Suicide in Achebe’s Things fall apart: a multidisciplinary reading
| dc.contributor.author | CHOUICHA Abderraouf | |
| dc.contributor.author | BENDIF Thiziri | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-10-16T13:06:18Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-10-16T13:06:18Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-06-30 | |
| dc.description | 54 p. (+CD) | |
| dc.description.abstract | This research has explored the theme of suicide in Achebe’s Things fall apart, focusing on the sociological, existential, psychoanalytic, anthropological, and postcolonial dimensions through which we have interpreted the protagonist Okonkwo’s final act. The topic investigated how suicide has been portrayed not simply as a personal choice, but as a reflection of the larger cultural, psychological, and historical crisis. The methodology has combined several theoretical frameworks, including Durkheim’s sociological theory of suicide, Camus’s existential philosophy of the absurd, Macquarrie’s existentialist interpretation of identity, guilt, and alienation, Ashcroft et al’s literary theory of appropriation and abrogation accompanied with Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis of the Oedipal myth and the crisis of communication that aligned with Okonkwo’s major problem, and Wright’s psychoanalytic theory and concept of the return of the repressed. These approaches have been applied to Achebe’s novel and supported by a comparative interpretation to the suicides of Ajax and Oedipus from the classical tragedy. The results have shown that Okonkwo’s suicide aligned with multiple types of suicide introduced by Durkheim: altruistic, egoistic, anomic, fatalistic. The findings revealed that Okonkwo’s death has represented a complex outcome of identity loss, cultural change, and resistance to colonial transformation. The research has concluded that his suicide served both as a personal tragedy and a symbolic reflection of the broader collapse of the Igbo society under the colonizer’s oppression. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Literature and Civilization | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://dspace.ummto.dz/handle/ummto/28391 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi-Ouzou | |
| dc.subject | Anthropological | |
| dc.subject | Appropriation and abrogation | |
| dc.subject | Crisis of communication | |
| dc.subject | Suicide | |
| dc.subject | Tragedy | |
| dc.title | Suicide in Achebe’s Things fall apart: a multidisciplinary reading | |
| dc.type | Thesis |