DISCOURSE OF DENUNCIATION: A CRITICAL READING OF CHINUA ACHEBE'S MAN OF THE PEOPLE (original) (raw)
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Discourse of denunciation: A critical reading of Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People
Achebe's narrative text, A Man of The People (1966), is a political satire in which he exposes the intricacies of democratic politics in a Nigerian setting. At the heart of this narrative is a clear denunciation of a bastardized political system in a perverse socio-cultural and economic environment similar to what pertains in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Ahmadou Kourouma's The Suns of Independence (1970) and Amu Djoleto's Money Galore (1975), among many others. Despite the fact that A Man of The people was published many years ago, its central theme, that is politics, corruption and underdevelopment in Africa, is still relevant to contemporary socio-cultural, economic and political context in Africa. No doubt the novel is classified among African classics in literary studies. This study seeks to critically examine the nature of linguistic tools and stylistic detours that define the satiric outlooks of this narrative text of Achebe as a denunciative discourse and its impact on the effective transmission of the message of socio-cultural and attitudinal transformation for sustainable socioeconomic and political development. Considering the nature of literature as a social discourse, in the words of Roger Fowler (1981), the study will be posited in the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis CDA (van Dijk, 1993b). Critical discourse analysis is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequalities are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context (van Dijk, 2001).
A Postcolonial analysis of Chinua Achebe's A man of the People
A postcolonial analysis of Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People, 2020
This paper was a postcolonial analysis of Chinua Achebe's novel, A Man of the People. The paper was of the argument that there is a need to look into various texts from a postcolonial perspective in order to unveil that which is concealed so as to provide a means of resisting the coloniser for the colonised. Postcolonial literature is key in understanding the coloniser and the colonised in aspects, such as politics, culture and education among others. From this analysis, it was concluded that Achebe's novel, A Man of the People is an element of postcolonial literature on its own as it is representative of contrasts of political, social, economic, cultural and moral aspects.
Struggle and Strategies of Containment in Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People
Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People introduces Chief M.A. Nanga in the opening paragraph as the Man of the People; and this had to be made clear from the outset; otherwise the story that Odili the narrator was going to tell would 'make no sense'. So there is a double focus on the man and on the story. This introduction seems to prepare the reader for a story presenting an action of a public nature. The story that dominates this narrative is accordingly of a public nature. But it also contains the story of a personal antagonism whereby Odili becomes drawn into the public actions of the man and is therefore able to give this account from the inside, as it were. The story of the public action is in its turn contained in another larger story, with mythical associations. The personal conflict, as a consequence, is more than merely an incident. Its meaning is partly captured in the public story, which is in turn partially captured in the mythic pattern. This paper explores this endless pattern of deferring of meaning.
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, born in Nov. 16, 1930, is a novelist, poet, an esteemed literary critic, and one of the most widely read author of 20th Century and his fame rests on solid personal achievements. As a young man of twenty eight he brought honour to his native Nigeria by writing Things Fall Apart (1958), the first novel of unquestioned literary merit from West Africa. Critics tend to agree that no African novelist writing in English has yet surpassed Achebe's achievements in Things Fall Apart. It was published in 1958 and since then his reputation has grown like a bush-fire in harmattan. Achebe's other outstanding achievements in the territory of fiction are No Longer At Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of Savannah (1987). His collections of essays are Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), Hopes and Impediments (1988) and Home and Exile (2001). Achebe's most controversial and great critical treatise is 'An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Most of his works assert his African identity strongly and underline his marginalized experience in the wake of African colonization.
