Oral forms in achebe’s things fall apart: a stylistic reading

Abstract

This paper is a tentative critical reading of Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart. It is an attempt to determine whether the use of oral forms in a literary tradition can help to better understand the underlying meaning of the novel without distorting its form as a literary tradition. It tries also to demonstrate that the analysis of these oral forms can help the reader to draw a stylistic interpretation. Most African writers use orality in their writings. It constitutes the primary source of literary creativity in Africa. Things Fall Apart is based on traditional African culture and it is the foremost example where oral forms are overused . This paper is divided into three chapters. Chapter one deals with a theoretical background of orality and oral style. The second chapter deals with literary analysis of oral forms such as proverbs, stories, songs, similes, metaphors and irony. The third chapter deals with linguistic analysis of oral forms such as repetition, codeswitching, the additive “and”, onomatopoeia and alliteration. The conclusion will expose a few views on what may come out from a literary point of view, when two literary traditions meet.