TERM PAPER

Third World Narratives in Things Fall Apart: An insight into Postcolonial

Theory

SUBMITTED BY: RAHID AHMAD

ROLL NO: 53052

PROGRAM: M.PHIL ENGLISH LITERATURE

Submitted to: Madam Shaista Malik

DESIGNATION: Assistant Professor

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, HAZARA UNIVERSITY MANSEHRA

July 2019
Third World Narratives in Things Fall Apart: An insight into Postcolonial Theory

Abstract

This term paper applies direct method as a design of my research along with the framework of
postcolonial theory using the techniques of qualitative approach to the data analysis and a close
reading of the text. The population of my research were Nigerian third world narratives but for
my sampling Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart served as the sampling. This study was
further delimited to third world narratives (Discourse) especially focusing on three main
postcolonial theorists such as Spivak (1992), Homi (1994), Said (2001). Postcolonial theory was
found relevant to this research as it deals with the problems of third world countries’ people that
how they are dominated by First world physically, mentally, psychologically, economically,
culturally, religiously and even through language. The purpose of this research is to find out third
world narratives that how people in Nigeria were victimised by the colonizers and how the
narratives of the dominant becomes the mouth piece of the colonized. So, in this research, there
will be an effort to put an end to exploitative third world narratives of the colonizers.

Key term: Colonial, Igbo, Culture, Third World, Hybridity, Postcolonialism

Introduction

The novel “Things Fall Apart” (1958) is written by the late Chinua Achebe (1930-2013),
who is considered as the father of modern African literature. The novel is set up in a small
fictional village, Umuofia, which is located in Nigeria. Before the arrival of white missionaries
in Umuofia, Achebe shows us the culture, tradition, language and religion of the Igbo people.
When the white missionaries arrived unexpected in Umuofia, they disturbed the lives of the Igbo
people and the villagers did not know what to do when they heard about the sudden cultural
changes that the white missionaries threatened to bring by replacing their cultural and political
structure. This term paper aimed at analyzing the effects and consequences of European
colonization on Igbo people.

In the end of the nineteenth century, most European states migrated to Africa and other
parts of the world where they set up colonies. Nigeria was also like other African nations that
received the Europeans who were in a mission of colonizing. The Europeans or the colonizing
missionaries went to introduce and impose their culture and religion which was imposed on Igbo
people in the novel. When we go through the novel, we see that how the people of Umuofia lived
before the white missionaries came to them and they came to know what they did with their
culture, tradition, language and religions and how did they disturb the prosperity of the people.

The primary purpose of Achebe is that he wants to convey to his readers the value of his
culture as an African. Things Fall Apart showed the readier with an insight of Igbo society before
they were invaded by the white missionaries and their lands were captured. The white
missionaries thought that the Igbo people were barbarians therefore wanted to change every
aspect of their society, i.e. language, religion, tradition, and culture. Consequently, Achebe tells
us that the white missionaries’ colonial rule and their invasion is responsible for the oppression
of Igbo culture and educates the readers about the myths and proverbs of Igbo society.

Before Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart, the Europeans had written all the novels which
were about Africans and Africa. Mostly, the writings of the Europeans showed Africans as
barbarians, uncivilized, uncouth and uneducated. The Europeans thought that they were more
educated and advanced from Africans and therefore they determined to change their lives and
claimed to help them in shifting from the old era into modern era of civilization and education.
For example, if we go through the novel, Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1899), which was one of
the most read novels, we see that Conrad described that Africans were wild, savages and
uncivilized. Similarly, in the novel, Mister Johnson (1939), the novelist Cary described that the
protagonist Mr. Johnson, who belongs to Africa, had a childish nature, semi-educated and
uncivilized African.

Postcolonialism or post-colonial studies is the academic study of the cultural legacy of

colonialism and imperialism, control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The
concept of the “third world” was suggested by a French demographer, Sauvy in 1952. It refers to
those nations which are apart from the powerful countries of the West and the USSR. It also
refers to those nations or people who were suppressed and whose properties, lands, languages
and houses etc. were taken and were colonized. Third world narratives went to change the
language, cultural, ritual etc. of the dominant nations. Postcolonial theory is established for these
subaltern or suppressed people that they should speak in their own voices for themselves
(O’Reilly, 2001).

The focus of the present study was to analyze Igbo society as it was shown in the novel
before and after the arrival of white missionaries in Umuofia. How it affected the lives of the
Igbo people and their culture which led to the conflicts of cultures between the two groups. The
novel Things Fall Apart was analyzed under one of the critical theories, i.e. postcolonial theory
as it was relevant for the analysis of the novel. Postcolonial theory is concerned with the
literature of those countries which are colonies of other countries. Some of the writings, elements
Achebe used in his novel like language and style were influenced by colonialism as we knew that
Achebe was from Nigeria, which was a colony of Britain.

Plot Summary of the Novel

The title Things Fall Apart is adopted from William Butler Yeats’ poem “‘The Second
Coming’” (1921). In this poem, the poet talks about the end of this world in which we are living
and the hereafter. 'The Second Coming' refers to the life after death, in which the poet says, is
completely different from this world:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed the tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

(Yeats, 1921)

Things Fall Apart revolves around the life of the protagonist of the novel, Okonkwo. As
the novel begins, Okonkwo wants to gain fame and therefore becomes a good wrestler.
Afterward, he accidentally kills a man and as a result he and his family are banished for seven
years from his village, Umuofia. During his banishment, the white missionaries come and change
the village as well as the people by converting them into Christianity.

When the protagonist, Okonkwo, returns to Umuofia, he sees the major transformations
that Umuofia has undone during his banishment, he is unhappy with this change. Okonkwo and
other villagers held a meeting for driving the white missionaries out of their village. But their
efforts go in vain as the white missionaries send them messengers to dismiss the meeting.
Okonkwo kills one of them while the villagers help the other messengers to escape. After that he
realizes that his villagers will not go to war against the white missionaries and therefore he hangs
himself.

Statement of the Problem

The problem which was pinpointed in this research was Third World Narratives
especially contrasting both the discourses of the colonizers and the colonized, the slave and the
master, the Dominant versus the subordinate. The Whites or the Britishers used language as a
tool to form ideologies to undermine the culture, identity and language of the dispossessed class
but thanks to such scholars like Spivak (1992) and Said (2001) who came forward to push
forward the third world narratives and speak for themselves. The present analyzed the novel
Things Fall Apart under postcolonial theory to understand the how Igbo society as it was shown
in the novel before and after the arrival of white missionaries in Umuofia was affected by others
leading to the conflicts of cultures between the two groups.

Literature Review

Postcolonial theory is the framework that evaluates any piece of art through the
postcolonial perspective. The theory is defined as: Postcolonialism deals with the effects of
colonization on cultures and society. As originally used by historians after the second World War
in terms such as the post-colonial state, ‘post-colonial’ had a clearly chronological meaning,
designated the post-independence period. However, from the late 1970s, the term has been used
by literary critics to discuss the various cultural effects” (Ashcroft et al., 2007, p. 186).

Most texts give the definition of colonialism before they define the meaning of the term
postcolonialism. Colonialism as defined by OED refers to “the policy or practice of acquiring
full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it
economically”. Therefore, post-colonialism is sometimes assumed to refer to “after colonialism”
or “after-independence” (Ashcroft et al., 2007, p. 12) describing the wide range of social, cultural
and political events arising specifically from the decline and fall of European colonialism that
took place after World War II (McEwan, 2009, p. 18).

The obvious cultural clash that existed between the white missionaries and Igbo in
Things Fall Apart was one that also emerged in The Arrow of God. An additional theme featured
in The Arrow of God is that of “internal division in the tribe” (Alimi, 2012, p. 121). The people
of Umoaro become divided on their own without any external influences; this created a very
strong sense of hatred among them and the spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood that once existed
was lost.

