Overview

Overview

What Actually ‘Falls Apart’ in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart? Asst. Inst. Suhair Fuaad Hajo English Department MA world Literature University Putra Malaysia Email: suhair.fuaad@garmian.edu.krd Title: What Actually ‘Falls Apart’ in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart? Abstract: A first reading of the novel reveals the fact that what fall apart in Things fall apart are Igbo’s cultures and traditions. Accordingly a lot of readings have been done on the novel with almost similar disclosures; considering it as a postcolonial novel and as Achebe’s response to the white racism embedded in European literature, which presented Africa as a primitive and socially retrograde nation. Hence, reading Things Fall Apart from a new and distinct perspective with the aid of trances from reader response criticism, this study aims to answer the question of; what really falls apart (in Things Fall Apart) and how? Through a close and transactional reading of the novel this study demonstrates that Igbo’s culture and religion didn’t fall apart but changed and in fact, what falls apart in Things Fall Apart is Okonkwo, the protagonist of the novel. By studying and comparing his conducts, before and after killing Ikemefona it reveals that his mortal sin parts him beyond the limits of his cultural conventions, in the process of gaining his individual purposes, which later leads to his downfall. Keywords: reader-response criticism, transactional analysis, curse, colonizer.