FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIP AND AFRICAN DECOLONIZATION: AN ANALYSIS OF ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART AND NO LONGER AT EASE

Alaa Ghaffar Bassee

Abstract In his book Decolonizing the Mind, Ngũgĩ deplores how the African literary circles used the colonizer’s logic and language to discuss the future of their own cultural heritage. Highlighting the debate about a core method of decolonization, he wrote “in the literary sphere-they were often seen as coming to save African languages-against themselves” (Ngũgĩ 7). Of course, Ngũgĩ was talking about African writers who devoted their lives attempting that salvage African heritage using languages other than African languages, which Ngũgĩ deeply criticizes in his book. And although Achebe’s trilogy was written in English, they are considered crucial in the decolonial movement that importance of which is heavily emphasized in Ngũgĩ’s book. For my thesis, I want to explore the impact of various forms of colonization on more intimate bonds within the African individual, namely the familial bond of father and son. In addition to that, I will attempt to highlight the importance of using the colonizer’s language in these books.As the slightly different definition of culture provided by Merriam Webster online dictionary collectively refer to culture as sets of beliefs and rules, patterns of behavior within the social constructs, and methods of thinking, all of those are acquired within a basic unit of the social fabric; the family. To certain extent, to effectively apply an influential factor over a given culture, that factor will not be as influential unless it reaches and affects the bonds of family. Therefore, I am aiming at examining three different settings in which a familial bond of a father and son is at display having internal and external conflicts both because of the colonial experience and the previous experiences of the father and the son. A study of those effects can lead to a better understanding of the dynamics through which such effects on culture may be hindered, or even reversed. Through the application of postcolonial theory on three of the works of the famous African writer, Chinua Achebe, I want to shed light on the significance of the familial bond within the colonial environment as a gauge that may be used to measure to effect of cultural colonialism. I also want to emphasize the importance of this particular theme in these novels: Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, and Arrow of God, that bear the task of reclaiming the both the literary and cultural spaces of the colonized cultures of Africa, as they were described by Irele as ”a counterfiction of Africa, in specific relation to the discourse of Western colonial domination” (2). The publication of Achebe’s novels coincided with historical intellectual and social movements in the western colonial countries that paved the way for such novels to become as impactful as they are. Along with the publication of internationally influential African thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo, the issue of the African nations and cultures became central to the international debate on the depths of colonial impact on colonized nations. Therefore, providing those who were increasingly seeking further insight in the issue of Africa with the means to get to know an African nation like never before was not only remarkable, but ultimately a decolonial step into decolonizing the nation. Hence, many works that tackled the African decolonial works, or “counterfiction” as Irle describes it, focused on the grand aspects of the cultural, military, and economic hegemony exercised by colonial imperial powers over the nations of Africa. But for the same reason Achebe’s novels were central to the movement of re-presenting and re-writing the African story, the details of small, seemingly insignificant everyday interactions with one’s family are at the core of any decolonial effort. They are partly the reason these novels gained their international appeal and became successful. Achebe understood the western method of handling art and successfully used his understanding to draw a then-unique picture of Africa. Achebe’s understanding can be summarized in Coutts-Smith’s interpretation of Western method of regarding art in general. Coutts-Smith argued that the bourgeois regarded art as abstract truths to maintain their definition of “high” culture and “status quo” (2). Achebe’s works, although did not meet the expectations of his peers as per his answer in a meeting with Charles H. Rowell, managed to be part of the welcomed, by westerner institutions, African art that aims at “understanding of the individualistic, competitive and acquisitive nature of man is not a class view but an absolute human condition” (Coutts-Smith 3). Achebe talks about the reasons why his peers were not pleased with the way he allowed strong character, Okonkow in Things Fall Apart and Obi in No Longer at Ease, to “fall” in one of his interviews with Charles H. Rowell. Without much justification, Achebe says “People are expecting from literature serious comment on their lives. They are not expecting frivolity. They are expecting literature to say something important to help them in their struggle with life.” (Rowell 88). Then Achebe continues “That is what literature, what art, was supposed to do: to give us a second handle on reality so that when it becomes necessary to do so, we can turn to art and find a way out” (88). Achebe here is simply proving Fanon’s words about how the identity of Africans was shaken by the colonizer and they are in desperate search unlike the white man “we observe the desperate struggles of a Negro who is driven to discover the meaning of black identity. White civilization and European culture have forced an existential deviation on the Negro” (Fanon 16). According to Coutts-Smith’s description of the way the bourgeois regarded art as that “creative process” that can be used to refer to the “understanding of the individualistic, competitive and acquisitive nature of man is not a class view but an absolute human condition” (3). In his answer, Achebe seems to be fully aware of that as he explains how other African writers insisted on the seriousness of art not knowing how that might have been instilled by the colonial power into the African individual. In my thesis, I will be using this particular argument to discuss the methods of interactions throughout the clash of generations in three of Chinua Achebe’s novels, Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, and Arrow of God, and examine the difference the colonial influence makes on the everyday interactions of the fathers and their sons. The argument that I am adopting to tackle this theme is important as this particular aspect of the colonial experience is not often in the large bodies of work done on the postcolonial literature. Achebe’s three novels can be described as realistic novels that depicted the life of one African nation in three different historical, economic, and cultural setting. It is in these different settings that the generational effects of colonialism can be seen most vividly. I want to contrast the impact colonialism has over a nation and the arguments that can be done to facilitate such discussion debate on this topic and the impact of the same colonial powers over the seemingly insignificant familial bonds of sons and fathers.

FATHER-SON RELATIONSHIP AND AFRICAN DECOLONIZATION: AN ANALYSIS OF ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART AND NO LONGER AT EASE

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