalence
• Cultural Clash
• Challenging Stereotypes
• Mimicry
• Metanarrative
• Colonial Discourse in Postcolonial Literature
• Counter-Discourse

8. Cont...
• Rewriting History
• Decolonization Struggles
• Nationhood and Nationalism
• Valorization of Cultural Identity
• Dehumanization
• Marginalization

9. Ambivalence
• Ambivalence is an experience of having a positive or
negative attitude towards someone or something. The term also refers to
situations where "mixed feelings" are experienced.
• Okonkwo tries to be ‘man’ throughout the story but many times feel
effeminacy in him.
• Nwoye his son also has these mixed feelings about the traditions as
killing of Ikemfuena and throwing twins into Evil Forest.
• Obierieka also questions about tribal laws, traditions and rituals of his
own society and when missionaries approach this society, he appreciates
change in his society as well as apprehends dangers of whitemen’s
intrusion into Ibo land.

10. Hybridization
• Hybridization is Bhabhas’ concept which he took up from Edward Said's
work. Hybridity is described as a blending of cultures occurring at the
intersection of colonizer and colonized.
• Hybridity in business is evident when he tells that the occupation of the
natives is cultivation and they sell and buy those productions. Colonizers
also adopt trade of palm-oil and palm kernels and the established members
of the village welcome new opportunities of wealth.
• Achebe expresses it that when people start converting in other religion, they
mix their pre-religion with new one. As in the case of woman who allows an
Igbo belief about the ogbanje to contaminate her new Christian way of life to
which Mr.Smith labels “pouring new wine into old bottles”.
• Besides relying on Igbo proverbs, idioms and stories, Achebe also employs
strategy of hybridization through transliteration.

11. Cultural Clash
• The egwugwu leader acknowledges the cultural standoff between
them: “We say he {Mr. Smith} is foolish because he does not know
our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we don’t
know his”.
• The White people become a threat for clansmen as an elder
member of the clan tells the young people, “I fear for you; I fear
for the clan”.
• “The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably
with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed
him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no
longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things which held us
together and we have fallen apart.”

12. Challenging Stereotypes
• Colonizers convinced themselves of their superiority by developing all kinds
of stereotypes about different colonized groups:they were dangerous,
untrustworthy ,lazy.
• A big mission of postcolonial writers is to challenge these stereotypes and
show that they are based on nothing but the biases of the colonizers.
• In Things Fall Apart, Achebe portrays Okonkwo who is wrestler, warrior,
,impulsive, patriot and brave.
• He was “afraid of being weak” and asks himself: “When did you become a
shivering old woman?”
• He proves diligent and strong during the worst days of hunger. Okonkwo
asserts: “Since I survived that year, I shall survive anything”.
• MR. Smith Brown is stereotype who is fanatic, strict, rigid, harsh and
uncompromising who sees black as a sign of evilness and rejects indigenous
beliefs and believes in slaying other prophets of Ibo people.

13. Metanarrative
• Colonizers like to certain stories in which Europeans were created
as rulelrs, masters, civilizers. Postcolonial writers tend to play
around with metanarrative: they like to draw attention to the way
that stories—or narratives—are constructed, and especially how
they're always told from a certain point of view or angle.
• “The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged
himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a
whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a
reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to
include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had
already chosen the title of the book, after some thought: The
Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."

14. Counter-Discourse
• Things Fall Apart may provide a proper space to probe the
prevalent features of Achebe's anti-colonial discourse and what
has turned out to be known as “Achebeism” in African Literature.
• In order to counter argue Achebe has given examples of the Igbo
proverbs beautifully woven in to the speech patterns of Okonkwo
and others.
• For him, languages carry the pride of community. Achebe (1996)
elaborates the concept of self-pride; "Self-pride sustains the culture.
When self-pride disappears, the culture is eliminated. Afterwards we find
only relics of the past."

15. Conti..
• Through, his inclusion of proverbs, folktales and songs
translated from the Igbo language, Achebe manages to
capture and convey the rhythms, structures, and beauty
of the Igbo languages:
• “As our people say, a man who pays respect to the great,
paves the way for his own greatness".
• "Our elders say that the sun will shine on those who
stand before, it shines on those who kneel under them. I
shall pay my big debts first".

16. Rewriting/ Revising History
• Postcolonial writers set about writing history from their own
perspective, showing how colonialism was actually a violent and
terrible thing.
• The colonizer say that they brought democratic government with
them but Achebe stresses that natives have their own in the form
of clansmen called egwugwu. Achebe tells history in the form of
proverbs, folktales and stories. Okonkwo’a stories about tribal
wars, violence, bloodshed and victory over rivals.

17. Valorization of Cultural Identity
• Chinua Achebe emphasizes and valorizes indigenous culture in Things Fall Apart that
they have their own traditions related to marriages, entertainments, feasts and
festivals, funerals etc.
• There is a great deal of tradition surrounding the kola nut. It seems to be a key aspect
of being a welcoming host. The kola nut tradition is yet another way of
communicating respect.
• “He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it,” replied
Okoye, passing back the disc. “No, it is for you, I think,” and they argued like
this for a few moments before Unoka accepted the honor of breaking the
kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor,
and then painted his big toe. As he broke the kola, Unoka prayed to their
ancestors for life and health, and for protection against their enemies. When
they had eaten they talked about many things: about the heavy rains which
were drowning the yams, about the next ancestral feast and about the
impending war with the village of Mbaino.”

18. Assimilation
• Assimilation is another alternative for a multicultural society. People
from the minority culture adapt to the majority culture. The majority
culture on the other hand also adapt certain elements from the minority
culture.
• In Things Fall Apart, Achebe tells how natives start to join the white
people and their religion specially those who are victims in their own
society by their families or by their traditions. The people of Osu,
Okonkwo’s son Nwoye and many others begin to embrace new religion
and then others start to visit church, send their children to schools and
colleges. Similarly, when the white people start to live in that society,
they also adopt some traditions of natives.

19. Integration
• Integration is when immigrants adapt to the main culture of the place
they migrate to.
• When Ikemefuna moved in with Okonkwo, But after a while,
Ikemefuna slowly started to integrate. For example, there is a
tradition in Umuofia that the son of the farmer hits the trees with a
stick to get better harvest. After some time, Ikemefuna was
allowed to join Okonkwo´s biological son in this ritual.

20. Decolonization Struggles in Postcolonial
Literature
• Achebe tries to decolonize the minds of the readers and natives through
portraying the picture of Igbo society in detail revealing that what the
colonizers do and there intentions to civilize the natives are not appropriate
and just rather they themselves need to be civilized.
• They are also not perfect; do not have democratic government and true spirit
of religion. As they tell the natives those who don't worship the true God are
evil and heathen.
• “We have been sent by this great God to ask you to leave your wicked ways and
false gods and turns to Him so that you may be saved when you die”
• Through Mr. Smith, Mr.Brown, District Commissioner, messengers Achebe
elaborates this point.

21. Conclusion
• Things Fall Apart reveals that when outsiders enter into other
regions, their societal norms, rites and rituals, traditions and
cultures, relations and families fall apart and shatter. Achebe has
tried to revitalize the African culture through the story of Okonkwo
and covers the wider area of colonization and its severe effects by
presenting Okonkwo's world which is organized, ordered and
civilized though having some space for improvement. Through his
narrative strategies and through the filters of Homi Bhabha’s
postcolonial theories and of others Achebe has exposed the
tactics, brutality, shrewdness from the side of the white people
and how their interference destroys the Africans’s life and culture
and they fall apart.