Chinua Achebe, author of “Dead Men’s Path,” was born in a village in eastern Nigeria; because he was a the son of a missionary, he had a Christian upbringing. He was educated in England at the London University but finished his schooling at...

Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease includes a variety of idealistic characters, from Obi Okonkwo, the typical educated young reformer, to Mr. Green, his curmudgeonly, racist boss. Despite these characters' differing views, they share the...

“Osu is like leprosy in the minds of our people.”

When Obi makes the decision to marry Clara, an osu, both the Umoufian community, and his parents strongly oppose this marriage, as it is a union which will bring suffering to all of Obi’s future...

Mr Omo from the novel ‘No Longer at Ease’ by Chinua Achebe is a minor character. He is one of the Nigerian men who shares a workplace with Obi, and is Obi’s idea of a typical ‘old Nigerian man’. Indeed, Mr Omo does represent the older generation...

Chinua Achebe’s “Civil Peace” takes place in post-war Nigeria. The story’s protagonist, Jonathan Iwegbu, considers himself to be a very lucky man as most of his family is alive and he still has the few material possessions he had possessed before...

A Man of the People is a satirical story of mentorship, romance, revenge, and chance. The story is told in the perspective of Odili, the protagonist and a young educated man who is used symbolically to represent the younger generation that was...

In Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God, tragedy is the driving force of the plot and the development of Ezeulu’s character. Contrary to the popular saying “that which does not kill you makes you stronger,” the successive and increasingly personal...

Intellectual Societal Position in Anthills of the Savannah

Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah deals with positions of power in society, and government’s true role in this hierarchy of power. It explores the intersection of power with...

The Anthills of the Savannah is a novel by Chinua Achebe set in a fictional country in West Africa, Kangan, during the 1960s postcolonial period. Arguably, this novel represents Achebe’s ideology of the postcolonial African social and political...

In his novel, Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe masterfully uses his characters to convey larger human truths as well as to drive his plot. Things Fall Apart is about the colonialization of a Nigerian tribe called the Igbo, following the characters...

Chinua Achebe’s autoethnographic novel “Things Fall Apart “written in 1958 can be viewed as an attempt to destroy the misleading conceptions about Igbo culture that were given to the world by European writers. The way novel presents the arrival of...

“What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears” (Alice Walker). This quote by Alice Walker, a prominent writer, delineates how ideologies and beliefs are often created with a lack of evidence - commonly referred to by the term...

The concept of balance in Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, is an important theme throughout the book. Achebe introduces this idea with an excerpt from William Butler Yeats's poem, "The Second Coming." The notion of balance is stressed here as...

In their respective works Things Fall Apart and The Joys of Motherhood, both Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta depict the effects of colonialism on Igbo society.

While Achebe demonstrates the gradual process of colonial imposition, Buchi Emecheta...

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart explores the struggle between old traditions within the Igbo community as well as Christianity and "the second coming" it brings forth. While on the surface, it appears the novel narrows its focus to a single...

By Justin J.R.K. Kirkey

An Involved Essay: The Comparison of

One Hundred Years of Solitude with Things Fall Apart

Things - and societies - fall apart. Societies are born; they grow, thrive, decline, and finally perish. Their procession through...

In the novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe uses Okonkwo's story to elaborate a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the cultural values of African tribes. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart as a rebuttal to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness....

When the Europeans arrived in Nigeria to harvest ivory and spread their religious ideals, many Africans were exploited and their cultures were irreversibly changed. Two novels, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Things Fall Apart by Chinua...

The novels Things Fall Apart and The Joys of Motherhood both present Nigeria as a competitive, consumption-crazed country. Each novel, therefore, also creates a parallel between Nigeria and capitalist, Western societies--yet each one shows that...

“The white man is very clever…He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”

Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart is a prime example of African literature that demonstrates the clash between cultures and...

The South African Igbo tribe of Umuofia, as depicted in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart,” (1958) encompasses layer upon complex layer of social order. From birth to death, every aspect of Umuofian culture is defined by an intricate balance of...

By comparing White Teeth with at least one other appropriate text, explore the presentation of family and family relationships in postcolonial literature.

The ‘metanarrative’ of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth differs from the direct linear narrative of...

The presence of sexism, both individual and institutional, runs rampant in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. It is the most constant theme in the story, more intrinsic in the plotline than even racism, and certainly more deep-rooted. The...

Tradition and change are as much at war as the people are in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. The events that define this war are centered on and around the main character, Okonkwo, who finds himself unable to adapt to the changes taking...