Things Fall Apart was a counter discourse against Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Though
Heart of Darkness is also considered as an anti-colonial text by some scholars, Achebe, along
with many post- colonial writers and critics, thinks that this novel depicts the humiliating images
of the Africans. In “An Image of Africa” Achebe (1978) says that Heart of Darkness projects the
image of Africa as “the other world,” the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a
place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant
bestiality (P. 03).

Research Methodology

Qualitative approach is used in this paper. The qualitative research is a research about the
collecting and analyzing the information in a form of non-numeric, there are two types of data;
primary and secondary data. In this paper the Postcolonial theory and Chinua Achebe's novel
'Things Fall Apart' are primary data while other novels, journals, dictionaries, articles and
publications from the internet are the secondary data.

Theoretical Framework

The present study used the postcolonial theory for the analysis of Things Fall Apart
following three important three main postcolonial theorists such as Spivak (1992), Bhabha
(1994), Said (2001). Bhabha is a prominent contemporary literary critic who has contributed
generously to postcolonial studies. Bhabha presents the colonial and postcolonial phenomena
from a new perspective of double emphasis: one to cultural factors and the second to take the
cultural factors as leading forces in the development of postcolonial studies. Bhabha emphasized
the importance of avoiding overgeneralization or objectification of theory for each colonial
context. Bhabha focuses on colonizer’s language as colonizers used in the era of colonization
which he thinks is the discursive tools of the colonizers in order to grasp their intentions of
colonizing the people. The postcolonial reading of Bhabha is an attempt to carry out two tasks
simultaneously: studying of how the colonized subject come up with “otherness” and hybridity
or how identity crisis is engendered by the colonizers and how one can reflect his dialectical
position in order to show that on what his identity has affected.

Edward Said is a cultural critic who is considered as the originator and inspiring patron
saint of the postcolonial theory and discourse because of his theory of orientalism. He describes
the Us and Them “being social relation”, which the Western Europe divided the world into the
“occident” and “orient”. The Europeans considered themselves occident and considered the
colonized nation as orient. The term orientalism was explained or described by Edward Said.
According to him, the cultural concept was created by the West for the East through which the
Europeans suppressed the people of the Middle East. In orientalism, Said introduces the
production of philology (the study of the history of language), lexicography (dictionary making),
history, and biology, political and economic theory.

Spivak contributed a lot in postcolonial theory. In her essay “can the subaltern speak?”,
she addresses the weak and colonized people that you should speak for your rights. The
theoretician Spivak defines the term subaltern as:

[……..] subaltern is not just a classy word for “oppressed|, for the other, for somebody who is
not getting a piece of pie.[…..]. In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to
the cultural imperialism is subaltern------ a space of difference. Now, who would say that is just
the oppressed? The working class is oppressed. It is not subaltern. [……] many people want to
claim subalternity. They are the least interesting and the most dangerous. I mean, just by being a
discriminated against minority on the university campus; they don’t need the word ‘subaltern’
[…..]. they should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They are within the
hegemonic discourse, wanting a piece of the pie, and not being allowed, so let them speak, use
the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern (Sharp, 2008).

Spivak also introduced the terms essentialism and strategic essentialism to

postcolonialism for describing the social function. Essentialism highlights the voices of the
oppressed people in many ways that might be the cultural identity of the social groups or the
representations of various identities of the people which as a result given social group. The term
strategic essentialism stands for the tentative, essential group identity which is used among the
people.

Discussion

Things Fall Apart is one of the most influential novels of its time, both on a local and
global scale. If someone wants to fully understand about novel and its contents, it is important
for him to read the history of the novel or history of that time that led the novel to publication.
The country Nigeria became exposed to the political structure of British and its various
institutions, when Nigeria in 1906, became a Britain colony. Achebe was born in 1930 nearly a
quarter of a century after the British got control of Nigeria. Though his parents has been
converted to Christianity at that time but his grandparents were firm believers in the traditional
culture.

Due to these circumstances, Achebe knew about the Nigeria culture as well as the British
culture. Since both the cultures do not want to quit their own beliefs and follow the beliefs of
others. They did not understand other’s culture, therefore, as a result there was a lot of chaos and
tension. Knowing this, Achebe said in an interview “that the conflict that existed between these
two cultures created sparks in his imagination” (Sickels, 2012). And in the result of this conflict
and clash gave birth to his novel Things Fall Apart.

