Reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart from the Postcolonial Perspective:
Chinua Achebe�s Things Fall Apart, a seminal work of Post Colonial studies, has acquired the status of a classic. Among the various factors which lead to its publication, the most noteworthy was Joseph Conrad�s Heart of Darkness that sparked Achebe�s indignation at mis-representations of Africans in fiction. Things Fall Apart was written, says Achebe, �to reassert African identity and as part of the growth of Nigerian nationalism�. In a way Things Fall Apart is a counter discourse against Joseph Conrad�s Heart of Darkness . Achebe espoused the idea that Conrad drew the humiliating images of the Africans as �some other beings�. Edward Said in his groundbreaking Orientalism (1978) argues that �The [fabricated] Orient was a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences� For imperialists like Conrad, this vast African continent was the haunt of savages; a country riddled with superstitions and f...