Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 22 Issue 4

ethnic group that has somehow always felt persecuted (Nwafor-Ejelinma, 2012). 1 Achebe’s foregrounding of his indigenous Igbo language and culture is not purely aesthetic; he presents a direct counter-narrative to colonial representation of Africans and Africa. With his plurilingual, mostly Igbo, text, the author of Things Fall Apart contests the cultural hegemony of the colonial British culture. More than just a showcasing of the Igbo language, it is a whole Igbo way of life that is represented in the novel. To an audience mostly used to Western methods of government, Achebe opposes a council of elders with the “egwewu.” To a formal judiciary system, he responds by an emphasis on community rule. To an organized monotheistic religion, he opposes faith in a plurality of gods and goddesses and a belief in the supernatural. In Things Fall Apart , Achebe indeed provides a prime example of the new English he had, up to then, only talked about in theory (Achebe, 1997). With his linguistic detour strategies that mainly consist of incorporating his Igbo oral language into his narrative, Achebe shows one of the many ways the inherited English language can be stripped of its hegemonic undertone and made able to carry local subject matters. As Karin Barber and Paulo Fernando On the strictly aesthetic aspects of the novel, Achebe’s understanding of the relationship between language and culture is a complex one. Contrary to linguistic purists like Ng ũ gi wa Thiong’o (1986) who believe in a fatal subjugation of African literature if written in English, Achebe not only recognized, but claimed a more utilitarian aspect of the language. In Things Fall Apart , he did more than add palm oil to the English language to help it carry his subject matter; he takes advantage of his plurilingual capability to represent, within his fiction, the cosmology of Igboland. By making the English of the narration share the literary space with both Igbo and the Pidgin of the interpreters, Achebe provides a realistic portrayal of the plurilingual nature of his society. In response to self-proclaimed, Western specialists, who were quick to label the African as savage and in need of redemption and salvation (Conrad, 1899/1999), Achebe offers valuable information on his native tribe, both at the levels of language and culture. With Things Fall Apart, the animal, at last, seizes the opportunity to tell his story; for, as the saying goes among the Igbo: “Until the lions produce their own historian, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter” (Achebe, 2000, p. 73). With the foregrounding of local languages and experiences, readers become better equipped to tell hunting stories from an animal perspective. 1 Without clear determination of their origins, the Igbo have been referred to as the “lost tribe of Israel” (Nwafor-Ejelinma, 2012, p. 5); a comparison to Israel and the conditions of the Jews which speaks to the issue of persecution earlier mentioned. de Moraes Farias put it, with Achebe, “the periphery now takes on the culture and language of the center and transforms it, breaking it, infusing it with local registers, and refashioning it so that it speaks with the voice of the marginalized” (1989, p. 6). By writing a novel in English with an obvious presence of his native Igbo, Achebe deliberately challenges a Western referential model as he reinstates the validity of a pre-colonial social order. In so doing, he challenges and puts to rest the underlying rationale that justified colonization in the first place. W orks C ited 1. Achebe, C. (2000). Home and Exile . New York: Oxford University Press. 2. ---. (1958). Things Fall Apart . London: Heinemann. 3. ---. (2012). There was a country: a personal history of Biafra. New York: Penguin Press. 4. ---. (1997). English and the African Writer. Transition , 75/76, 342–349. 5. Barber, K. and de Moraes Farias, P.F. eds. (1989). Discourse and its disguises: the interpretation of African oral texts . Birmingham: Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. 6. Chakravorty, M. (2012, January 01). Never Kill a Man Who Says Nothing: Things Fall Apart and the Spoken Worlds of African Fiction." Ariel , 43 (4), 11-47. 7. Christopher, A. J. (1988). The British empire at its zenith. New York: Croom Helm. 8. Conrad, J. (1999). Heart of Darkness. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press . (Original work published 1899). 9. De Nerval, G. (1998). Voyage en Orient. Gallimard. (Original work published 1851). 10. Defoe, D. (1994). Robinson Crusoe . Ware, England: Wordsworth Editions. (Original work published 1719). 11. Gallagher, S. (1997). Linguistic Power: Encounter with Chinua Achebe. The Christian Century , 114 (9), 260-61. 12. Hyde, E. (2016, January). Flat Style: “Things Fall Apart” and Its Illustrations. PMLA : Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 131 (1), 20-37. 13. Johnston, H. (1969). Britain across the seas: Africa: a history and description of the British Empire in Africa . New York: Negro Universities Press. 14. Kioga, M. (2012, Oct. 29). Achebe Got It All Wrong on Tribalism (In Nigeria and in Africa) [Review of There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe.]. ihuanedo.ning.com . 15. Korieh, C. (2007). Yam is King! But Cassava is the Mother of all Crops: Farming, Culture, and Identity in Igbo Agrarian Economy. Dialect Anthropol 31, 221-232. © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue IV Version I 21 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 A 45 From Local Fabulation to Worldwide Celebration: Foregrounding Indigeneity in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart 16. Kunal, P. and Baral B. (2020). Restructuring the African Identity Through Language- An Analysis of