The Africa he knew about was far from what these biased, prejudicial, and agenda-driven Western writers were portraying. The Africa he read in these works ceased to be an enigma or a wild fantastic place, but rather a place as real as his home, as real as the stories and folklores passed down to him. However, his evolving consciousness allowed him to properly see these representations as they were, as well as better understand his true place within these interactions. Two such works, Joseph Conrad’s ‘ Heart of Darkness (1902), and Joyce Cary’s ‘Mister Johnson’ (1939), were especially influential in motivating Achebe to write ‘ Things Fall Apart.’ Both works represented Africans as brutish, one-dimensional horror figures without any measure of sophistication.īeing initially exposed to exclusively Western literature, Achebe first began identifying with the West, and he saw himself in the civilized, gentlemanly, and adventurous western characters encountering untamed African savages in their supposedly dangerous adventures down the heart of Africa. While growing up, Achebe was exposed to literature by Europeans that attempted to describe Africa and its people, often in a subordinate role within encounters with European adventurers, missionaries, or administrators, whichever the case may be. The Nigeria Achebe grew up in was under the throes of a British colonial process that had begun decades before his birth. In this sense, it is a work very much defined by its historical context, namely the anti-colonialist sentiment rife around the time Achebe was coming of age and the racist nature of the colonialist literature he read while studying at the university.Ĭhinua Achebe wrote ‘ Things Fall Apart’ as a response to skewed portrayals of Africa by European writers. ‘ Things Fall Apart’ is, in some respects, a reactionary novel written as a political statement to counter certain unfair narratives about Africa popular in Western fiction.

Achebe things fall apart