Trauma Writing In Chinua Achebe’s Fiction

Chinua Achebe was a renowned poet,novelist and critic,who devoted his life to revealing to readers the real Africa.He wrote five novels,one collection of short stories and a large amount of essays and poems.His novels Things Fall Apart,No Longer at Ease,Arrow of God,A Man of the People and Anthills of the Savannah and short story collection Girls at War and Other Stories depict colonial and postcolonial Nigerian history.Achebe’s works aim to demonstrate real living circumstances in Africa.His trauma writing was based on his actual experiences.He committed all his life to breaking stereotypes of Africa,presenting the genuine history and culture of Africa from the standpoint of an insider.Achebe believed that in order to reconstruct its subjectivity,Nigeria should look at its history in a proper way.His five novels and short stories are an inseparable entity,which shows Achebe’s lines of thought.Through analyzing these works,one can uncover multiple dimensions of traumas they contain,including personal,family,historical and cultural traumas.Only by taking a broad historical perspective can one construe the connections between traumas of different spaces and time periods.This thesis is divided into five parts.The first part,introduction,consists of an account of Achebe’s life and his writings,domestic and foreign literature review and theoretical framework.The second part probes into the manifestation of trauma in Nigeria,encompassing personal,collective,national and cultural trauma.The third part traces the roots of postcolonial trauma,namely the invasion of colonizers,the loss of subjectivity and the split between historical accounts and reality.The fourth part suggests in order to build a new Nigeria,its people ought to heal their trauma and establish new identities and communities,specifically by claiming postcolonial trauma,digging into ancient traditions and forging cultural confidence.The fifth part,conclusion,summarizes the uniqueness of Achebe’s fiction,namely his proposition to achieve cultural hybridity by building new communities and finding a platform for diverse cultures to communicate.As a great talent,Achebe made invaluable contribution to Nigerian literature.He encouraged African writers to portray an Africa that is drastically different from that delineated by European writers.Africa needs to find the real self at the crossroad of cultural interaction.For the sake of constructing a new subjectivity,Nigeria should champion Afropolitanism.Achebe’s thoughts and explorations concerning Nigerian history and culture can serve as guidance for African and other countries in the world who seek to form a multicultural society.