scholarly journals On Wale Ogunyemi’s Translation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart into Yoruba, Ìgbésí Ayé Okonkwo: A ‘within-to-within’ Approach of its Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Gabriel Ayoola
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Things Fall Apart

This essay examines the proverbs, and other wise-sayings as used in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart vis-à-vis the Ogunyemi’s Yoruba translations of the novel, Ìgbésí Ayé Okonkwo. The within-to-within approach is the lens through which the text and its Yoruba translation are explored. The approach establishes some level of similarities in the cultures and nuances of both languages (Igbo and Yoruba) due to their mutual intelligibility. The work encourages more translation of African novels written originally in English, French, or Portuguese into African languages. Doing so preserves the languages and cultures, the sustainability which Akinwumi Isola (2010) refers to as Literary Ecosystem. That is a way of giving back to the society from which the author got inspired. Further, there exists the idea of language retrieval, a process of translation which Isola viewed goes into translation when the novels involved are lexico-semantical and culturally close to each other.

Return migration, failed reintegration and tragedy in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-266
Author(s):  
Ogochukwu Ukwueze ◽  
Jacinta Ndidi Okey-Agbo
Keyword(s):  
Return Migration ◽  
Psychosocial Support ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Financial Status ◽  
Things Fall Apart

Do affluence and skilfulness render a returnee immune to reintegration challenges? Beyond psychosocial support, would a wealthy returnee need any other form of assistance for a sustainable reintegration? Drawing upon theoretical ideas from the field of return migration, this study considers reintegration as a key issue for all returnees, irrespective of financial status, class or skilfulness, the failure of which is a disastrous end. This end explains the tragedy of Things Fall Apart, which is also reinvestigated here, and it is argued that the novel is simultaneously tragic and comic. The focus is on the possible failure of reintegration of a financially stable returnee. For this study, although tragedy inheres in whom one is, tragedy in the novel under consideration is attributive to the failed reintegration of the tragic character, despite his affluence, status or skills.

scholarly journals Re-Reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: A Postcolonial Perspective

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.K.M. Aminur Rashid
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Igbo People ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
The Individual ◽  
To Receive

Being a postcolonial narrative, Things Fall Apart experiences a wide critical acclaim. From the pen of Chinua Achebe, the Igbo cultural complexity has come into being a theme that opens up a historical account of the clash of two cultures. Okonkwo, a very well-known public figure in his community falls under the threat of a new culture brought by the white missionaries preaching the gospels of the Christianity. After the arrival of the Christian culture, the first collision that takes place is the division at the individual, and then at the societal levels. When a number of the Igbo people, including Okonkwo’s son, change their religion, it creates chaos and confusions throughout the community. Although the Igbo people have a well-established way of life, the Europeans do not understand. That is why they show no respect to the cultural practices of the Igbo people. What Achebe delivers in the novel is that Africans are not savages and their societies are not mindless. The things fall apart because Okonkwo fails at the end to take his people back to the culture they all shared once. The sentiments the whites show to the blacks regarding the Christianity clearly recap the slave treatment the blacks were used to receive from the whites in the past. Achebe shows that the picture of the Africans portrayed in literature and histories are not real, but the picture was seen through the eyes of the Europeans. Consequently, Okonkwo hangs himself when he finds his established rules and orders are completely exiled by his own people and when he sees Igbo looses its honor by falling apart.

scholarly journals Lexical Gaps and Ideological Shift in the Translation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as “Le Monde S’effondrein French”

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-297
Author(s):  
Angelinus Kwame Negedu
Keyword(s):  
French Language ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
The Novel ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Original Title ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
Ideological Divergence

In translating Chinua Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart, Michel Ligny translates directly Igbo terminologies, realities and beliefs into the French language. This has contributed greatly in the preservation of the beauty and authenticity of the original text. However, the title of the novel is domesticated by Michel Ligny to present a different ideology. Within the framework of Lawrence Venuti (2004) theory of domestication and foreignization of translation, this paper examines the ideological divergence between the title of the original text and the title of the translation. The paper concludes that the ideology that the translated title projects to the French-reader is totally different from the ideology that the original title projects to the English-reader.

scholarly journals Okonkwo’s fate and the worldview of Things Fall Apart

Literator ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Foley
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Actual Meaning ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Different Sources

This article argues that despite the apparently exhaustive critical attention paid to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), certain key aspects of the novel’s meaning remain unresolved. At the heart of the problem lies the question of how to interpret the reasons for Okonkwo’s downfall or fate. The article suggests that a number of different sources of explanation appear to be plausible at various levels, but it goes on to demonstrate that at least some of these putative explanations are incompatible if not mutually exclusive. The more general difficulty arising from this is that several of these explanations are underpinned by worldviews which differ from and even conflict with each other. The article intends, therefore, through an exploration of the possible reasons for Okonkwo’s demise, to consider what worldview the novel finally supports and, indeed, whether the novel’s outlook is coherent at all. The chief conclusion is that although the overall perspective of the novel is highly complex, it does not necessarily follow that the actual meaning of the novel itself is either illogical or selfcontradictory.

scholarly journals Cultural Symbols, Identity and Meaning Formation: Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Role Performance ◽  
Symbolic Interactionist ◽  
Socialization Process ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
The People ◽  
Things Fall Apart

