Of the three faces of the hero in Achebe’s Things fall apart

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Date

2023

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Mouloud Mammeri University

Abstract

This research portrays the three different faces presented in Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart (1986): the epic figure, the problematic hero, and finally the tragic one, relying on Aristotelian tragedy and its main concepts. Through his portrayal of the protagonist Okonkwo, Achebe embodies the elements involved in Aristotle’s poetics, which drive the novel to be a tragic work. It also highlights the value and high status of Achebe’s novel, where the author skillfully creates a monument erected in celebration of a tragic figure, serving as a powerful device of resilience for indigenous cultures. In addition, the novel is seen as a means of post-colonial memory in grasping modern African identities. Throughout this research, we have mainly relied on Frye’s Anatomy of criticism, borrowing his archetypal approach from his essay "Theory of genre" to analyze Achebe’s tragic figure; Okpewho’s The epic in Africa when illustrating Okonkwo as an epic hero; and Lukács’ The theory of the novel, developing the idea of the problematic state as a displaced character. Finally, we focus on the dominant finding of the work, which is the tragic end of the hero, relying on Aristotle’s Poetics. Achebe adopts post-colonial theory in order to celebrate African traditions and culture, which were totally disintegrated and deluded by imperial literary works that tend to break African unity and dignity, presenting the continent to the world as inferior and in need of civilization by the "masters." Class struggle, colonialism, and imperial dominance are well illustrated in the piece through the adoption of Lukács’ and Bakhtin’s Marxist approaches, in addition to the realistic mode that the author uses to allow readers to inhabit the characters’ roles and their lives through reading the novel.

Description

55p. ; 30cm(+CD-Rom)

Keywords

Archetype, epic, hero, Marxism, memory, monument, post-colonial memory, problematic, tragic

Citation

Literature and Civilization