The world of Chinua Achebe

I just finished reading Chinua Achebe’s new book, “The Education of a British Protected Child,” which was released a few days ago. It is a collection of essays consisting of 17 pieces, some of which are slight and thin, while others display the sparkling intelligence, audacity to challenge conventional wisdom and human warmth that we have come to expect from Chinua Achebe.

His new book deals with a gamut of themes that have preoccupied Achebe for some time - imperialism, colonialism, modernity, cultural identity, African dignity and the use of English for creative purposes. All uniting in a new discursive alignment. Chinua Achebe is a writer who is convinced that ideas amount to nothing if they are not put into action. This is the central message that pervades the pages of this book that crackle with creative intelligence. For him, ideas are not closed significations but evolving entities that need to break through their self-sufficient finitude; meanings are intransigently multiple. He believes that one should pursue ideas and meanings guided by a clear moral compass.

Chinua Achebe, with his first novel, “Things Fall Apart” published in 1958, gained wide critical acclaim. No other novel by an African writer saw the kind of excitement generated by this work. It has sold over eight million copies and has been translated into more than fifty languages including Sinhala. The Time magazine selected it as one of the hundred most influential works published in the twentieth century. It is taught throughout the world as a representative text reflecting the strengths of new literatures in English.

“Things Fall Apart” deals with the trials and tribulations of the Igbo society in Nigeria as it confronts internal dissensions as well as the intrusions of Western colonialism. How in a once solid and unified society troubling fault lines and fissures begin to open up is delineated by Achebe with great skill and discernment. This novel was followed by such other works as “No Longer at Ease,” “Arrow of God,” “A Man of the People” and “Anthills of the Savannah.” Taken as a whole, these novels examine social transformations, impact of colonialism and issues of cultural modernity in Nigeria and manifest a profound understanding of the dynamics of history.

Among his novels, the one that I like best is “Arrow of God.” It reconfigures insightfully the tensions and delusions of societies in which colonialism is in full muscle. These novels have a deep resonance for us, and in an essay I wrote in Sinhala in the early 1970s, which was subsequently included in my book, “Girikula Ha Sanda Mandala,” I sought to illustrate this point.

Achebe’s “A Man of the People,” which explores the complex power plays, corruptions and social decay of modern Nigerian society and its concomitant silences and evasions, was in many ways a prophetic novel. It foretold the imminent coup that was to take place in Nigeria. Achebe makes the following observation about his novel in his new collection of essays.” The offense of my pen was that it had written a novel called A Man of the People, a bitter satire on political corruption in an African country that resembled Nigeria. I wanted the novel to be a denunciation of the kind of independence we were experiencing in postcolonial Nigeria the best monster I could come up with was a military coup detat, which every sane Nigerian at the time knew was rather far-fetched. But life and art had got so entangled that season that the publication of the novel, and Nigeria’s first military coup, happened within two days of each other.” The Education of a British-Protected Child contains a number of themes that have stirred Achebe’s deepest interests and sympathies.

The first is the impact of colonialism and the complex ways in which it impacted the lives of the people. There are many interesting observations on this theme. For example, Achebe says that,”because colonialism was essentially a denial of human worth and dignity, its education programme would not be a model of perfection. And yet the greatest thing about being human is our ability to face adversity down by refusing to be defined by it, refusing to be no more than its agent or victim.” His thoughts are quickened by the collision of Western belief and African doubt.

A theme that has threaded its way throughout the discussions in this book is Achebe’s controversial assessment of Joseph Conrad; in discussing “Heart of Darkness” in 1975, he called Conrad a racist. He felt that Conrad had failed to understand the complexity of African life, the shadowless participation of its people, and made use of the African continent as a backdrop to portray the collapse of a single dissolute European.

In his new book he accuses Conrad of portraying “Africa as a place where the wandering European may discover the dark impulses and unspeakable appetites he has suppressed and forgotten through the ages of civilization may spring back to life in Africa’s environment of free and triumphant savagery.”

A third theme that runs through this collection of essays is the problem of using English as a medium of creative expression. While Ngugi wa Thion’o, whose work I discussed some weeks ago, and whom Achebe promoted early in his career, argues that African writers should write in their native tongues, Achebe makes a case for English. Achebe’s point is that owing to historical contingencies it is inevitable that some African writers are forced to choose English as their preferred medium of creative expression; however, he also makes the point that their language should bear the imprint of African cultural sensibilities.

The Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison refers to Achebe’s “crystalline prose.” In his new book, Chinua Achebe says, “theatricalities aside, the difference between Ngugi and myself on the issue of indigenous or European languages for African writers is that Ngugi now believes it is either/or; I have always thought it was both.” Achebe, to be sure, has written poems in his mother tongue.

A fourth theme that pervades Achebe’s newest collection of critical essays is his complicated and ambivalent relationship to his native Nigeria. He has been one of the fiercest critics of the corrupt politics, short-sightedness and visions of false grandeur of those at the helm of affairs. However, his criticism has always been constructive and well-intentioned. In his new book, Achebe remarks, “More recently, after a motor accident in 2001 that left me with serious injuries, I have witnessed an outflow of affection from Nigerians at every level. I am still totally dumbfounded by it. The hard words Nigeria and I have said to each other begin to look like words of anxious love, not hate. Nigeria is a country where nobody can wake up in the morning and ask: what can I do now? There is work for all.”

It is Achebe’s deeply-held conviction that if a writer does not face up to the stark realities of his country, he will thereby diminish himself and his art.