It was about two years ago when my mother exposed me to the first Nigerian novel that I had the pleasure of reading, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It was after this that i decided to delve into the works of a nation that is so rich in culture but so poor in affluence because colonization and corrupt government. If you were to ask an everyday american about the true reasons for Nigeria’s economic plight, some indifferent countenances would come into your vision and ethnocentric comments would probably fall on your ears. Ranging from generalizations about the work ethic of the indigenous to an insufficient population to draw companies and foreign investment.
The truth is that many don’t know and are content in abstaining from the answers. Many don’t care to know that the nation only gained its sovereignty from Great Britain in 1960. Or that after pacifying any insurgent resistance to the British during colonization, over 400 various ethnic groups were conglomerated into three administrative regions, breeding even more violence between natives and destroying an unfathomable amount of culture.
As if that weren’t enough, Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Oil Company) had exclusive rights to drill for petroleum in Nigeria (one of the largest petroleum deposits in the world) and kept one hundred percent of the revenue without compensating Nigeria up until the late sixties. Also, England backed the winning side in the first of many Nigerian Civil Wars in order to protect its stake with Shell. After that initial conflict, a military coup kept the nation under military control until the 90’s where corrupt elections took their place and continue to in the present. Nigeria’s progression as a nation is tragic. Sadly, because of being educated in the United States, whom is also an imperial superpower, I hadn’t heard their side of the story until I searched it out myself.
With having dipped my toes into Nigerian literature I decided to wade a bit farther into the pool by reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, possibly the work that has gained the most praise out of any work originating from Nigeria. I was soon to find out that this was because of the conversation of intertextuality Achebe was having with colonial primitivist writers like Joseph Conrad, and specifically his piece The Heart of Darkness which I had already read at an earlier time in my life.
Things Fall Apart follows the story of Okonkwo, a quick tempered war hero in an Igbo village of Nigeria; the reader watches Okonkwo progress through adulthood and is able to see the beauty of the Igbo way of life and how the tribe is just as proficient and civilized as their imperial counterparts. All is well in for the igbo until christian missionaries are sent into the country during a short period of exile for Okonkwo. He returns to find a schism has developed within his people thanks to the introduction of christianity. Things begin to fall apart. The rest of the novel documents the prolonged and futile fight for the independence of the tribe; which I won’t spoil (the ending can probably be inferred).
This is the inverse of The Heart of Darkness which follows an imperializing Belgian crew voyaging up the Congo River in search of Captain Kurtz who
has convinced the natives that he is a God. With this imposed power he has sex with the native women and uses the native men as a fighting force for raids on surrounding territories for Ivory. Throughout the novel African natives are referred to as savages and brutes constantly. Their homeland being referred to as the Heart of Darkness. After reading both texts It was apparent that the imposing jingoist views of imperialists spawned the horror they found.
Where Conrad displayed savagery and depravity Achebe voiced pure beauty and connectedness of his people with their homeland. It was through Achebe’s criticism of Conrad that enlightened me to the fact that most canonized literature predominantly reflects the views of those from affluent imperialistic countries and societies. as Alex Moran said “The task of criticism is to restore a lost sense of wholeness in society and culture” (Moran 35).
Chinua Achebe on Heart of Darkness: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=113835207&m=113840317