Achebe and Fanon on Colonization and Decolonization
Living in the same region for an extended period of time will endow the human inhabitant with a sense of pride in their homeland. When this idea is extended to a certain group of people living in the same area, pride turns into nationalism. The residents not only feel like they geographically own the land, but their history of culture in that given area lends them an emotional connection as well. When people of elsewhere come to take the land from the native inhabitants, many changes occur. In his book The Wretched of the Earth, Franz Fanon gives his insight into how the process of colonization and decolonization happens, and the resulting physical and mental effects on both groups of people. Telling this from a strictly historical and platonic standpoint he gives an accurate representation of how it works. Whereas in the novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe chronicles the life and times of an African family located in the lower Niger. The head of the family, which the story mostly follows, is highly respected by his fellow tribesman for his brute strength and warrior mentality. Achebe tells the story as if he is an all-knowing elder from the tribe, which makes it quite natural for the reader to become emotionally involved. The reader invests their feelings in the tribe, so when the shocking process of colonization happens, the pain is much more real, as compared to Fanon 's piece. Another feature that both pieces touch on, as it is unavoidable in this context, is the role that violence plays in colonization. Whereas Fanon speaks about the historical process of decolonization as an aspect of modernization from a birds-eye view offering an external opinion, his uninvolved state lacks emotional backing. Achebe fills this void nicely by chronicling the life and times of a family in a small African community, from peace to colonization, which gives the reader a deeper connection with the text and gives backing to Fanon 's idea of the process as movement of mankind