The present paper makes an attempt to examine how George Herbert Meade’s theory explains people’s use of symbols as a sense-making tool to elucidate the socialization process, role performance, identity, and meaning formation within the Igbo society for explaining various aspects of human life in the novel Things Fall Apart. This study is significant as it deals with character analysis of Okonkwo, to see how different roles of son, warrior, husband, father and a clansman are defined in Igbo culture during various phases of family and social life to clarify how Symbolic Interactionism has given a new impetus to see society, culture, psychology and relationships. It argues that the physical setting is significant to human behavior and human actions can be interpreted with the critical analysis of cultural symbols and the way they are deployed. It concludes that human behavior is based upon assigning meanings and their symbolic interpretations of the objects that surround them. The Symbolic Interactionist analysis of the novel clearly indicates that Okonkwo’s self and meaning formation is built on perceptions of the reactions of his clansman and his self-concept functions to direct his behavior. The development of different roles changes role and behavior patterns. The internal and external happenings influence role performance, conflict, struggle, and affect the nature, attitude, and self-image of Okonkwo. Moreover, it also affirms that the cultural symbols for honor, respect, and manliness etc. are not fixed naturally rather these are the constructions of the mind and are given meaning through interaction of the people.

scholarly journals Okonkwo’s Fall: Multiple Perspectives

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
T S Varadharajan ◽  
Dr. K. Ramesh
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Igbo Culture ◽  
Things Fall Apart

<p><em>This article aims at exploring the causes of the fall of Okonkwo, the protagonist of the Nigerian Novel</em><em>.</em><em> Things Fall </em><em>A</em><em>part by the renowned novelist, Chinua Achebe. Though the novel mainly deals with the fall of Igbo Culture where Okonkwo has played the sheet anchor role in the novel, Things Fall Apart at the hands of British establishment in Nigeria, the other vital reasons that make him vulnerable will also be discussed at length in this article. It is from the study of the novel, it is established that the Igbo society that refuses to change itself could be one of the reasons for the fall. However, it is very clear that the changes should take place spontaneously and not by force which the Igbo society has been the victim and the representative, Okonkwo its scapegoat. The writers of the article make sure that the reading of this article will be an eye opener in terms of Nigerian consciousness as revealed in the novel, Things Fall Apart. </em></p>

Things Fall Apart (1958): The Novel and Nigeria

2007 ◽  
pp. 40-68
Author(s):  
Jago Morrison ◽  
Nicolas Tredell
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Things Fall Apart

Cultural Symbols, Identity and Meaning Formation: a Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Role Performance ◽  
Socialization Process ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
The People ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
The Mind

The present paper makes an attempt to examine how George Herbert Meade’s theory explains people’s use of symbols as a sense-making tool to elucidate the socialization process, role performance, identity, and meaning formation within the Igbo society to explain various aspects of human life in the novel Things Fall Apart. This study is significant as it deals with a character analysis of Okonkwo, to see how various roles of son, warrior, husband, father, and clansman are defined in Igbo culture during different phases of family and social life to clarify how Symbolic Interactionism has given a new impetus to see society, culture, psychology, and relationships. It argues that the physical setting is significant to human behavior and human actions can be interpreted by the critical analysis of cultural symbols and the way they are deployed. It concludes that human behavior is based upon assigning meanings and their symbolic interpretations of the objects that surround them. The SI analysis of the novel clearly indicates that Okonkwo’s self and meaning formation is built on perceptions of the reactions of his clansman and his self-concept functions to direct his behavior. The development of different roles changes role and behavior patterns. The internal and external happenings influence role performance, conflict, struggle and affect the nature, attitude, and self-image of Okonkwo. Moreover, it also affirms that the cultural symbols for honor, respect, and manliness, etc. are not fixed naturally rather these are the constructions of the mind and are given meaning through the interaction of the people.

scholarly journals Heteroglossia in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-170
Author(s):  
Yao Jung Lin
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Novel ◽  
African Novel ◽  
Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe’s first African novel, is a story about the traditional Igbo life in the pre-colonial period. It is often seen as an African national epic by literary critics because of its characterization of a bellicose hero, Okonkwo. These critics pay attention to the unitary epic viewpoint represented by the hero but ignore the diverse opposing viewpoints in the Igbo society of Umuofia. Hence, this paper aims to represent the double-voiced discourses in the novel by adopting M. M. Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglossia. Bakhtin’s four fundamental forms for incorporating heteroglossia in the novel are utilized to reveal the double-voiced discourses, the voices of the masculine and feminine traditions, in the languages of the novel.

scholarly journals THE IMPACT OF THE 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN COLONIALISM IN AFRICA, IN THE NOVEL “THINGS FALL APART” BY CHINUA ACHEBE

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Afriliyani Piola ◽  
Happy Anastasia Usman
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Impact

Things Fall Apart is a novel potrays the background of traditional life and primitive culture Ibo tribe in Umuofia, Nigeria, Africa and also the impact of European colonialism towards Africans’ society in the early 19th century. The research applies the qualitative method and it supported by the sociology of literature approach. The primary data are taken from the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Based on the analysis the researcher conducts, the impact of European colonialism in Africa which not only brings a positive impacts but also negative legacy. There are several points of the impact European colonialism in Africa : existence of christianity, existence of language, establishment regulation and contribution to development.

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