A Study Of "writing Back" Strategies In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

This thesis studies the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe’s (1930—) most famous novel Things Fall Apart which mainly depicts the authentic Ibo life before colonization and the great change in Ibo after the arrival of British. The research focuses on "writing back", which is a common practice in postcolonialism. Thus, postcolonial criticism is adopted as the main approach to this study.The paper mainly studies what kind of "writing back" strategies Achebe uses and what kind of feeling he has in "writing back". It first explores three "writing back" strategies Achebe used in Things Fall Apart:replacing the text, replacing the language, and culture hybridity. Achebe replaces the Western text with his own discourse, where sophisticated Ibo culture together with workable political, economic, cultural and religious systems is displayed. Also, he appropriates English language to "write back" by untranslating and glossing some Ibo vocabularies, referring to Ibo traditional proverbs and tales when dealing with important plots. Besides, he notices "culture universality" and turns it into a strategy to "write back". The thesis further explores the complex feelings Achebe holds in his "writing back" to the Empire. His feeling is by no means simple resistance to Western discourse, especially the British Empire, but mixed with a nostalgic sense, which is, to some degree, decided by his social identity. By "writing back", as a medium to reflect his view of writing, Achebe achieves his postcolonial writing philosophy.The thesis focuses on "writing back" and intends to initiate a new perspective to interpret Things Fall Apart and make readers have a deeper understanding of Achebe’s postcolonial writing.