ability to enlighten us about real issues in the real world. Chinua Achebe's

novel Things Fall Apart offers us a rare glimpse into the world of the

African Ibo tribe as it struggles to redefine itself in the face of British

colonialism; we learn not only about the problems of a particular time and

place, but encounter some of the issues dealt with in contemporary

sociological literature as well. In turn, our understanding of Achebe can be

tremendously deepened through the lens of works such as Mahmood Mamdani's

Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism;

Anthony Butler's Democracy and Apartheid: Political Theory, Comparative

Politics, and the Modern South African State; and Frederick D. Lugard's The

Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart derives its title from a line from William

Butler Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," which foretells the end of the

world. And Achebe's novel indeed foreshadows the end of a world: the

incursion of the white man into the society of the African Ibo, and the

subsequent dissolution of the indigenous culture. The image of things

day it hatches" (Achebe, 46). Leaders who constantly speak in proverbs

interesting. Why, if the Ibo society is as stable and complacent as it would

way of undermining a people's social autonomy and self-acceptance. In

patriarchal, xenophobic, and authoritarian, the British assumed that African

Some topics in this essay:
Consequently British, African Ibo, South African, Admittedly Achebe, Mahmood Mamdani, Additionally Mamdani, Christian Nwoye, Okonkwo Umuofia, Fall Apart, Nwoye Okonkwo, ibo society, achebe's novel, fall apart, african society, citizen subject, south african, mamdani charges, political theory comparative, political theory, politics modern, comparative politics, comparative politics modern, politics modern south, theory comparative politics, modern south african,