Achebe’s Multicultural Views Reflected In Things Fall Apart And No Longer At Ease

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is renowned as “the father of modern African literature”.His first two works interrelate with each other in terms of character and theme: Things Fall Apart reveals the disintegration of Ibo traditional civilization under colonial intrusion at the early stage.No Longer at Ease demonstrates the cultural predicament that African elites suffer from the aftermath of cultural colonization.The author is labeled as an African nationalist for his strong accusation against colonialism.Under the guidance of postcolonial theory,this thesis analyzes cultural choices made by different characters in the given works,which turns out that Achebe’s intention is not just limited in writing back to the colonial center or subverting the stereotypes of African “dark” image.Chapter one makes an investigation of Achebe’s critical views on the colonizers’ Eurocentric views which are manifested in hegemony in the Ibo community and orientalist denial of the humanity of Ibo individuals.Chapter two concerns with Achebe’s objection to the monocultural choices of Ibos who respond to cultural change with radical defense or betrayal of indigenous culture.Chapter three,with an examination of Achebe’s effort in reinventing African image and hybridizing African culture with western culture,reveals Achebe’s proposal of multicultural views as a way to deal with cultural conflicts.This thesis insists that Achebe objects to the essentialism reflected by the monocultural attitude of the colonizers and that of the colonized.He suggests multicultural views for the negotiation of different cultures and the deconstruction of the binary opposition between indigenous and foreign cultures in order to develop African culture.The study of Achebe’s multicultural views will further help to unveil the logic of his literary creation and provide a new perspective for the interpretation of his works which are stereotypically identified as the author’s anti-colonial attempts.