African Culture in “Things Fall Apart”

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebes African culture is shown rampantly throughout the book. The book replicates his culture and also replicates history. The things that influenced his novel the most were, the European literature surrounding Africa, where he grew up and what was happening to Nigeria at time.

During the time of European colonization, many pieces of literature were written about Africa. According to Things Fall Apart Further Study, Achebe was tired of seeing his culture represented as primitive, socially [backwards], and, most important, language-less so he decided to write a book that represents his culture and people more accurately, (https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/things/context/). This influenced how he wrote his book, because he wanted to show the true aspect of Africans. He made sure of this by being careful to not stereotype the Europeans, while also showing how advanced the Igbo culture really is, (https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/things/context/). Achebe wanted to show thing for how they were, while trying not to do what the European writers had done before.

Achebe was born and grew up in a popular city in Nigeria. Where he lived, the people there followed the culture of the Igbo. This is very important because the book is about a leader of the Igbo tribe, and their life during European colonization. Similar to as stated above, Achebe wanted to bring the real aspect of African culture to this book, not the aspect the Europeans had wrote down long ago. Achebe was born to Protestant missionaries while also living in a village with native traditions still alive. He was able to incorporate this into the book by showing what happened when the missionaries originally came to the tribe. Because of his unique circumstances he was able to incorporate both european standpoint and the natives standpoint. Where Achebe grew greatly influenced his novel because he wrote entire novel based on his culture.

In 1958 and 1959 Nigeria was working its way to gain independence from Great Britain. This would have directly influenced his book and indirectly influenced culture and even politics. In Diana Rhoads article titled, Culture in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart,
In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe does incorporate his culture into the book. He incorporates it by including his people's history, by showing a different aspect to how native Africans were normally looked at, and by letting what was happening in his home country affect his writing. By incorporating his culture into the book, he was able to make it more realistics and provided a better aspect to African culture.

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