Chinua Achebe: The Price of Language

Paper Summary:

This paper presents a study showing Chinua Achebe's appropriation of the English language in his novel, "Things Falls Apart", as a way of educating the world of the perils of imperialism. The paper also examines the effects of Chinua Achebe's use of English rather than his native Igbo language on the anti-colonial efforts of African writers like him.

From the Paper:

"The past fifty years or so since the beginning of the so-called decolonization of the world, literature written by people from formerly colonized states have surfaced and captured the world wide audience. However, not all of these works are read worldwide. Literature is filtered and what comes out of these post colonial nations are those written in languages widely spoken and understood around the world, such as French, Spanish and English. In Africa, a continent ravaged by colonialism, where hundreds of native languages are still in use, the colonial languages of French and English have instead become a sort of standard due primarily to the deep rooted influence of the French and the British. For African literature to be given a chance of a world wide audience, the writer is left with no choice but to write in French or English, or write in a native language and get translated into either French or English. Probably why Nigeria, Chinua Achebe's home land, speaks about "half dozen or so languages" and yet "English gave them a language with which to talk to one another (Achebe 58)." Working on this belief, Achebe chose to tell his African stories, write his African novels in English, a language that would be able to bridge the barrier, both within the African continent and outside; a language that was part and parcel of the colonization process. That is why, for an African, writing in English also creates a problem on "how to express the African experience in a language that was originally evolved to embody a different kind of experience and to convey a different kind of sensibility (Obiechina 53).""

More papers on Chinua Achebe: The Price of Language:

• Analytical Essay # 23108 : "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe and "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad"
• Book Review # 127940 : "Review of "The Price of Everything"
• Essay # 63646 : "The Price of Art"

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