Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930 to Isaiah Okafo and Janet Achebe in the very unstable country of Ogidi, Nigeria. He was exposed to missionaries early in his childhood because Ogidi was one of the first missionary centers established in Eastern Nigeria and his father was an evangelist. Yet it was not until he began to study at the University of Ibadan that Achebe discovered what he himself wanted to do. He had grown apalled to the “superficial picture” of Nigeria that many non-Nigerian authors were providing. That is when Achebe resolved to write something that viewed his country from “the inside”. (Gallagher, Susan, The Christian Century, v114, 260) His first novel, Things Fall Apart, achieved exactly this. Things Fall Apart is based on Nigeria’s early experiences with the British. It is the story of an Ibo village and one of it’s great men, Okonkwo, who is a very high achiever being a champion wrestler, a wealthy farmer , a husband to three wives, and a man with titles. Okonkwo’s world is disrupted with the appearance of the first white man who tries to inflict his religion on the Umuofia natives. Okonkwo, a high tempered man, later kills a British employed man and eventually takes his own life. Achebe himself once said, “Language is a weapon and we use it, and there’s no point in fighting it.” ( Gallagher, The Christian Century, v114, 260) These are words that Achebe lives by. He stood by this statement throughout his entire career with a language style that would change African literature. was no exception. He accomplished his goal by writing about his own culture and his own family in a poetic, proverbic style. < qtd. in http://www.upress.state.ms.us/catalogs/books/c/html/conache.html > The unique language style of Things Fall Apart not only changed Achebe’s career, but it also changed his country. Achebe himself once said, ” Art is, and always was, at the service of man. Our ancestors created their myths and told their stories for a human purpose. Any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should have a purpose.” < http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/achebe.html> Achebe used the “weapon” of language to convince “outsiders” that Nigeria is a nation with great potential.
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