Resumo de Things Fall Apart

iNTRODUCTION:Literature can be regarded as works of art ;it is either informative dealing with facts,ideas or happenings;in short everything that is connected with the life of real men of all ages as in Achebe's novel<THINGS FALL APART< or imaginative aiming at arousing thoughts and feelings.Because Literature is concerned with human being's way of living,thoughts,feelings,believes,...there should be no doubt of its significance.Furthermore,what distinguishes literature from the most other branches of human studies is the fact that it gives us pleasure whether it was tragic or ironic.As we are originally concerned with the African literature,we shoud have a clear idea about it.AFRICANLITERATURE:So,African literature which was oral dated back to the early days of various tribal cultures can be divided into two kinds :1-Traditional poetryand folklore,2-Written literature which first emerged in the eighteenth century but most had been produced in the twentieth century.African literature has been influenced by two great colonizing movements;those of Islamic Arabs in the seventh century and Christian Europeans in the nineteenth century.Although the number of books written in African languages is growing ,many African writers find a larger audiance for works written in Portuguese and English.Some of the most important themes in African literature chart the effects of European colinization.The earlier published works by converted Christians express religious zeal and acceptance of western values.Acceptance gives ways to disillusion and a sense of loss in the European-educated writers who followed.So,cut off from their traditions,yet not accepted in the Western World;they write about their axperiences of culture conflict.Many also reinstate the African oral traditions in their works.CHINUA ACHEBE:Can be certaily considered as the best -known and the leading of those writers in this context .But,before knowing who is this famous African writer,we should casting a glance at his ownclan-the Igbo Society-So,what do you know about this society?
The Igbo people are a large nation of related tribes;they share a common language,common beliefs and traditions,and a common social structure.In English,both they and their language are known as Ibo,but they prefer themselves to use the form 'Igbo'.They inhabit a very large forest area of inland south-eastern Nigeria,between Niger and the Cross Rivers,and though,in past history ,they were peaceful and agricultural people;their intelligenge and capacity for hard work and their high regard for education caused them to spread out over Nigeria as traders,teachers and professional men with the economic development that followed the settlement of the country in the first half of the twenteeth century.They were never organized as a 'nation' in the modern political sense.But,based upon the extended family , elaborate kinship and clan relationships,they were organized in small villages,getting along with neighbouring villages through a system of agreements.
It should be made clear,however,that they were organized on democratic and republic lines that a man was esteemed for himself,his achievements and his value to the community and not fo rwhat his father was.They settled everything political by argument and discussing;dearly loved the ritual of speeches.For or against any side,liberally larded with proverbs and thus were regarded as highly argumentative individualists.
Unlike the African people further west along the Guinea coast ,they inherited from the father's side and the creative force of their religion was the sun(male) rather than the moon(female).
Though,most of them now are either Chritians or Agnosaucs.
The traditional religion of the Ibo people was one in which there were great many gods under one great god,Chukwu, in which ancestor-worship and reincarnation featured and in which the other world,inhabited by the gods and the dead,ran parallel to and interpenetrated the everyday World of present reality.The priests and priestesses interpreted the otherworld to mortals,often becoming possessed by the spirit of their god or oracle,and the gods themselves could visit this world in the guise of masked dancers,called Egwugwu,who wore elaborate disguises of raffica,traw and carved wooden heads.Simple people might believe that these really were the gods.But,those in the know were aware that they were really humans in disguise.Neverthless,thetribesman himself knew that Egwugwu,his ordinary everyday self, was one thing and that when he was Egwugwu,he was another.In a sense, as with the priests and the priestesses,he was a vehicle for the god.In addition,each man had a personal god or 'chi' that is his spiritual other-self-part soul,part personal god and part fate.

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