Role of Women

Power in cutlure: The novel “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, while often thought to offer readers an accurate portrait of Igbo or African culture in general, often does not effectively represent the culture it seeks to portray. More generally, one of the challenges of the fiction genre, and of the frequent criticisms lodged against it, is the manner in which history, people, and place are integrated into the narrative. Writing a fictive narrative that is based on real people, places, and events poses some inherent dangers, not the least of which is the possibility of inaccurate or partial representation of Igbo culture. This is particularly true for novelists who are writing about non-Western cultures for Western audiences. Such is the case in “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, in which the author writes about members of a Nigerian tribe.
While Achebe’s literary intentions in “Things Fall Apart” were probably noble, his achievement, in the eyes of many critics, falls short of the mark (Quayson 117). By presenting some beliefs, rituals, and characteristics of the community about which he writes, Achebe necessarily leaves out other important details about Igbo culture in “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, giving the reader only a partial view and understanding of the tribe and its culture. Thus, the reader sees that although history and narrative can be complementary—after all, history itself is a narrative, and it is certainly not objective (Gikandi 3)—the relationship between the two also poses particular problems for the writer and the reader of a fiction work.
The relationship between history and narrative is not always or immediately a troubled one as it appears to be in the case of “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe . As Gikandi observes, “literature [is] about real and familiar worlds, of culture and human experience, of politics and economics, now re-routed through a language and structure that seemed at odds with the history or geography... [continues]

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