Comparison of the Form and Style in Things Fall Apart and A Far Cry Essay - 1

Comparison of the Form and Style in Things Fall Apart and A Far Cry from Africa - Essay Example Since the story is that of a warrior, Achebe uses a tone that is martial. At the same time, the tone is also that of a historian who faithfully chronicles the events that happen in a society. The events of this society are shown through a pre-colonial and colonial perspective. The tone of Walcott’s poem, A Far Cry From Africa is different. This is because Walcott writes during a period when there is a consensus on the debates that surround pluralism and nativism, in favor of a pluralistic culture that seeks the integration of a pre-colonial and colonial culture. The agony that Walcott expresses regarding the conflict between his African belonging and the English language in which he is proficient and in which he expresses himself as a writer can be seen in the tone that he adopts in his poem which is that of a lament. These works tilt towards the pluralist cultures that the writers who were a part of the Negritude movement opposed (Ashcroft, 2010). As a result, their tone, eve n though they lament the loss of a culture with the advent of colonization, they express the hope of an integration of African and western cultures. This mixed culture may be said to be a reflection of the identities of these writers, an identity that had been molded through a consciousness of their own racial identity along with western education. Their tone enables them to make clear the racial differences that they aim to highlight through their works. These differences are made clear by talking of the conflict in the value systems that form the societies that Okonkwo lives in, in Things Fall Apart and the duality of the identity of the poet in A Far Cry From Africa. The narrator in Walcott’s poem is unapologetic about this... Comparison of the Form and Style in "Things Fall Apart" and "A Far Cry from Africa" While talking of race differences in their works, they are critical of the western colonizers for their economic policies, but occupy a space that is not entirely divorced from the western education that they have received. As a result their discussion of racial differences is extremely nuanced and complex. They however, have various differences in their tone and style, something that can be attributed to the differences in the historical and geographical context in which these writers produced their work. This paper shall attempt not only a historicist and new historicist mode of analysis, but shall seek to combine it with an analysis of the forms that the writers in question employ in their works of art. Things Fall Apart was one of the first few novels that explored the role of the colonizers in the changes that came in African society. There have been many works of art that have followed this work in the tradition of post-colonial works of art that critique the role of the coloni ser. The conflict that both these writers face is one that is faced by people, who are, according to Frantz Fanon, of mixed identities. Such people cannot turn to either side for support and thus end up feeling like outsiders in their own community. While this enables Achebe to provide his work with the perspective of an outsider, imbuing his work with the tone of a historian, it enables an effective articulation of Walcott’s identity crisis that results from not only a biologically mixed parentage but also a metaphorical one.