English 226: Achebe

  Chinua Achebe, Nigerian author, scholar and statesman, is perhaps the most influential African writer alive. Writing in English for a world audience, having intimate knowledge of both Igbo culture and Christianity, Achebe achieved worldwide reknown with his novel Things Fall Apart, first published in 1958. This relatively short novel provides a deliberately unsentimental view of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of Christianity and colonization. It accomplishes several purposes at once: it introduces readers to the richness and humanity of Igbo culture, undermining stereotypical views of Africans, at the same time that it critiques both that culture and the European colonizers who tragically destroyed it. Most important, it is a moving tale of a tragic hero, Okwonkwo.

Texts: We will read Things Fall Apart, available in print in a number of different editions. We are using the Anchor Books edition first published in 1994, available at the MCC bookstore. It may also be ordered online. Here is Things Fall Apart at BestBookBuys.com.

Links: A reliable and comprehensive website is the African Postcolonial Literature Site on Achebe. It contains a wealth of useful material-- biographical, bibliographic, historical, and cultural. See especially the link specifically on Things Fall Apart. Another very comprehensive site is the Achebe Webpage from English Professor Cora Agatucci's Humanities 211 class, "Cultures & Literatures of Africa," at Central Oregon Community College. In addition to quotations, interviews, and links to other resources, this site contains extensive and detailed lists of works about Achebe, especially about Things Fall Apart. You can find a number of interesting articles on the novel online.  If you're writing a paper on Achebe, see Dr. Agatucci's Achebe Bibliography and her selections from Achebe's Statements.  If you're interested in contrasting views of women in Achebe & Emecheta, don't miss Rose Ure Mezu's "Women in Achebe's World."
 

When You Read: Here is Professor Paul Brians' Study Guide on Things Fall Apart from Washington State University. And here is Cora Agatucci's "Reading & Study Questions on Things Fall Apart" from Central Oregon Community College.