Postcolonial literatures are mainly concerned with writing to the center, according to
O’Reilly (2001), when the writer is approaching to postcolonial text, he should have awareness
of the key issues that are: “the use of indigenous cultural traditions, the appropriation of English,
and impact (whether cultural, psychological or political) of colonialism and its aftermath”(p. 61).
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart also deals with these three principle issues. This novel highlights the
“cultural traditions” of the Igbo people. It also illustrates the impact of colonialism whether it is
cultural, psychological or political on the Igbo people. Achebe uses English language as the
medium of express for making these two points successful.

The history of narration and tradition’s invention are centered to the nation. The nations
has its own historical narrative that demonstrated its origin and the disposition of an individual.
In Things Fall Apart, Achebe tries to maintain his own historical narratives by sticking to the
oral tradition. In is essay “Named for Victoria, Queen of England”, Achebe shows his moral
responsibility to assert tot the past. In other essay, Achebe explains that the African scene of
complexities should be defined in African literature, otherwise, it not successful and will go to
failure.

In the novel, Things Fall Apart, Achebe presents us Igbo society before the colonization
and after colonization. Achebe’s main purpose by writing this novel was writing back to the
Europeans who has been misrepresented Africans for their fabricated stories about the traditions
and culture of Africa. Fanon (2001) maintains that “there is nothing to be ashamed of in the past,
but rather dignity, glory and solemnity. The claim to a national culture” (p. 169). This optimism
is shown by Achebe who dug out the past of Nigeria through presenting the picture of the pre-
colonial Igbo culture in Things Fall Apart.

Achebe has shown the perspective, which is actually the perspective of a native, through
the characters who possess their own voice in the novel. The characters show the value of their
own socio-culture that are fell part with the arrival of the white missionaries in Igbo land.
Corresponding to this issue, Okodo (2012) points out the relationship between the cultural
performance and the Igbo’s religion. He says “if the dramatic performance of Greek classical
culture originated from ritual performance in honor of gods, Dionysus and Appllos, why would
the ritual performance of Igbo gods, why all the gods in Africa be rejected (p. 131).

The first characteristic in the case of Chinua Achebe’s language is the notion of
“historicity”. Actually, for Achebe a depiction of a humanized version of Africa and its people
through his language is of paramount significance since the Western ethnographical tradition, as
old as the Greek and Romans ethnographical records, had a certain set of fixed beliefs about
Africa and as a result, stock images about Africa were formed. For example, the idea of dealing
with the strange and the unknown with an objective point of view was among the central
assumptions of this form of writing. Precisely, the Western ethnographical writer had the
presupposition that he was going to face an “other” which needed to be recorded in full details
from a disinterested standpoint. Thus, the idea of confronting “the other” or what was strange
and hard to infer based on the western logic or mentality had created a distance in between and
caused the producers of such texts to remain at the surface level and get content with objective
and realist record of physical details without making any efforts to provide a psychological or
philosophical reinterpretation of the new phenomena. What Achebe decided to do was to respond
to this form of writing and what had actually turned out to act as a strong “otherizing” device in
the hands of the British Colonizers by giving birth to a kind of novel which can be called the
“ethnographic novel”. In this regard, Snyder (2008) describes it as a kind of novel “written by an
artist from within the culture which presents an authentic representation of that culture” (P. 157).

Another instance of drawing on the issue of the significance of language can be found in
the chapter sixteen of Things Fall Apart which focuses on the way the white Christian preachers
speak to people of Umuofia. Actually, the presence of a black interpreter talking in Igbo to the
people of Umuofia non-fluently and through wrong words is symbolic. At first glance, the reader
may take the black people’s act of laughing at the interpreter as a simple joke, but by delving into
the issue, he may find out that it represents the lack of a true negotiation between the white men
and the Igbo people or the lack of mutual understanding because the words conveyed through the
language of the interpreter are references to referents as if from void and of no place in the
lingual cosmology of the Igbo people. Achebe again highlights the fact that for the people of
Umuofia the white man was also an “other”, who had “iron horses”, and was “mad” by speaking
of strange religious beliefs.

