After conducting extensive research studying cultures around the world, theorist and social anthropologist Peter Van Der Veer remarked that "the critical elements, like those to be found in the spiritual ideas at the beginning of the 20th century,...

The process of colonialism is the ongoing eradication of old practices and the exploitation of new practices, and often entails settlement into a foreign land, the introduction of new cultural practices, and the enforcement of religious practices....

Ethan Frome and Things Fall Apart are found in two dramatically different settings, with each plot relying heavily on the setting of the novel to tell its story. The setting of a story is a broad term and can contain many layers. While each story...

The novels Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Moby Dick by Herman Melville feature two uniquely different characters who similarly strive for fulfillment amidst uncertainty and danger, completely devoid of moral qualms about extremities taken...

Within any system of oppression, the oppressed, once they realize their treatment is a type of oppression, oftentimes have the impulse to resist. This resistance, sometimes exceptionally dangerous, often bucked by popular opinion and those who...

Okonkwo is a character in Chinua Achebe’s novel “Things Fall Apart” who attempts to conform outwardly while questioning inwardly, although he definitely might not appear to be at first glance. Okonkwo’s inner conflict caused by the tensions of...

Gender Matters: Why Achebe and Jung Chang Have Opposing Interpretations of Western Influence

While neither Wild Swans nor Things Fall Apart was entirely positive or entirely negative toward the societal change brought about by imperialism and...

The colonists and the Ibo people depicted in Achebe's Things Fall Apart had differences of opinions on many topics – such as their ways of life, the Ibo’s multitude of gods and deep spiritual connection to their ancestors, their customs of their...

“No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man” (Achebe 45). Throughout Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, gender and cultural norms of the Igbo tribe...

The main characters in the novels Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe in 1958, and Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston in 1937 are Okonkwo and Janie Mae Crawford. The countries in which they reside (Nigeria and The...

Chinua Achebe’s “Civil Peace” takes place in post-war Nigeria. The story’s protagonist, Jonathan Iwegbu, considers himself to be a very lucky man as most of his family is alive and he still has the few material possessions he had possessed before...

A Man of the People is a satirical story of mentorship, romance, revenge, and chance. The story is told in the perspective of Odili, the protagonist and a young educated man who is used symbolically to represent the younger generation that was...

In Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God, tragedy is the driving force of the plot and the development of Ezeulu’s character. Contrary to the popular saying “that which does not kill you makes you stronger,” the successive and increasingly personal...

Intellectual Societal Position in Anthills of the Savannah

Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah deals with positions of power in society, and government’s true role in this hierarchy of power. It explores the intersection of power with...

The Anthills of the Savannah is a novel by Chinua Achebe set in a fictional country in West Africa, Kangan, during the 1960s postcolonial period. Arguably, this novel represents Achebe’s ideology of the postcolonial African social and political...

Chinua Achebe, author of “Dead Men’s Path,” was born in a village in eastern Nigeria; because he was a the son of a missionary, he had a Christian upbringing. He was educated in England at the London University but finished his schooling at...