Personal History Holds the Pencil

Thesis:

Chinua Achebe’s provision of a balanced view of both the Europeans and Igbos in Things Fall Apart is a corollary of the combination of his Christian upbringing and reverence for traditional Igbo life, using paradoxical characters from both cultures such as Okonkwo and Uchendu plus Mr. Brown and Reverend Smith to attain an unprejudiced audience interpretation.  

Topic Sentence 1:

Achebe’s characterization of Uchendu and Mr. Brown respectfully depicts some of the favorable attributes such as openness and wisdom of their respective cultures, providing an idyllic view of both civilizations in order to subvert the foreign view of Africans as primitive and evoke the notion of peaceful colonization.

Topic Sentence 2:

To juxtapose the aforementioned characters, Achebe depicts Okonkwo and Reverend James as possessing some of the antagonistic or unfavorable characteristics such as hypermasculinity and hostility that can be identified with individuals of their respective cultures, removing any idyllic dispositions and providing a realistic perspective based off his own experiences and beliefs.

Topic Sentence 3:

The ways in which the characters of Okonkwo, Uchendu, Mr. Brown and Reverend Smith interact with one another is representative of Achebe’s internal battle of cultures and perhaps problematic hybridity, cases such as Uchendu’s criticism of Okonkwo and Okonkwo’s confrontation with Mr. Smith ultimately allowing the author to create a desired holistic view of both civilizations and groups and how they interact.