Chinua Achebe: Shaping African Literature and Culture
Chinua is considered to be the father of African writers. He employs a variety of literary strategies to tell the story of African culture, social issues, and the role of literature in society. In doing so, he shaped African culture in literature and the collective consciousness based on his life experiences. According to him, the book holds a unique place in society as both a teacher and a work of art. His notion as a novelist serves a particular purpose in the evolution of literature throughout the cosmos. As a figure of social fairness and human dignity, he represents the pinnacle of the continent's expanding literary accomplishment. Evidently, he has written many books to explore the boundaries of rational beliefs and relationships within a diversity of cultures. His works depict a combination of arts and genres at the same time. He purports a theoretical framework to explain the marginal line between these aspects of literature.
The Novel as Art and Genre
First, the novel is an art because it targets a public audience in the communities. Art is an aspect of human work that focuses on meeting an audience in the city as part of the public domain. According to Achebe, the content of the novel derives its shape from what the society expect from the writer and not what the writer hopes from the organization. Ideally, stories have collective sense in the entire process of writing and production because the component bears much respect to the expectations of the community and the social structures. Writers tend to extract knowledge from their experiences in the towns and families (Mukherjee 23). Thus, novelists use their art to demonstrate the prospects of their development while revealing and sharing experiences with various generations in the novel.
As a genre, a novel tends to utilize the environmental opportunities to teach and help the society gain consciousness on issues affecting their progress. Therefore, Achebe declares books as a medium of sharing and educating the audience about specific components of life that might be abandoned based on ignorance or lack of awareness. In one of his declarations "I would be quite satisfied if my novels...did no more than teaching my readers that the past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them (Chinua, 2)." The other authors perceive Achebe's approach as a liberation to the continent. The timing of every article in his work portrays a medium of communication to the oppressor at a time when the oppressed needed to know her rights in the society. His reflection on the pre-colonial eras of Africa introduces the tool of flashback mostly used in arts to intrigue the audience attention.
A Novel as an Artistic Thematic Aspect
Achebe argues that any novel is a piece of art that exemplifies the diversity of artwork in the human society. In such metaphoric illustrations, he perceived every audience to show an interest in either watching or reading the art components. Thus, it becomes more of the art itself than theoretical perspective of the same. The novel becomes a thematic aspect of Achebe's theory as he explores the boundaries of human nature in his backyard. Similarly, he adopts such styles in "The arrow of God" and other novels to explain the same concepts in using the literary devices.
Literary Narration of African Struggles
Literary, he uses the writing to narrate the plight of the African under the rule of the white culture displaying multiple contexts of the relationships between the two continents as one maimed with lots of challenges and technicalities besides cultural differences in play. The environment played a central in most of the thematic components of Achebe's memoirs in the communities of Africa. We can admit that the past endeavors depicted in Achebe's literature point to the evolution of the African people with a significant focus on the struggles for independence and freedom of nationhood in many countries.
The Role of Literature in Society
In this context, he believed that writing and the society bear many references to the contemporary issues. A novelist should contemplate on the real problems that affect the people around them and the environment in which they live while documenting the history of every event in the novels. Literature plays a significant role in liberating the population from chains of ignorance and the rhetoric of unawareness. One should focus on the significant challenges in the society as a source of motivation in the quest to writing the central themes of the stories. Therefore, Chinua believes that a good writer should not spread the message about themselves to the audience. Instead, the contextual frameworks.
Chinua Achebe's Focus in "Things Fall Apart"
I think Chinua Achebe's focus in "Things Fall Apart" portrays an induction of saddling and consciousness towards specific goals in the art of writing. Nonetheless, the novel would represent wholesomeness in the event of a contrary approach to such issues in the society. In this article, he pursued specific aspects of his communities that he felt the need to express to his audience. His concentration on the issues affecting the African continents limits the boundaries of this article. In return, surfacing the ills and burdens of human surrounding makes the story one of the complacencies in different segments.
The Conflict between Social Dedication and Dedicating to Arts
The conflict between social dedication and dedicating to arts may posit a comprehensive statute of understanding the significant concerns in the theory of the novel. Ideally, the rise and fall of Okonkwo and the revolution of the African society may posit the challenge of identifying the boundaries in genre identification. I think Chinua's choice of plot betrayed the intent of the novel upon his audience. It would be more captivating when in engulfed in a thrilling plot that focuses on nature's course in human life. Likewise, the contemporary society has villains and victims of every circumstance. People fall and rise at some levels in life. The case of Okonkwo is a symbolic illustration of the political and the economic struggles of the scrambling African continent that failed to meet the expectation of her people. "And so people said he had no respect for the gods of the clan. His enemies said his good fortune had gone to his head. They called him the little bird Nza who so far forgot himself after a heavy meal that he challenged his chi" (22).
Again, the constituents of the novel may help us to understand the fundamental issues raised by the author in the context of live events. Natural calamities, as well as human struggles, exist in the novel explaining various concerns the author had relating to his environment. "That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself" (Chinua, 17). These are elements of what happens daily in our communities across Africa and the world at large. In this context, we can learn that the author does not only hold to the claim of social links, but also displays the major implications in the divisions within humanities.
Achebe's Novels and the International Context
Therefore, the author reduced the components of the story to an international context in the pedagogical studies. His craftsmanship and new expertise merge to produce a comprehensive piece that exposes the ills of every decision in the international arena. This way, we can learn the social intents of his work in the eye of the readers. He prioritized the facts embedded in the anthropological developments as well as the impacts of other social injustices in this perspective. Colonialism and invasion of the African society by the whites is a major theme of his novel. With an artistic approach, he embellishes the role of writing in a complex society. This way, he chooses specific ills in his continents to help the reader understand the history of the African people before the western captivity. I think this is an excellent approach to his theory of the new mentality. The philosophical contents and the ideological boundaries may portray the kind of reasoning in his opinion of approach to the work of novels in Africa.
The Artistic Approach to Novels
Practically, the novel shares much of an art framework than a genre in this cult. He uses motivational and captivating quotes to introduce the writing to his audience. "The drums beat and the flutes sang, and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out in their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end, Okonkwo threw the Cat" (Chinua, 3). Such an approach paves the way to the retention and captures the readers' attention as we seek to explore the character of natural influence in the society.
Achebe's Contribution to the Literary World
In conclusion, Achebe's work focused on the social dues and injustices while illustrating his novelist approach to the theory of genre and art. He uses exemplary techniques to underscore the structural boundaries within his work. Thing Fall Apart is one of the most effective tools to illustrate Achebe's theories of writing and categories of literature all over the world today. It is clear that Achebe's work combines reflection and language styles in his work to stress the purposes of his writing as a novelist. The stories illustrate the values embraced in his actions and his focus on theory and reality. He perceived humanity as a universal code of existence within various geographical areas. At the same, I think Chinua is a champion of the voiceless at a time when the society almost lost hope. Therefore, a combination of all these aspects and other styles makes Achebe's focus towards his theory to become a reality on numerous occasions in the study. I think his novel portrays all the genre characters as well as the original contexts of art in the African society making him a universal author of all times in the literature.
Work Cited
Mukherjee, Ankhi. What is a Classic?: Postcolonial Rewriting and Invention of the Canon. Stanford University Press, 2013.
Chinua, Achebe. "Things fall apart." Ch. Achebe (1958): 1-117.
