*Chinua Achebe
By Ugochukwu
Ejinkeonye
Recently, I was at a forum put together to
celebrate the work of Chinua Achebe, one of Africa ’s widely read authors who is universally regarded as the father and
rallying point of African Literature. As the speeches flowed and the ovations
sounded, I could feel the depth of admiration in the various speakers for Achebe and his work. The whole thing was moving on well until one lady
came up with elaborate praise for Achebe for the significant “improvement” his
female characters achieved in Anthills
Of the Savannah, unlike what obtained in Things Fall Apart, his
first novel, which is globally acknowledged as a classic, and which now exists
in more than fifty major languages.
Now, I would easily have ignored and quickly forgotten this
comment as “one of those things” one was bound to hear in a “mixed crowd” if I
had not also heard similar thoughts brazenly expressed by some female scholars
whom I thought should be better informed.
For instance, I was at a lecture in
Port Harcourt some years ago when a female professor of literature announced
with the excitement of someone who had just discovered another earth: When
Achebe created his earlier female characters, she said, they complained;
then he responded by giving them Clara (in No
Longer At Ease), they still complained; then he gave them Eunice (in A Man Of The People) and they still asked for more; and then he gave them Beatrice (in Anthills Of The Savannah)!
Unfortunately, I have encountered thoughts even more pedestrian than this
flaunted by several scholars and readers alike.
Honestly, I had thought that this matter had long
been resolved and forgotten. It should be clear (and I should think that
this has been sufficiently stressed) that whatever perceived differences in the
various female characters created by Achebe are a function of the prevailing
realities in the different settings and periods that produced them, and
Achebe’s ability to record those realties so accurately should not be construed
to mean that he also “celebrates” them (as some critics have wrongly
imputed) or advocates their sustenance.
In his lecture at the University of Nigeria
Today Achebe is being widely hailed for using his
first novel, Things Fall
Apart, to change the distorted images of Africa celebrated in the heaps of mostly
concocted historical and literary accounts about the continent and its people
by mostly Western writers. But Achebe did not see any wisdom in countering
these distortions with his own distortions. He merely presented reality with
both its glowing and unedifying sides with exceptional insight, penetration and
grasp of the real picture which the foreigner, whose impressions were mostly
coloured by many years of deep-seated prejudices, was incapable of capturing.
It is a credit to Achebe’s mastery of his art that even though his
readers might be shocked, for instance, at the bloodcurdling murder of
Ikemefuna (which every sane person should find overly revolting), they would
still find it nearly impossible to categorize the incident as one more evidence of savage pleasure of
the native in wanton bloodletting. The reader is able to see an Okonkwo with
genuine human feelings that are even more appealing than those of the white man
who was attempting to “civilize” him, but who would have no qualms wiping out
an entire community, as happened in Abame!
