Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
AP - Guiding Questions for Things Fall Apart:
- Select a character caught between colliding cultures – national, regional, ethnic ,religious or institutional. Describe the characters response to the collusion and the relevance to the work as a whole.
- Describe how a tragic figure functions as an instrument of suffering to others. Explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.
- Focus on one symbol, analyze how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole.
- Select a character who leaves home. Analyze the importance of home to this character and the reasons for its continuing influence and then explain how the character’s idea of home illuminates the larger meaning of the work as a whole.
- Choose a character who has deliberately sacrificed, surrendered, or forfeited something in a way that highlights the character’s values. Analyze how the particular sacrifice illuminated the characters values and provides a deeper understanding of the meaning of the work as a whole.
- Cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation. Discuss how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what does cruelty reveal about the perpetrator and/or victim.
- Select a character who gets cut off from home or a special place. Analyze how the character’s experience with exile is both alienating and enriching and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.
- Choose a character who responds in some significant way to justice or injustice. Analyze the characters understanding of justice, the degree to which the character’s search for justice is successful, and the significance of this each for the work as a whole.
- Select a character and discuss how change or the unwillingness to change defines the character and illustrates the meaning of the work as a whole.
- Choose and major character and a minor character and analyze how Cultural Imperialism has defined them and illustrated the meaning of the work as a whole.
- In what ways in the poem "The Second Coming"by W.B. Yeats reflective of themes in Things Fall Apart?
- Choose a character and describe how the constructs of Empire, Colonialism and/or Orientalism relate to the choices made by the character and illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole?
- Choose a character and discuss the role of women in society and how their roles is reflected in the meaning of the work as a whole?
- In great works of literature, Ancestors, the God, the Spirits or religion often have profound defining effects on a character and reveal the greater meaning of the work as a whole.
- The conflict between the Community and the Individual can profoundly affect a character and illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole.
Interview - Africa 50 years After
A WORLD OF IDEAS - Transcript