Overlapping Character Variations in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

• Published in: Journal of narrative theory 2019, Vol.49 (1), p.55-81
• Main Author: Abd-Rabbo, Muna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Achebe, Chinua; Ambiguity; Bildungsroman; Capitalism; Civilization; Classification; Colonialism; Colonies & territories; Culture; Epic literature; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Fate; Folklore; Heroism & heroes; Imperialism; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Literary translation; Literature; Logic; Narratives; Nigerian literature; Novels; Postcolonialism; Readers; Society
• ISSN: 1549-0815; 1548-9248; 1548-9248
• DOI: 10.1353/jnt.2019.0002

Williams' social classification helps bring to the fore the complexity of the characters in Achebe's novel, while also shedding light on the elaborate composition of pre-colonialist African civilization. [...]Williams' categories provide the means to examine the African characters' varying reactions to the advent of European colonialists and thus help explain why the Umuofian society eventually falls apart. [...]as Robert Wren argues, "Igbos do not exist in a bubble-like culture that determines their thinking and actions, but are individuals who, with the cultural resources available to them interpret [. . .] the world" (qtd. in Kortenaar 773). According to Williams, "individuals have varying innate potentialities, and thus receive social influence in varying ways" (83). [...]for Williams, a simplistic division of individuals in their relationship to society as one of either conformity or nonconformity to social rules is unacceptable (83). [...]one could apply the same individual/social stratifications to the colonized territories and the British countryside.