Friday, March 9, 2018
Achebe and Marquez
When reading things fall apart, I could not hep but notice the obvious simmilarites between Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Marquz's 100 years of solitude. Right off the bat, I think the timeline fo the two narratives are nearly idenitical, both have a concrete timeline but tend to jump from the main timeline into anecdotal sequences. Along with the timeline, the charters also have a heavy attachment to superstition and religion. Some simillar themes can be found as well, such as the question of what makes a man a man? In a more broader sense, both authors are writing from an "inside perpetive." Marquez's people went thhrough the same strugle that Achebe's Igbo culture went, their identities were contsantly affectd by their colonizers. Marquez and Achebe capture the richness and beauty of thei culture from a perpective devloped by being apart of that culture, rather than being an outsider. I am really enjoying things fall apart because it reminds of the delight I had when reading 100 Years of Solitude.
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I was thinking about the similarities between these two as well, especially the aspect of colonization. They both explain colonization really differently, Marquez through the lens of magical realism, and Achebe with a much more objective attitude. However, they both have the power of an inside viewpoint.
I think it's interesting to compare these two works as they are two of the most famous examples of postcolonial literature and as such share many characteristics but also have significant differences. Both works definitely consider their own cultures from an interior perspective and consider the effects of colonialism on their cultures, but do so in different ways. As we've talked about, Achebe employs a large element of social realism in describing Igbo culture. Marquez, on the other hand, is mainly writing in the mode of magical realism, with less of an attempt to realistically depict Latin American culture. However, these approaches aren't necessarily antithetical as I think Marquez is still trying to show Latin American culture, just through a different lens, which, as we discussed in class, in some ways was necessary for his subject. Also, while we haven't really gotten to the colonial parts of Things Fall Apart yet, I think it will be interesting to compare these aspects of the novels as well. In a weird postcolonial sense, I think both writers used their work to address the Western conception of their home continents, which had been colonized, exploited, and turned into vague cultural ideas by the West. But in some ways, these experiences of colonialism are significantly different, as the Buendias and other settlers of Macondo are ultimately part of the colonizers who come to Latin America (who were then subsequently exploited though), while any colonizers coming to Umuofia will be entirely invasive.
I thought this as well, Diego! I think both Marquez and Achebe shared a similar intention of wanting to reveal more about their cultures than the false, preconceived notions that the Western world carried. In different ways, I think this work also relates to many of the other pieces we've read as well because it gives insight into world and time periods we are unfamiliar with. We've learned about Greek and Roman tradition along with Danish culture. We've learned about religion in the Middle Ages and political conflict in Czechoslovakia. All of these pieces help unravel the stories of people living under different societies, and I think it's so great that we've been able to cover them.
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