Name : Kubavat Kishan

Roll No : 11Semester : 4Paper no : 14Paper name : The African LiteratureYear: 2015-16PG Enrollment No:14101021Submitted to: Department of English M. K. Bhavnagar University

Topic: “Things Fall Apart as a Historical Fiction”

Born: 16th Nov. 1930

Died: 21 March 2013

Occupation: Writer, Professor.

Nationality: Nigerian

Notable Works:-

• Things Fall Apart • Arrow of God

Chinua Achebe

Author: Chinua Achebe

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publication Date: 1958

It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English.

Things Fall Apart

What is Historical Fiction?

Ambiguous term

Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting located

in the past.

The character of history

Based on or concerned with events in history.

Historical

Literary work whose content is produced by the imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.

The category of literature comprising works of this kind, including novels, short stories, and plays.

Fiction

Things Fall Apart as Historical Novel

When the novel was published it was a time often called the Nigerian Renaissance because in that period a large number of very strong Nigerian writers began to create a powerful new literature that drew on the traditional oral literature, European literature and the changing times in Nigeria and in Africa at large writers as varied as Ben Okri and Whole Soyinka developed in the context of the ideas and energy of the Nigerian Renaissance, but Achebe is considered one of the earliest and best novelist to have come one of the top English – speaking novelists of his time anywhere.

( Jiffynotes )

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a novel whose title bears the central massage of the work. The title ‘Things Fall Apart’ foreshadows the tragedy which takes place at the end of the novel. The novel depicts the tragedy of an individual as well as the tragedy of a society.

The protagonist of the novel Okonkwo who was rich and respectable at the beginning of the novel meets a tragic fate at the end of the novel. Achebe portrays how an ambitious, well known, and respected African Okonkwo’s life falls apart.

Significance of The Title

But when he suffers, his whole tribe also suffers. At the beginning of the novel, the Ibo society was a peaceful, organic society, but at the end of the novel it falls into pieces. Thus, the novel records not only falling apart of Okonkwo’s life but also his whole society.

Things Fall Apart

Cultural roots of the Igbos

Self-confiden

ceUniversal Principles

In 1958 much of Africa was still under to colonialist yoke, although few countries had already achieved independence. Set in a time of great change for Africans.

Two painfu

l features in the

Novel

The humiliations visited

on Africans

by colonialis

m

The corruption

and inefficiency

of what replaced colonial

rule

Things fall   Apart in particular focuses on the early experience of colonialism as it occurred in Nigeria in the late 1800's, from the first days of contact with the British to widespread British administration.

Achebe is interested British administration. Achebe is interested in showing Igbo society in the period of transition when rooted, traditional values are put in conflict with an alien and more powerful culture that will tear them apart.

( Jiffynotes )

Achebe paints a vivid picture of Ibo society both before and after the arrival of white men, and avoids the temptation to idealize either culture.

In this context, he believe that the novelist must have a social commitment.

"The writer cannot be excused from the task of reduction and regeneration that must be done.

“I for one would not wish to be excused. I would be quite satisfied if my novels did no more that just teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfection – was not one long night of savagery from which the Europeans acting of God's behalf delivered them."

Thank You

Source :- http://www. Jiffynotes.com / Thingsfall Apart/

HistoricalContext.html