International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue XII, December 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Portraying the Relationship between Cultural Fall and the Hero’s fall in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

 Sandamali K. P. S
Institute of Human Resource Advancement, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka

Abstract:- This study itself deals with the novel “Things fall apart” which is a creation by a well-known Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe to see the portraying of the relationship between cultural devastation and the hero’s destruction. The entire novel portrays Igbo society with specificity and sympathy and it examines the effects of European colonialism from an African perspective. The objective of this study is to identify the way that the author has made the link between the major themes and the characters of the text. There it has worked on to see the relationship between the hero’s fall and the cultural fall in the text. Further this study reveals a link which creates a sound bond about the social set up a particular set of people while donating hiding value of a cultural reveal.

Key words: Culture, Colonialism, Themes and Characters, Destruction

Introduction

Literary pieces always stand in the side of human beings to be available for the reference while making the people to be more human than they are expecting to be. Among the Nigerian writers even among the authors around the world, some writers can grab the attention of the readers through the way they are capable of handling the subject matter. With accompanying the aforesaid notion, Chinua Achebe talks about the respect of the people for their tribes and how they do sacrifices on the survival of the clan.

This story creates a picture of an ideal leader who does more than his capacity to keep and save the clan with its originality with the tradition. The entire novel portrays Igbo society with specificity and sympathy and it examines the effects of European colonialism from an African perspective. He wants to publish his own story about Africa to visualize the complexity and sophistication of African society before the arrival of the Europeans and to manifest the deep wounds of colonization and its influences upon social, cultural and political aspects of the country. For this purpose, he uses a story with a hero who faces a tragic end at the end of the story. According to the writer, the protagonist is known as “Okonkwo” and “was well-known throughout the nine villages and even beyond”(The novel “Things Fall Apart, chapter one, page 03) At the final half of the story the hero hangs himself because he can’t bear the dying of his culture and the tradition. The whole story shows very clearly how the relationship between the death of the protagonist and the culture.