The tremendously harmful effect that colonialism has caused indigenous people that have suffered oppression and the invasion of White colonists cannot possibly be embraced. In Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart,” the decomposition of the local community as a direct effect of the colonialist power is demonstrated uninhibitedly and powerfully. By imposing their beliefs, values, perceptions, and other elements of the white culture onto local residents, colonists have nearly annihilated the Ibo culture, causing its members to suffer significant cultural trauma.
In fact, the nature of the colonialists’ influence on the Ibo people and their culture is pinpointed in the very title of the book. By creating a mental image of the entire environment falling apart and eventually collapsing, the writer demonstrates the destructive nature of the colonialist power. Specifically, the societal split as a result of the “division of Africa into at least fifty nation-states” is rendered powerfully in Achebe’s work (“Things Fall Apart”). Moreover, being forced to teach their children the essential constructs of the foreign culture, the Ibo people develop a sense of cultural loss and, ultimately, massive community trauma (“Things Fall Apart: Plot Summary”). Thus, the despair that the Ibo people experience as they feel the devastating loss of their culture becomes particularly resonant in the book.
By viewing the White, western culture as the only reasonable and legitimate mind frame to possess, White colonists have almost destroyed the Ibo culture, as Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” illustrates. The book shows how the colonists foisted their culture on the Ibo people, forcing its members not only to accept the new values, philosophies, and even faith, but also to teach the specified cultural constructs to their children. Thus, being stripped of its culture and identity, the Ibo community started falling apart, as the book describes vividly.
Works Cited
Things Fall Apart. GALE, n.d., Web.
Things Fall Apart: Plot Summary. GALE, n.d., Web.