Background
for Teachers
As the editor to the MLA guide on teaching Things Fall Apart
comments, “[o]n the surface, Things Fall Apart
may seem a simple, uncomplicated story, but it has subtle and profound
dimensions that those coming to it for the first time might easily
miss” (Linfors 18).
This
module aims to help teachers and students better understand those
dimensions by examining the moral questions the novel raises,
which in turn allows the student to better understand ethical
decision-making and action.
Critic
Biodun Jeyifo comments that Things Fall Apart is a “canonical
Third World text that appeals to readers everywhere because its
seemingly objective realism renders with poignancy and solicitude
the plight of the powerless and the dominated” (Linfors
18); in other words, the issues TFA is concerned with are universal
issues, ones with which any student can identify.
Chinua
Achebe himself wants to make the universality of Things Fall
Apart clear:
One fundamental point…is fundamental and essential to
the appreciation of African issues by Americans. Africans are
people in the same way that Americans, Europeans, Asians, and
others are people. Africans are not some strange beings with
unpronounceable names and impenetrable minds…the characters
are normal people and their events are real human events. (21)
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