Achebe's novel " Things Fall Apart" shows the completely opposite side of African society, telling the story of Okonkwo, an Ibo man who is actually represented as a functioning person. Africans are represented as actual individuals with intelligence and a language, not just one massive conglomerate of dumb thoughtless natives. Their customs are not regarded as crazy and foreign, but as normal everyday life no different than the assortment of Western customs.
According to Achebe, Conrad depersonalizes African, eliminating them as a "human factor".
" And between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and , upon my world, to look at him was a edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind legs. A few months of trainning had done for tat really fine chap...", Heart in Darkness.
If we compare the description about Afrian people from Achebe's points of view, and Conrad's points of view, we can see that there is a a yanwing gap among them; In one hand Achebe tries to show the real image of African people and on the other hand Conrad's novel " Heart of Darkness" shows them as savages.
I argue that In Things Fall Apart, Achebe justifies the inevitable surrender of Africans to colonisation by portraying their shortcomings. Achebe's characterisation of Okwonkwo is centrifugal; that is, he constructs the events of the story to unfold such that Okwonkwo is removed from the centre. This decentring of the protagonist diminishes him and in turn diminishes the African he is made to represent. His lack of intuition, reflection, and foresight lead him into acts of transgression that first
ResponderEliminarbanish and later lead to his demise (disgrace and dishonour). Even those who join the Christians are not certain of what it is all about. Achebe reduces the African to the childlike portraiture Western thinkers accord them when he captures the character of Ogbuefi Ugonna, an elder who decamps to Christianity. Invited to partake in the sacrament of holy communion, "Ogbeufi Ugonna had thought of the feast in terms of eating and drinking, only more holy than the village variety. He had therefore put
his drinking horn into his goatskin bag for the occasion" ( page 125). Thus, Achebe agrees with the colonialist that Africa was poorly organised and substandard measured with Occidental values and its ideology.