Place and Interiority in the African Trilogy of Chinua Achebe

Abstract

This dissertation analyses Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy from the perspective of the interiority of its Nigerian protagonists and the relationship between this interiority and the landscapes they inhabit. The study is borne out of Achebe’s pointed writing against the Orientalist ‘Other-ing’ of the African native in novels such as Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, texts in which native African characters are reduced to homogeneous types and contrasted in their simplicity with the complex interiority of Western characters and narrators. Although Achebe’s novels are analyzed in isolation, and Achebe is situated as a postcolonial writer in the literature, this dissertation will contribute to the existing literature a holistic and sequential analysis of the novels as a trilogy, and will situate the analysis in a hitherto under-explored area of Achebe studies: the idea of landscape. It will contribute further to existing knowledge by reading Achebe’s texts in light of his position as a critic of Conradian narratives of African interiority. It will therefore provide a unique perspective which looks at Achebe both as a fictional creator and a non-fictional theorist. Achebe’s characters in these three texts, far from homogeneous, are complex and multi-faceted, torn in particular between competing loyalties: the countryside versus the city, Africa versus Europe, tradition versus modernity, tribal loyalty versus allegiance with the colonizing power, pagan ritualism versus western Christianity, and so on. The landscape, both as a literal element in the three texts and as a more symbolic idea of home, place, and belonging, is a central trope through which Achebe explores the interiority of his characters. The dissertation demonstrates how a dialogic relationship emerges between the interior psychology of the individual, and the external circumstances of landscape and place, a dialogue which shapes both Achebe’s protagonists and the plot development in the African Trilogy. The role of the individual in the landscape shapes important themes in the three texts, from masculinity to tradition to the idea of the tragedy as exile from one’s native landscape. The Ibo and Nigerian characters are 5 | P a g e developed in Achebe’s texts as nuanced, conflicted and varied individuals, and their interiority changes and is threatened as the landscape and its usage and ownership change and are threatened. This marks a dramatic rewriting of the Orientalist homogenizing narrative of the African as ‘Other.’ Achebe foregrounds the complex interiority of his characters and the landscape they inhabit, radically altering Conrad’s vision of a menacing darkness into a portrait of native African interiority which is nuanced, complex and located in a complex relationship to the ideas of Europe, modernity and the colonizing power. Landscape and interiority emerge as inextricably connected in this portrayal, such that one cannot change or re-appropriate the landscape without doing lasting damage to the psyche of the individual. Landscape is a central element of one’s identity, and to change one’s perspective is always to change the material conditions of the world one inhabits in Achebe’s texts, as well as vice versa