Postcolonial Nigerian LiteratureAs Evident In Achebe’s Novels

Abstract

This paper sets out to explore and analyze Chinua Achebe’s books Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease through which the author depicts quite clearly the impact of postcolonial reality. It is the turn of the nineteenth century. An imperial power hungry for gold, trade, or perhaps even more power, invades a country. The indigenous people must struggle with this newly arrived culture and all of its beliefs, values, habits and traditions that have now become entangled within their own lives. They must evaluate which part of that change brings benefits (stimulation of the economy through trade, increased awareness and self-sufficiency through education, advanced medicine that may lead to the removal of disease) and which part reaps harm (loss of traditional culture, beliefs, and values). In many cases, the lines blur and the imposed change can be thought to have both positive and negative ramifications. In either case, the issue of colonization touches upon more than just the struggle of native people to adjust to a new culture. A more serious obstacle needs to be faced: the suppression, and oftentimes overt annihilation, of the native people’s former lives and culture that comes with the new presence of another, who believes -- knows, he'll even tell you, deep in his heart -- his culture is superior. This other, neither a typical enemy nor a traditional invader, does not share similar traditions or warfare. He does not seem aware that he stands on a land that is not his own, but on a land belonging to dead ancestors. Rather, this colonizer -- a foreign force -- holds that idea that the land he has come to conquer truly can be owned and furthermore, that it can be owned by him. He holds an unfaltering belief that his culture is superior to the one he has come to suppress.