Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: A Case of Postcolonial Discourse Analysis and Reexploration

Abstract

A plethora of reasons stand behind Achebe’s decision to write Things Fall Apart, positioning it among the classics of literature. Of these key reasons is his discontent with European representations of Africans in works of fiction. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a marker of the counter-discourse adopted by Achebe to voice his stand on these baseless representations based on the original local contexts’ interiority. Achebe’s confirmation of writing Things Fall Apart is over and above evident in reasserting the African identity as an inseparable part of the growth process of Nigerian nationalism. Utilizing a postcolonial textual discourse analysis of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the paper provides evidence that Things Fall Apart is a postcolonial novel exploring the impact of colonialism on Igbo society in Nigeria, being regarded as a seminal work of postcolonial literature, for it efficiently conveys the cultural clashes occurring during the colonial era.