By Condé’s own admission, the motive for writing the novel was to present “a reflection on the history of Africa and the reasons for the present day situation of decay and decline” (Condè 548). Based on the key events of the novel, religion is a conspicuous thematic element that is alluded to. The novel Segu demonstrates that, although religion forms an important part of a society’s identity, it is a divisive and destructive force in society that breeds intolerance, and is often used by influential forces to exert power or control over other groups, to obtain wealth and dominance. Secondary to the negative impact of religion, Condé demonstrates how racial and ethnic prejudices, hierarchical systems, and the slave trade have been destructive forces within societies. The novel, which is divided into five parts and further subdivided into chapters, spans the lives of the main protagonists.
The debate surrounding the essay is in judging Twain’s depiction of the “negro” Jim and its relation to past and present racial discourse. Smith is writing at a time where most respectable circles condemn the practice of slavery, yet many still blindly accuse Twain of being a racist out of a lack of understanding of the novel. These “respectable” circles and the schoolteachers, literary professors, modern critics, and libraries they influence are the target of Smith’s words. They are the educated, the part of society that is most likely to come across Huckleberry Finn, and Smith argues that their blind outrage
To him, art and society are indivisible, which is the African tradition. Unlike writers in European communities, the African artist is accountable to the community. Achebe is further influenced by the fact that African writers believe it is their mission to change their society through education. 37 Chapter 2: Things Fall Apart and Colonialism 1. Okonkwo’s Actions Foreshadow Colonialism’s Impact on Traditional Values Christopher Heywood 47 Even before the colonial rule directly impacts Okonkwo’s world, he betrays African and Igbo tradition in beliefs such as the hatred of his father’s way of life.
The question here which will carry on this research paper is, is Conrad really racist, or he is just trying to be a realist? After reading a few lines of Conrad's racist description to the denizens of the Congo, I really could not fathom why such an open-declared racism against people whose only fault is that they were born with a skin that is different in colour. Conrad did not hesitate from making bitter statements in his description to the black
This journey takes Rutherford into an enterprising passage of horror and self-discovery. The Middle Passage and The Book of Negroes are two novels written by African-American scholars, as they both clearly depict the social and psychological conflicts that result from the invasion of a self-contained African society by the white man and his culture. Thus, in this paper, I argue that post-colonial theory is a useful tool to analyze the dynamics of colonization, both in Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes and Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage. In particular, I investigate the novels depiction of truth and its betrayal according to the process of colonization from the perspective of the colonizer, the perspective of the colonized and the process of decolonization. The first step to utilize post-colonial criticism is to understand the impact of colonization through the perspectives of the colonizers.
Things Fall on Yeats Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart is a postcolonial novel which combats the stereotypical views the Europeans have on the Africans. Very powerfully yet passionately, not to mention rationally, Achebe draws his sword upon the oxidant, providing a story from the point of view of the Africans; he successfully describes reasons for such accusable behavior, while at the same time, allows the reader room for hatred towards the colonizers. Chinua Achebe titled his novel after the third verse in William Butler Yeats’s poem, “A Second Coming”. The similarities between Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Yeat’s “A Second Coming” can be discussed from countless perspectives; generally, they both deal with the issue of disorder, destruction, and the honor lost on the path to power. In Achebe’s novel, we are presented with a society that slowly begins to lose its tradition and culture as a result of submitting to the white men.
In Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie, there is a critical presentation of the oddities in Nigeria as well as Africa in general, as the continent trudges in the biting tyrannical trauma of the military and anarchical leaderships. This aspect is x-rayed beyond the micro setting (families) to the macro society (countries) as the inhabitants, represented by the naïve Kambili, perceive unruly torture in their experience of governance. We see a novel that reassesses what Izevbaye (1979) expresses as “the civilizing function which literature performs by tearing down the veil of sophisticated drawing room manners and fashionable clothes… dealing with the African image in the past or the politics of the present” (African Literature Today 10, 14). This paper examines how Chimamanda Adichie has unraveled the problems of politics, freedom, gender and development within the threshold of governance in Africa. 199 The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.1, no.9, August 2007 Introduction Charles Nnolim (2005)1 explains critically that the third generation of writers in Nigeria (which includes Adichie) exhibits “a literary jungle- rich with varieties of life and growth, awe-inspiring and full of breath-taking surprises…” (8).
One type of culture, which has traditionally been labeled as uncivilized, are those found in Africa. Other more civilized cultures tend to look down on those who belong to African cultures, labeling their customs and ways of life as abnormal. Randall Bass, an Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University, made an interesting argument in his book, Border texts: Cultural Readings for Contemporary Writer. Bass describes a passage from a local newspaper out of Louisville, Kentucky. The newspaper coined the phrase, "national geographic nudity" in describing a movie.
Then Kloby helps us look at real examples of different times in which colonialism has hurt Africans more than helped them. All of these authors have come to one clear consensus: colonialism has ultimately destroyed Africa’s chances of becoming a great and powerful continent. In Mies’ essay, she tends to be very pessimistic about the Africa being able to “catch-up” to other already developed countries. Mies says that, “the poverty of the underdeveloped nations is not as a result of ‘natural’ lagging behind but the direct consequence of the overdevelopment of the rich industrial countries who exploit the so-called periphery in Africa” (151). She denies that possibility that Africa can catch up by following the same path of industrialization, technological progress, and capital accumulation as the more developed countries have used.
Rida Faisal Dr. Nawar Golley ENG 215- Post-colonial assignment 28th November 2013 The post-colonial novel Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, centers on the protagonist Okonkwo, a controversial figure who is characterized by the immense value he places on masculinity, aggression and physical strength above all else, and his equal abhorrence of all things feminine, which he associates with cowardliness and weakness. The book is set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, tracing its precolonial and colonial periods. It explores the downfall of Okonkwo from a highly esteemed tribal leader to someone who, through faults of his own, loses significance in the eyes of the people of Umofia; all of this takes place in the context of Igbo customs, traditions, and a language that is sophisticated and rich. We also see Okonkwo’s relationship with the many women in his life, especially with his wives and his daughter, Ezinma. So although women in Things Fall Apart are initially portrayed as a marginalized group with little to no power, it would be reductive and highly dichotomous to give into the European stereotype of the African woman as the poor, helpless creature with no autonomy.