The effects of cultural colonialism on the Ibo society in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Colonization dominates the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population. It is essentially a system of direct political, economic and cultural intervention by a powerful country in a weaker one. In other words, colonialism can be meant as a process when one group cannot determine themselves and another group dominates them. The phenomenon of colonization does not happen only in real life but also in written fiction. And this phenomenon clearly described in Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart. There, he presents to us to have a close and real picture of the past and present African life with all their pains, pleasures and puzzles with immediacy and force.

Related to the phenomenon above, this study is aimed at answering two following questions; the first is how is the Ibo’s culture portrayed in Things Fall Apart, this question consist of what social organizations that is described on the Ibo society, for instance: marriage and family and what religious practices that is depicted on the Ibo society, such as: submission to the God, offerings, and ritual rites. Next, as the last question is what are the effects of colonialism on the culture of the Ibo society depicted Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart.

This research is a literary criticism. And Postcolonial literary criticism can be applied in this study because this study talks about how Ibo undergo the changing of their culture after the British arrival. The data source of this study is the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The data of this study are all sentences in the form of written dialogues, monologues and expression, which are collected from novel Things Fall Apart.

After analyzing the data, the writer finds several points about colonialism. They are: the changing Ibo’s culture on the Ibo personal and Ibo society after the British arrival. The unique and bizarre of Ibo on their culture change because they cannot keep it as well as their ancestor. As the result, their cultures fall apart.

The changing on the Ibo’s culture in many side and the effects that are received by Ibo society commonly and for personal Ibo especially can be found in this novel, Things Fall Apart. Finally, the writer hopes that this study can give a new contribution to the readers, especially the students who are interested in postcolonial discourse. Furthermore, it is hoped for further writers to conduct the research, which not only focuses on reflection of colonization but also on the other aspect of postcolonial.