Soyinka 's Ngugi Wa Thiong ' O : An Anthology Of Recent Criticism

Women are often thought of as the weaker, more vulnerable of the two sexes. Thus, women’s roles in literature are often subdued and subordinate. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, women are repressed by an entrenched structure of the social repression. Women suffer great losses in this novel but, also in certain circumstances, hold tremendous power. Achebe provides progressively changing attitudes towards women’s role. At first glance, the women in Things Fall Apart may seem to be an oppressed group with little power and this characterization is true to some extent. However, this characterization of Igbo women reveals itself to be prematurely simplistic as well as limiting, once

In Derek Walcott’s From in a Green Night: A Far Cry from Africa, the author explains and dives into the topic of colonialism and self-reflection through his own experiences of being trapped between his Kenyan and British descent. Similar to Fanon’s concept of complicity, Walcott also understands both sides of the story in an unbiased manner. In his poem, he uses imagery to describe the violent past in which Kenyans and British people have committed to each other, the ‘savage’ nature of humans during colonization, and his own internal speech where he himself is confused of his cultural and social identity. This paper will explore the core concepts of Walcott’s writing and further explain it through Fanon’s lens to amplify the meaning of the poem.

Immanuel Kant claims that our concepts of space and time are transcendent and provide a framework for cognition to begin to understand raw sensory input from the outside world. For Kant, space and time are a priori pure intuitions, knowledge existing outside of sensory experience. This paper will further dissect Kant’s arguments for space and time as pure intuitions before making an argument in favor of Kant’s understanding of space and time.

Hume believes it is human nature to trust the causal laws, but fears that if his critique of induction is correct there could be a day when there is a cause without an expected effect, disproving causal laws. Kant combats this fear with Transcendental Idealism, which argues that the world as we know it exists in the mind. Phenomena embodies this argument by representing how our mind has glasses that cause itself to see the world based on how it wants to. This new idea caused a Copernican revolution bringing forth a new idea that the object around us conforms to the mind. Kant uses this theory to give Hume absolute certainty that there will never be a cause without an effect because if he wants to see the effect, the objects will conform to that desire, no matter if it happens in the real world or

The year is 1797 and we are in the heart of Segu located in West Africa and unforeseen change are arriving on the horizon. In the novel Segu, by Maryse Conde we explore an empire at its height on the brink of drastic change and conflict. In this Historical fiction novel Conde introduces the major theme of change, which is brought about through the spread of foreign religions, the rise of the slave trade, and the death of traditional ways in Segu. These major themes are conveyed through the use of the use of the Traore family and their four sons Tiekoro, Siga, Naba, and Malobi who each represent a form of change in Segu. In the novel Conde takes the readers on a trip experiencing average life in West Africa as we follow each of the fours sons journeys to make a new name for themselves. Conde gives many subtle themes and thoughts on segu and its downfall but mostly sets up the novel in a way that allows the reader to gather perspective on life in segu and form their own argument and contention.

II: In this section Ngugi speaks about how the English- an imperialistic language that belongs to Europe dominates the local languages in the post-colonial Africa. He asks to the reader that how did people become to be so feeble towards the claims of their languages on them and so aggressive in their claims on other languages, particularly the languages of their colonization. It is worth mentioning the words spoken by Chinua Achebe, “is it right that a man should abandon his mother language for some one else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling”. Ngugi refers to the 1962 African writer’s conference at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda: “A Conference of African Writers of English Expression.” Excluding writers who wrote in African tongues, it proceeded to discuss questions of what African literature is or could be, while accepting that it must be in English. This cruel poisonous paradox is summed up this way: “The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation and language was the means of the spiritual subjugation” (9).

The widespread influence of Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart not only has earned it a number of accolades, but also led to its reputation as one of the most influential works of fiction by an African writer of all time. According to an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, the novel has sold about eleven million copies in fifty different countries, was a part of Harold Bloom’s 1994 selection of the canonical works of world literature, and The Sunday Times named Achebe one of the “1,000 makers of the 20th century” for his work. For many years, literary representations of Africa had been immersed in negative conceptions of reductive romance, primitivism, and colonial sentiment. With a fresh new perspective, Things Fall Apart

Though being a political narrative, the presence of women to strengthen the quality and reality of the novel is undeniable. Critic Abdulzarak Gurnah says: "Ngugi's writing is never far from the subject" and this is perfectly applicable for his description of the African women. However, being rather objective he also points a picture of the white women who though being secondary characters play a certain role in the novel.

