POST COLONIAL THEORY IN NOVELS

Post Colonial Theory in Novels

Post Colonial Theory in Novels

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart has been called the archetypal African novel. It was the first West African novel written in English that succeeded in giving European readers a sympathetic understanding of the indigenous culture, which had been occupied but not understood for one hundred years. Critics have praised its protagonist's heroic though futile stand against colonialism, its restrained prose style, and Achebe's purposeful integration of Igbo proverbs (Wren, 1996). Achebe was attempting to create the communal, functional, utilitarian art he admired and which he believed represented the traditional purpose of art in Igbo society. He consciously wrote Things Fall Apart as part of the cultural revolution that was moving in step with the political revolution that led to Nigerian independence in 1960. The primary goals of this cultural revolution were to rediscover the Igbo past and to undermine the colonial stereotypes represented in European literature about Africa (Wren, 1996).

On a more personal level, Things Fall Apart is also Achebe's attempt to atone for his own Europeanization. A Christian with a coveted university education, Achebe had at one time dismissed the importance of his own culture. Things Fall Apart is an effort to rediscover the riches of Nigerian history, celebrate the cultural past, and mourn what has been lost.

In Things Fall Apart, Achebe effectively counters the persistent and self serving European stereotypes of African culture, particularly the notion that traditional African cultures are authoritarian, amoral, and unsophisticated (Wren, 1996). In refutation of this stereotype, Achebe carefully describes the complexity and fluidity of Igbo culture, disclosing its essential pluralism. Moreover, Achebe shows that the Igbo have a coherent system of values that nevertheless allows for a considerable exercise of individual choice. Although the novel is narrated in the third person, the sympathetic point of view is located within the Igbo culture, and the reader gradually comes to accept this perspective as natural (Wren, 1996).

Yet Achebe tries to avoid idealizing this historical past. Although sympathetic to it, he demonstrates that it cannot survive unaltered in a modern world. The novel's title is taken from William Butler Yeats's “The Second Coming,” and the novel presents a similarly ironic and apocalyptic vision of the failed effort to maintain order and balance. Okonkwo's unsuccessful struggle with change parallels the Umuofians' effort to maintain the careful balances between free will and necessity, the needs of the individual and the needs of the community, and the demands of traditional culture and the political reality of colonial rule (Wren, 1996). Colonialism strains the capacity of Igbo culture to adapt, and it is clear that Okonkwo's death is a sudden and dramatic paradigm for the gradual but inevitable death of traditional Igbo culture.

The Wide Saragossa Sea by Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is a study of individuals who are entangled and finally consumed by their obsessions, just as divers are ensnared by the thick sargasso seaweed that surrounds the Windward ...