Social and Political Unrest in Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People: A Study
Roots International Journal of Multidisciplinary Researches, Impact Factor 0.811 , 2015
by V.Jeya Santhi & Dr.R.Selvam Chinua Achebe was a distinguished Igbo (Ibo) novelist, renowned for his unsentimental depiction of the social and psychological renovation associated with the imposition of western customs, education and values upon traditional African society. His particular concern is with evolving Africa at the moment of crisis. Similar to the diasporic experience, the modernity is contested and out of this conflict, new identities with a firm moral order out of changing values are constructed. Achebe’s fourth novel A Man of the People (1966) exemplifies his goal of social realism; and it is an attempt to restore the lost dignity of his people by allowing his readers to examine their past and to resolve what he terms a ‘crisis in the soul’. To achieve a realistic effect, Achebe created the protagonist Odili Samalu, a representative of the new intellectual generation in opposition to the Chief Nanga, Odili’s former teacher, a representative of the old bush politicians. The realization of Odili that the country could be made much better if he went up against “a man of the people” who in reality was “a man against the people” and the subsequent events foreshadow the Nigerian Revolution of 1966. The paper examines how the political, social and economic unrest relate to the transition in the context of a post-colonial African country as depicted in A Man of the People.
THEMES, ISSUES AND CONCERNS IN THE NOVELS OF CHINUA ACHEBE: RESPONSE TO COLONIALISM
isara solutions, 2021
Achebe's fame as an outstanding African novelist rests specially on his four novels-Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer At Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and A Man of the People (1966) the first three of them having been published together as The African Trilogy (1988). The village novels Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God depict conflicts in Ibo society partly generated by the impact of European colonialism and partly by tensions within the society itself. These two novels form a class by themselves in the sense that they unfold the complexities of tribal life beneath its surface simplicity and calm and the tribal societies symbolize the conflict of cultures. The other two novels No Longer At Ease and A Man of the People are satirical in intent and hold up a mirror against the New Rulers of the of the postcolonial era in Africa. Taken together, all the four novels deal with the theme of colonial encounter and human condition, and yield wonderful response to colonialism. At the root of these themes, runs a parallel and basic theme of these novels, that is, the theme of sustenance of African culture and traditions. Explicitly so, because traditions and the culture of a country provide an identity and self-respect to the people of that country. A society of certain identity then gets established and re-established even after untold losses.
Readers and critics of Chinua Achebe’s novel 'A Man of the People' (1966) have invariably pilloried Chief Nanga, while they have generally been gushingly sympathetic to Odili Samalu by excessively praising, among other traits, his honesty as a character and his objectivity as a narrator. This paper seriously calls such sympathy and praises into question. From a narratological perspective, I argue that the scandalous bestowal of an 'undistorted view', a 'detached position' or a 'detached perspective' upon Odili is a normal effect of 'narrative empathy' which, however, can be only short-lived in the face of copious textually schematized clues of narratorial unreliability. These clues quell narrative empathy, elicit epistemological doubt from the (implied) reader, and alarm his/her cognitive mechanisms into the exercise of epistemic vigilance. I therefore withdraw the reliability badge from Odili, taking the stance that he is an unreliable narrator and that narratorial unreliability is intentionally encoded in the novel by the implied author as a stylistic device, i.e. for the purpose of generating irony.
Aspects of Realism in Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People
2008
Achebe has proven his worth among english-speaking African novelists by representing the African social and political environment in a thoroughly realistic way. his novels depict life within a particular historical background, and convey a sense of growing disgust and unrest within nigerian society, a society that has started to emerge from the 'colonial complex' caused by years of denigration and self-abasement. A Man of the People (967) is Achebe's fourth novel. it describes nigeria in its post-independence phase, during which time the country became a 'cesspool of corruption and misrule' in the context of colonial-style social and economic development, a situation that resulted in conflict between the emergent, elitist middle class and the general population. Achebe's reputation as a novelist rests on his impartial understanding of, and ability to represent, the nigerian environment. his realistic characterization, and diagnosis, of his country's malaise has the power to inspire a revolution informed by African ideologies.
Critics and admirers of Chinua Achebe’s work have largely ignored fundamental techniques used in his novels that make them complex, unique, and successful. Achebe has been described by many as the ‘founding father‘ of the ‘African novel’ (Gikandi, 1991, p2), but I propose that he is given this title for reasons that undermine the inner complexities that result from Achebe’s own inner socio-cultural dualities and political motivations. In an increasingly aware world, where multi-cultural societies proliferate and, in Western education are celebrated and explored, appreciation of Achebe's work emphasises the anthropological elements of his novels, viewing them as ‘native documents’ (Healy, 1959, p6) rather than legitimate literary achievements within the novel form.