Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe - Aron Aji and Kirstin Lynne Ellsworth (essay date October–February 1992–1993)


Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe - Aron Aji and Kirstin Lynne Ellsworth (essay date October–February 1992–1993)

Aron Aji and Kirstin Lynne Ellsworth (essay date October–February 1992–1993)

SOURCE: “Ezinma: The Ogbanje Child in Achebe's Things Fall Apart,” in College Literature, Vol. 19–20, No. 3–1, October–February, 1992–1993, pp. 170–75.

[In the following essay, Aji and Ellsworth examine how the character Ezinma operates on both a cultural and a literary level in Things Fall Apart.]

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1959) is commonly read as a testimony of the cultural confrontation during the period of British colonialism.1 For the non-African it is an obvious beginner's text to discover the West African, specifically Igbo, culture. The book is at once a cultural resource, a historical novel, a morality tale, and above all a great literary work that celebrates its own cultural milieu and renders it familiar to others. Although written in English, Things Fall Apart is an African storyteller's...

[The entire page is 3046 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass