Rebuild The Dignity Of Africa—Achebe’s Colonial Criticism And Anti-Colonial Writing

As one of the most widely read African novelists,Chinua Achebe is Africa’s well-known novelist and literary critic and he is regarded as "the father of modem African novel".Most of his works are written about the Afriean customs,history,cultures,religion,politics.African original ecological civilization in the pre-colonial period, African society under the colonial penetration, colonial aggression and Colonial rule. Historic shows the collision and fusion between different cultures, objective presents the the influence upon Africa brought by the colonists.Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall APart as the representative of "Nigeria tetralogy" has been regarded as the independence declaration of Afriean national culture,pioneering and basing the modem Afriean literature. In Achebe’s novels, by telling the story of his own nation and portraying unique traditional cultural traditions in Africa,Achebe attempts to get rid of the stereotyped image of Africa and aims to counterattack the distorted description of Africa by the west to redress the image of Africa in the western discourse.Achebe’s criticism of the western colonial literature is wisdom and keen.He is also the representative of the colonial criticism.By adopting to the actual and the text,through text and theory analysis to explore his writing position in counterattaeking the representation of Africa in western discourse and reconstructing the African image.The thesis is composed of three chapters.Chapter one mainly introduce Achebe’s life and identity,his unique in modern African literature, the overview of his novels and the domestic research status.Chapter two mainly discuss the misunderstanding of using post-colonial culture criticism in research of Achebe’s works. His criticism of Conrad Heart of Darkness to understand Achebe’s colonial critical ideas.Chapter three through Achebe’s most important novel Things Fall Apart,from four parts to analysis Achebe’s anti-colonial writing characteristics.The four parts include restoring the true picture of Africa, actualization of the colonial history, objective description of the white people and the localization of English.Through the above analysis,we can see the great value of Achebe’s description of the unique social reality in Africa and his efforts to counterattack the distorted and stereotyped image of Africa in Western discourse.Meanwhile, it argues that only by persisting in their national culture,winning national dignity and absorbing the essence of western civilization can a new Africa be built.