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Master Harold, And Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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In many ways, language can be the most powerful weapon of all. Stories can have a great and lasting impact on their readers, and those who cannot make their voices heard can find themselves excluded from collective thought and memory. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie puts it, there is great danger in exposure only to a “single story;” as per the oft-quoted axiom, “history is written by the winners,” and thus the voices of those on the proverbial losing end—or, indeed, those whose stories simply cannot permeate the barrier separating them from another culture—often go unheard. Such was the case for many Africans during the early twentieth century, as Europeans invaded the continent and suppressed the voices and cultures of those who already lived there. Set during this time are Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, which tells of an African clan’s encounter with European settlers, and Athol Fugard’s one-scene play “Master Harold”…and the boys (hereinafter Master Harold), the story of the relationship between a South African boy of European descent and his family’s African servants. In both texts, the story told by many Europeans of a “primitive” culture in need of “civilization” is clearly the dominant view of Africa in European culture. However, the horrifying ramifications of this ignorant viewpoint quickly reaffirm Adichie’s argument. The danger of the "single story" Europeans tell is its silencing of the voices of the Africans whose supposed story is being told,

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