Cultural Critique in Selected Works of Chinua Achebe

The purpose of this study is to examine Chinua Achebe's critique of both African and European cultures in his four novels: Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, and A Man of the People. This study utilizes strategies of close textual analysis in the context of postcolonial and cultural studies. It explores the native culture before the arrival of the white man and its contact with the alien culture. Moreover, it deals with the impact of colonial education upon the native community and upon the colonized person's identity. Colonial education creates ambivalent persons, who suffer from hybrid identity. Finally, this study explores Achebe's critique of the native culture after colonialism. The native customs and values have been turned upside down and replaced by Western material values. The loss of spiritual control over the materialistic elements leads to the spread of corruption and chaos. The study concludes that the pre-colonial Africa is more organized than the post-independence Africa, which experiences a new form of colonialism known as neo-colonialism.