Achebes Central Idea, The Need for Balanced Stories in Home and Exile

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               Aylin G12

IB English HL

Mr. Ernest

31/10/11

Word Count: 1099

Achebe’s Central Idea, “The Need for Balanced Stories” in Home and Exile

Storytelling distinguishes humans from animals. However, sometimes the power behind stories is exploited creating numerous bias stories which results in an unbalancing of accounts. Home and Exile is a short novel comprised of three lectures by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The inspirational novel provides a glimpse of Achebe’s life, African literature written by foreigners, the rise of African writers, and universal civilization. Achebe’s discussions about non-Africans writing about Africans, the diverse responses towards literature written by Africans, and Achebe’s own statements, all direct to the lingering idea Achebe advocates: need African literature to create balanced literature. The balancing of literature may occur in two ways. The first, being that current African literature balances the bias literature written about Africa in the past. The second being that every entity is written about equally and thus like Achebe dreams of, African literature will balance the literature of other countries. Hopefully, one day Achebe’s dreams will be fulfilled.

Achebe introduces the first side of African literature through his detailed discussions of the accounts of Africa and her people by non-Africans, showing readers why there is a need for literature to be balanced. This first writer introduced is Joyce Carry and his book Mister Johnson. According to Achebe, the problems of the book was the “infuriating principal character, Johnson(the Nigerian), and the contagion of distaste, hatred, and mockery [that] breaks through to poison his(Carry) tale.”  This kind of writing a trend within the other extracts incorporated such as John Lok’s account of Africans on his voyage “a people of beastly living…no speech...people without heads(27).” Joseph Conrad’s quote “ that was the worse of it-this suspicion of their not being inhuman(46).” All these writers were separated generations apart. Achebe states that the “ last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery (Achebe).” People have “absolute power over narrative (30)”, which allows them to write anything, even bias and false accounts. These influenced the majority of a nation’s view that Africans were a lower race. However, this shows why there must be literature written by Africans expressing their story of Africa and its people.

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This kind of literature is necessary to balance the literature of colonial times and will help eradicate previous demeaning stereotypes created by previous literature. Africans have the power to voice their true-selves which helps educate people globally and create civilizations accepting of the diversity and cultures of one another.

                   Achebe also discusses the rise in literature written by Africans and the differing response to it by both Africans and Africans, to show the need for African literature. During the 1950s and 1960s an eruption of literature written by Africans emerged. Achebe mostly discuses Amos Tutuola’s “Palm-Wine Drinkard”and shows the ...

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