Chinua Achebe's novels as the chronicle of colonialism in Nigeria

Colonialism is a noteworthy reality that has shaped the world order throughout history. In cooperation with imperialism, it has dominated various nations and created a mounting antagonism between the colonized and the colonizer. In the course of the colonial history, the British Empire took the lead, and Africa as a continent with dignified nations like Nigeria encountered various unfortunate challenges in all spheres of life. Hence, as a reaction to the profound impacts of colonialism, the term postcolonialism came into prominence. Accordingly, postcolonial theory and criticism emerged to unravel the mysteries of colonialism. Likewise, postcolonial literature was born to cast light upon the realities of the whole colonization process from diverse angles. In this regard, the voice of Africa, Chinua Achebe made a stunning exploration of colonialism through his novels Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah reflecting the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial eras chronologically. His novels and works in general are precious sources of information in the field of postcolonialism. In this respect, employing postcolonial theory and criticism as well as the postcolonial terms ambivalence, hybridity, mimicry, subaltern, and appropriation, this study discusses Achebe's novels in a sensible order with a specific focus on narrative features, culture and indigenous order, identity and characterization. Overall, in doing so with an inductive manner, three basic questions pertaining to the motive behind conducting such a study are answered reasonably. That is, the chronological analysis of Achebe's pentalogy, the use of postcolonial theory and criticism, and revealing Achebe's nation-building journey to help regain dignity as well as writing back to the West to correct the fallacies are the clear answers of the questions 'what', 'how', 'why' respectively.