Analysis Of Cultural Attitudes

As one of the most widely known African novelists, Chinua Achebe is regardedas “the father of modem African novel”. Most of his works are about the Africancustoms, history, religion, politics, African original ecological civilization ofpre-colonial period, African society under the colonial aggression and colonial rules.Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, as the representative of “Nigeria tetralogy”, hasbeen praised as the “Independence Declaration” of African national literature,pioneering and laying the bases for modem African literature. In his novels, by tellingthe story of his own nation and unfolding unique cultural traditions in Africa, Achebeendeavors to get rid of the stereotype of Africa and aims to denounce the distorteddescription of Africa to correct and redress the image of his hometown in the westerndiscourse.This thesis, by reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, analyzes Achebe’scritical thinking against obstinate defending, hybridizing and westernizing traditionalAfrican culture during the cultural conflict. It also explores Achebe’s view of how toselectively absorb the two cultures for the postcolonial African countries to surviveand develop their own national culture. This thesis analyzes three characters—Okonkwo, Nwoye and Enoch from the perspective of their personalities and tries tofind out the reasons of their different cultural attitudes which caused their differentendings. There was no culture which was completely superior to another, while therewas right and wrong in the cultural attitude. A comparison of these three charactersleads to a conclusion of Achebe’s attitude towards the three ways of treatingtraditional African culture and explores what Achebe wanted to teach all the readersthrough those different cultural attitudes. In the end, a suggestion for all the culturalexchangers is raised.