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Chinua Achebe was born in Eastern Nigeria on November 16, 1930. His father was an evangelist and church teacher in the Ibo village of Ogidi, had converted to Christianity as a young man. His parents were passionate about their children’s education, and their house contained many schoolbooks.
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Chinua Achebe was born in Eastern Nigeria on November 16, 1930. • His father was an evangelist and church teacher in the Ibo village of Ogidi, had converted to Christianity as a young man. • His parents were passionate about their children’s education, and their house contained many schoolbooks.
Achebe began learning English at age eight. • He was not only bilingual, but negotiated two cultures. • His immediate family was Christian, but he freely visited relatives who followed traditional Ibo rituals.
Education • Achebe studied literature in college. He Achebe encountered British works about Africa. • Achebe was dissatisfied with having to settle for the outsider’s view. • “At the university I read some appalling novels about Africa… and decided that the story we had to tell could not be told for us by anyone, no matter how gifted or well intentioned.”
Things Fall Apart was published in 1958 and was an immediate success. By 1964, TFA was required reading in many West African secondary schools for its literary merit and because it showed students a rich, positive view of an African culture.
Culture: The Ibo, also spelled Igbo • are the third most populous ethnic group in Nigeria • make up about 16% of Nigeria’s people • live mainly in the southwestern part of the country and are subsistence farmers.
Family Life • At marriage, a wife went to live with her husband. • A prosperous man would have two or three wives, each living in her own hut within the family compound. • Villages were loosely organized into clans of about 5,000 people.
Religion • Supreme god = Chukwu; many lesser gods. • Natural forces such as Earth and Sky were represented by important gods or goddesses. • The will of the gods was revealed through oracles and divination ceremonies. • Each clan, village, household and each individual had a protective ancestral spirit. • The personal guardian spirit for an individual was called a chi.
Government and Leadership • No single leader; no kings; no capital cities. • Decisions made by discussion and consensus in meetings of all the adult males of a clan. • Some men had special influence through wealth, personality, age or family status, or through having earned, rather than inherited, titles of nobility. • High value was placed on individual achievement and on stating one’s views eloquently. • In 1886, Nigeria became a separate British colony. TFA takes place during this early period of colonization.
Achebe on culture: • “Americans have their vision; we have ours. We do not claim that ours is superior; we only ask to keep it.” …and literature: • “Literature, whether handed down by word of mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality, enabling us to encounter in the safe, manageable dimensions of make-believe the very threats to integrity that may assail the psyche in real life, and at the same time providing through the self-discovery which it imparts a veritable weapon for coping with these threats whether they are found within problematic and incoherent selves or in the world around us. What better preparation can a people desire as they begin their journey into the strange, revolutionary world of modernization?”
Things Fall Apart Family Tree Unoka | Okonkwo’s father; he is dead | Okonkwo -protagonist / | \ (unnamed) Ekwefi Ojiugo 1st wife 2nd wife 3rd wife /\ | /\ Nwoye Ikemefuna Ezinma Nkechi Obiageli son adopted son (Nma) daughter daughter daughter