There are also other instances in the novel which can prove that language turns out to be
a very significant theme for Achebe: Early in the novel, in chapter three, the reader finds out how
in precolonial Igbo community, a constructive social contract could be framed based on some
conversional or dialogic norms and social customs without creating any uproar or threat to the
stability of the Igbo society. The episode tells how Okonkwo was able to convince Nwakibie to
give him enough yams for share-cropping due to his awareness of the Igbo culture and language
since he takes kola seeds and wine with him as gifts to Nwakibie and starts the conversation
based on the social norms of respect and politeness through a famous Igbo saying: “A man who
pays respect to the great paves the way for his greatness”. (Trilogy, 16). Such an instance and
other similar ones – like the court scene in the tenth chapter reflecting the perfect judiciary
system and language of Umuofia – gains double significance when compared to the attempts
made in the final pages of the novel; futile attempts made by the titled men of Umuofia in order
“to open a respectful dialogue” with the district commissioner about what happened to the
church. They do their best to negotiate through their art of conversation but the district
commissioner tricks them and sends them to prison.

The effect of such a technique on the readers will be more tangible when the court scene, as one
of the manifestations of the self-sufficient pre-colonial Umuofia, is compared to another social
scene in the seventh chapter which revolves around the story of a wrestling match. There unlike
the court scene chapter the readers find the poem in praise of the winner in pure English:

Who will wrestle for our village?

Okafo will wrestle for our village

Has he thrown a hundred men?

He has thrown four hundred men?

Has he thrown a hundred Cats?

He has thrown four hundred Cats.

Then send him word to fight for us. (Trilogy, 38)

Based on the two examples, it can be inferred that since the issue of judging in court
through the spirit of the ancestors is so unique and of the cultural specification of Umuofia,
Achebe needs to highlight it more than a wrestling scene, that may be found in many other
cultures too. Thus, he uses Igbo language to draw on the matter of egwugwu while in the
wrestling match scene, even the final laudatory poem is presented in English translation.
Respectively, it must be stated that by such an act of foregrounding in chapter eleven about
egwugwu, Achebe is somehow addressing the native readers of the novel and reminding them
not to forget one of the most powerful pre-colonial social systems of Umuofia: that their society
in pre-colonial age could practice justice through an efficient system while the court brought
later by the whites had caused many problems, for example in the case of landowning. Precisely,
Achebe criticizes the colonizers idea that England is most valuable contributions to its colonies.

Thus, it can be asserted that he has tried his best to provide a discourse capable of
portraying the positive aspects of hybridity, alongside with its negative repercussions which is
tantamount to providing an alternative to the colonial text or any other pieces of writing which
may find hybridity against homogeneity of language and a sign of giving chance for self-
expression to the undecipherable “other”. However, it seems that studying Achebe’s discourse in
Things Fall Apart as an alternative to the colonial discourse and a model for Nigerian national
literature acquires much more concentration by going beyond its language.

To this end, we should investigate the thematic and ideological issues conditioning
Achebe’s discourse and its linguistic features. This can be possible when according Bhabha, the
ontological and existential processes at work within each voice and between different voices in
the novel are put into study. To be precise, it should be analyzed how Achebe has been successful
in crafting a “heteroglossia”, complying with Bakhtin’s theories, to show the way different Igbo
voices with all their complexities and those of the white men come into contact with each other.
Furthermore, it should be detected how those negotiations or struggles made by Igbo men in the
way of “existential self-positioning” in the colonial context are formed and delineated by the
voice of the narrator.

Many readers have noticed the important role the voice of the narrator plays in Things
Fall Apart and have proposed different and sometimes contradictory ideas about its mechanism.
However, it can be asserted the narrative voice in this novel is very significant as it is to enhance
the “polyphonic” features intended by Achebe through adopting different narrative positions in
the course of the novel, breaking the boundary between omniscient and non-omniscient which in
consequence leads to a better view of the precolonial Igbo voices actively taking part in various
acts of the social discourse plus their encounter with the voices of the new white comers and the
new emerging discourse.