This paper reflects the novel “Things Fall Apart” written by Chinua Achebe in 1958. Achebe gives an overview of pre-colonialism and post-colonialism on Igbo, detailing how local traditions and cultural practices can “fall apart” in some scenarios through some introduced, externally created hassles elevated because of colonization. The protagonist named Okonkwo mentioned in the story is a proof showing the lifestyle of the tribe. My main objective and focus is to lay emphasis on Africa specifically the Igbo society, before and after the arrival of the Europeans in Umuofia community; the results of their arrival concerning Igbo culture, thus leading to the clash of cultures between the two categories. I will also draw on post-colonialism with respect to globalization.

More than those of any other African writer, Chinua Achebe’s writings have helped to develop what is known as African literature today. And the single book which has helped him to launch his "revolution" is the classic, Things Fall Apart.  The focus of this essay includes: 1) Achebe's portraiture of women in his fictional universe, the existing sociocultural situation of the period he is depicting, and the factors in it that condition male attitudes towards women; 2) the consequences of the absence of a moderating female principle in his fictions; 3) Achebe's progressively changing attitude towards women s roles; and 4) feminist prospects for African women. In the context of this study, the Igbo people whom Achebe describes will

The book takes place in the Umuofia and Mbanta villages around the 1900s. During the 1900s the rise of European Imperialism in Africa becomes very much prevalent between 1881 and 1914.

In his play, Death and the King's Horseman, Wole Soyinka would have us examine every clash and conflict, save for the one involving culture. Certainly this may seem the most obvious part of the play, but we would do the general understanding of Death a disservice if we ignored one of the central conflicts in the play. Every element of the play is placed in terms of two extremes, and the cultures must be considered one of those pairs. Suicide is no exception to this examination; it must be seen in the conflicting lights that Soyinka gives us: British vs. Yoruban, physical vs. metaphysical, personal vs. social; and an expression of failure vs. a form of redemption. In examining how the play

The novel Weep Not, Child by Ngugi was Thiongio will be explored in this paper. The novel unfolds a tale of a young boy, Njoronge, growing up in the rime of the Mau Mau insurgency that swept away Kenya in the fifties and early sixties. The novel reveals a metamorphosis of Kenya through political, social and cultural conflict lens in the 1952- 1960. By folding different generations of storytelling with each character of the book, Weep Not, Child becomes alive with vivacity. It gives a certain musical element to the flow of the short subsections; they function as contrasted and counterpoints, moving from scenes of quietness to ones of distress. These paper will fist look upon a boy Njoroge and the love he shared with Mwihaki, daughter of his family’s tormenter, then a discussion on political violence and colonial that took place in Kenya then later unfolds the undying grief that the Mau Mau and Gikuyu suffered.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a modern example of postcolonial literature and is one of the most influential pieces of its genre. Postcolonial writing presents important themes and lessons of justice, equality, and freedom that can be applied to present times. It reminds us of how important our freedoms are and why we need to protect them. The colonized write about their exploitation and show how there is persecution in their colonized society. Postcolonial authors use specific methods to undermine their colonizers and reveal their backward logic. Things Fall Apart has various examples of meta-narrative, decolonization struggles, and colonial discourse worked in throughout the novel. Chinua Achebe’s writing styles showcase these techniques to subvert his European colonizers.

It is paradoxical to have a course, which revolves round the corrosiveness of faulted Western notions of time and its depiction through abstraction, identify itself with an abstract title but argue for the concreteness and tangibility of the portrayal of time and space. A Place Beyond Time does just that. Containing a vastly abstract title, A Place Beyond Time may at first glance appear to properly relate time as a tangent notion with space. Upon further contemplation, however, it becomes patent that A Place Beyond Time possesses a conspicuous absence present in its philosophy of aloofness from intangibility. And although the name of the course attempts to tackle and manifest the complications of abstract and concrete time, it is through its lack of definition and precision, lack of possession, and lack of sensation of repetition that A Place Beyond Time fails to properly capitalize on this dilemma.