The Thing Around Your Neck, By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Chimamanda Adichie’s “The Headstrong Historian” both deal with the heavily controversial tellings of the Christian assimilation of Nigeria. The two stories take place in Nigeria and more specifically, the Ibo society. Achebe’s telling of the story involves many people/villages and their own stories, even though their story may not pertain to the main character’s. Adichie’s version focuses mainly on one family and the lasting effects of the encounters with Christianity. Achebe’s novel does fixate on the ideas involved in the means of Christian assimilation. To put it another way, Achebe talks more about the approaches the missionaries take in order to convert

Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, is a story of a traditional village in Nigeria from inside Umuofia around the late 1800s. This novel depicts late African history and shows how the British administrative structure, in the form of the European Anglican Church, imposed its religion and trappings on the cultures of Africa, which they believed was uncivilized. This missionary zeal subjugated large native populations. Consequently, the native traditions gradually disappeared and in time the whole local social structure within which the indigenous people had lived successfully for centuries was destroyed. Achebe spends the first half of the novel depicting the Ibo culture, by

Ever seen something that may look odd to you? Or someone that shows up and you seem to wonder why they’re doing what they’re doing? Do you feel a little unpleasant about their actions? That’s totally normal, because that’s what we call cultural collision. In the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, he shows how cultural collision affected the Ibo culture in Nigeria because of colonization and the arrival of Europeans who brought forth a new religion, a new lifestyle and ways that challenge the Ibo culture. The conflict in Things Fall Apart is the struggle between change and tradition. Chinua Achebe demonstrates Okonkwo’s daily life as a struggle to resist changing from

Adichie’s characters are subject to cultural suppression in several of the short stories. This is most pronounced in ‘The Arrangers of Marriage’ where Chinaza is forced by her husband to assimilate to her new surroundings by ridding herself of all signs of being Nigerian,

In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, Ezinma battles an internal conflict of wanting to act like the opposite gender, but is looked down upon because of her sex. Ezinma ultimately resolves this conflict by following the expectations of society; however, this choice also illustrates her true character as both rebellious and ladylike. Ezinma’s decision to follow the gender roles also reveals the universal theme that social orders may determine how an individual acts according to stereotypes and gender roles.

In July 2009, at a TED conference, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author, gave a stunning speech about “the Danger of a Single Story”. In her speech, she mentioned about negative consequences happening when people tend to form stereotypes based on a single story, the one-sided argument. The single story blindfolds our eyes and prevents us from seeing the complexity, diversity, and similarities that construct our world, just as Adichie says “these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that formed me” (12:56). Listening to all her own personal experience and argument, I have become fully convinced and also see myself reflected in her stories. The single story can cause underlying and harmful impacts not only on personal issues but also on the global scale.

Adichie was born and raised in Nigeria were she experienced many different type of stereotypes. She would use her previous life experiences to illustrate the stereotypes that were going on in the world. She was always exposed to different cultures in the world and was always taught to be thankful for open opportunities

Preconceived ideas about one’s culture often arises from stereotypes passed down from generation to generation. It is those stereotypes which shape one’s way of thinking, without being educated properly. In the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, misunderstood culture is what drives the story of a small African clan called the Umuofia and the life story of Okonkwo, a fearless warrior and farmer. An in-depth look into pre-colonial African culture helps the reader discover and understand an unbiased point of view of a world one may not understand. In doing so, Achebe uses imagery as well as strong narration to describe the cultural norms and activities that the Nigerian tribe undergoes in everyday life. Through this he offers a nonbiased point of view, and communicates and accurate picture of pre-colonial African culture to a western reader.

My room-mate had a single story of Africa; a single story of catastrophe”. Adichie also tells how growing up in Nigeria reading only American and English children’s books made her deaf to her authentic voice. As a child, she wrote about such things as blue-eyed white children easting apples, thinking brown skin and mangos had no place in Literature. That changed as she discovered African writers.

‘The Thing Around Your Neck’, written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discovers the inclined realization from the perspective of Nigerian woman Akunna is developed through her cultural hybridist. Similarly to the isolation felt by May, Akunna the protagonist, also begins to feel secluded due to her heritage as she unpredictably discovers how she is viewed in relation to those around her. The dialogue, “Many people at the restaurant asked where you had come from in Jamaica, because they thought that every black person with a foreign accent was Jamaican. Or someone who guessed that you were African told you that they loved elephants and wanted to go on a safari”, portrayed in a patronizing tone of the American expression and cliché reveals the social and cultural assumptions that limit the protagonists’ experience of discovery and self-acceptance. The meeting of Juan, a white man, startles her prior assumptions as he treats her as an individual rather than a symbol from a foreign land. Inexpertly, Akunna begins to discover the truth of her identity beyond ‘the white men and women who muttered and glared’. “That thing that wrapped itself around your neck, that nearly choked you before you fell asleep, started to loose, to let go”, the motif of the things around your neck identifies the psychological impacts that

Today, the society’s lives and cultures are composed of many overlapping stories. A single story confines a corner of the world to a generalized stereotype. Chimamanda Adichie in TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, addresses that “if you hear a single story about a person or a country we risk a critical understanding.” Adichie also states, “a single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not what they are untrue, but they are incomplete.” Adichie believes everyone is guilty in creating single stories and they are dangerous because they rob people from their identities and dignity. Diversity of stories and possibilities are things that should be read and discussed. Single stories are dangerous because they make the differences in people stand out and the single story an incomplete description.

In the talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said when she went to college, her American roommate had many “Single Stories” about Africans. She thought Africans couldn’t speak English so well; Africans only listened to the “tribal music”; Africans didn’t know how to use a stove. Adichie found her roommate had a single story that, “There was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.” Her roommate believes in “a Single Story” that Africa is poor and hard therefore there is no more than pity for Adichie because she is an African. The single perspective influences her roommate to think unequal between herself and Adichie because of her fixed impressions of Africa. The “Single Story” could become bias to others because of it narrow people’s perspective and gives a single impression of complex things. Therefore, it’s important to know things wholly, otherwise, it could lead to a dangerous

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Ted Talk, The Power of a Single Story, examines the power of story, both as a tool to create stereotypes and as a tool to teach people about the complexity of humanity (Adichie). In her words: “stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity” (Adichie 17:24). Adichie emphasizes that a single story obscures the complexity of the people supposedly represents. By attributing one story, one stereotype to an entire population, you eliminate the possibility of complexity or humanity for the object of the story (Adichie 04:49). The power of story comes from “how they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told,”(Adichie 09:37). It is this power that

First she tells the story of a Nigerian woman who is completely misunderstood in America. Her college roommate knew nothing of what life in Nigeria was actually like. Adichie uses this story to show not only the naivety of her roommate, but also her roommate’s difficulty fathoming that Adichie was not so different from herself. Her roommate was shocked with the reality of Nigerian culture. This story is also a fundamental part of where Adichie establishes her credibility with her situated ethos.

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.