The discussion about the issue of voices in Things Fall Apart will not be complete if the
voice of the colonizers is excluded. In fact, Achebe intends to provide the reader with a space
where all voices can be heard free from any bias or presumptions. Thus he highlights the
importance of foregrounding the matter of variety as well as hybridity of voices and how by
adopting new positions at different points within an act of discourse each voice is to synthesize a
different effect. In this sense, Achebe’s main task as a postcolonial novelist can be taken to show
how the voice of the white newcomers imposed new discursive roles on the Igbo voices and
conditioned them so as to grasp hegemony. However, the reader must not forget that Achebe is
also successful in depicting an alternative or showing the possibility of moving toward a new
liminal space of negotiation for future which the readers realize after carefully scrutinizing the
clash between the voice of the colonizers and the voice of Igbo people or the clash of discourses
of different natures. Thus this matter sheds light on the importance of Achebe’s careful task of
introducing different voices heard within the body of colonial discourse in the third part of
Things Fall Apart and their discursive significance: the voice of Church bodies, the voice of
British commissioners and the voice of the new converts.

Conclusion

This term paper was effort to examine Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in light of the
framework of postcolonial theory through the perspective of postcolonial theorists like Bhaba
(1994), Said (2001) and Spivak (1992). The nature of polyphonic novel was analyzed and its
relevance to postcolonialism was highlighted. By a qualitative approach to the data analysis and
a close reading of the text, it is concluded from the above discussion that Achebe provides a
record of the theorizing policies of the colonizers, which the colonizers brought to the Igbo or
Nigerian people in order to express them and to repress their voices. Achebe talks about the
identity, hybridity, traditions and culture of the Igbo people in the novel in order to raise the
voices of the Igbo people to decolonization. If we look in this sense, we can say that Things Fall
Apart is a postcolonial discourse which depicts the pre-colonial as well the colonial Nigeria in
order to help the readers of Nigeria to find how to get together things which once fell apart. The
problems of third world countries’ people that how they were dominated by First world
physically, mentally, psychologically, economically, culturally, religiously and even through
language. The purpose of this research was to highlight the accidents in novel that how people in
Nigeria were victimized by the colonizers and how the narratives of the dominant becomes the
mouth piece of the colonized. So, in this research, there was an effort to put an end to
exploitative third world narratives of the colonizers.
 References

Achebe, C. (1978). An image of Africa. Research in African literatures (Special Issue on Literary
Criticism), 9 (1): 1- 15.

Alimi, A. S. (2012). A study of the use of proverbs as a literary device in Achebe’s things fall
Apart and arrow of God. International journal of academic research in business and
social sciences, 2 (3),121-129.

Cary, J. (1962). Mister Johnson. New York: Time

Conrad, J. (1994) Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin Popular Classics.

Fanon, F. (2001). The wretched of the earth trans: Constance Farrington. New Delhi:
Penguin Books

Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1992). New Nation writers’ conference in South
Africa.

McEwan, C. (2009). Postcolonialism and development (Volume 3). London: Taylor and Francis.

Okodo, I. (2012). African traditional drama: The Igbo-Nigerian experience. Journal of emerging
trends in educational research and policy studies, 3 (2): 131-136.

O’Reilly, C. (2001). Post-Colonial Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Said, E. W. (1994). Culture and imperialism. London: Vintage.

Said, E. W. (2001). Orientalism. New Delhi: Penguin Books.

Sauvy, A. (1956). Adolphe Landry, Population, 11ème année, 4, pp. 609-620.

Sharp, J. (2008). Can the subaltern speak? Geographies of postcolonialism. SAGE publications.

Sickels, A. (2012). Critical insights: things fall apart (Kindle Edition). Critical Reception of
Things Fall Apart. Salem Press.

Snyder, C. (2008). The possibilities and pitfalls of ethnographic readings: Narrative complexity
in things fall apart.” College literature, 35 (2),154-74.