The World of Letters

The Blossom Merry, merry sparrow! Under leaves so green; A happy blossom Sees you, swift as arrow, Seek your cradle narrow Near my bosom. Pretty, pretty,-robin! Under leaves so green, A happy blossom Hears you sobbing, sobbing, Pretty, pretty robin, Near my bosom. (William Blake in the Songs of Innocence) Notes : Merry, merry sparrow: The speaker in the poem is most probably a little girl. The sparrow is proverbially a merry bird. Swift as arrow: The simile is very appropriate, even if taken literally. But some critics see the "arrow" and its swiftness as symbolic of sex. cradle narrow: small or tiny nest. Nea my bosom: The bosom is symbolic of motherhood. The litle girl, who speaks, instinctively thinks of her bosom in connection with the sparrow's nest. Sobbing, sobbing: The robin is depicted as "sobbing". There are two interpretations of this: (1) The robin is proverbially a sad bird, just as the sparrow is merry. (2) The robin is sobbing on account of exess...

End of the Seventeenth Century and Beginning of the Eighteenth Century: Novel is Assuming Shape The novel dimly took shape by the end of seventeenth century. Aphra Behn’s “Orinooko, The Royal Slave” shows power of description, and some claim to plot, characterization and dialogue. Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s progress” (1668), though intended to be an allegory, shows a smoothly working plot, a variety of characters impressive descriptive passages, and simple, dramatic dialogue. Daniel Defoe represents the culmination of the seventeenth century tendencies in English fiction. He emerged as a novelist with the publication of “Robinson Crusoe”. Some of his other novels are “The memoirs of a Cavalier”, “Captain Singleton”, “Moll Flandors”, “Colonel Jacob” and “Roxana”. Novelist of the Eighteenth Century, the two prominent essayists Steele and Addison, reflected some traits of the novel in their essays which were published in “The Spectator” and “The Coverly Papers”. There is little plot in their...

Novel’s Origin in Medieval Stories Medieval romances and collections of ballads, especially those concerned with the legends of King Arthur, were the germinal sources of the modern novel. They were fiction of a picaresque and lively kind, though rambling stories. They were peopled by stock characters such as the wicked wizard and the damsel in distress. But they catered to the human longing for fiction and imaginative stimulation. Development in the Elizabethan Age The Elizabethan Age was the rise of the prose romance, of which Lyly’s “Euphues” and Sidney’s “Arcadia” are examples. Their prose styles, however, are too fantastic. Characters are rudimentary and there is little attempt at an integrated plot. There is too much of moralizing. But they represent a further step taken towards the beginning of the novel proper. Picaresque Novel in the Seventeenth Century A new type of embryo novel of Spanish origin, namely, the picaresque novel, made its appearance at the end of the sixteenth ce...

5. Reference to Nature The last element contributing to the success of the novel Things Fall Apart is the reference to nature. Since the novel talks about the life of the native people in Nigeria, it cannot be neglected that their life is related to planting, gardening, hunting, and many things related to the nature. The illustration of planting, as the reference to nature, can be seen on the back-plot of the novel, when Achebe talks about the life of little Okonkwo with his mother and sisters. And so at the very early age when he was striving desperately to build a barn through share cropping Okonkwo was also fending for his father’s house. It was like pouring grains of corn into a bag full of holes. His brother and sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women’s crops, like coco-yams, beans, cassava. Yam, the king of crops, was a man’s crop. (Achebe, 1958: 16) Another reference to nature also talks about plants. It can be seen when Ikemefuna teaches Nwoye many things. He could fash...

4. Ceremony and Custom The next element contributing to the success of on the novel is ceremony and custom. There are many ceremonies that show the traditional ritual of the Umuofia. The first ceremony found in the novel can be seen in the following quotation: The feast of the New Yam was approaching and Umuofia was in a festival mood. It was an occasion for giving thanks to Ani, the earth goddess and the source of all fertility. Ani played a greater part in the live of the people than any other deity. She was the ultimate judge of morality and conduct. And that was more; she was in close communication with the departed fathers of the clan whose bodies had been committed to earth. (Achebe, 1989: 26) The quotation above indicates that the Umuofians perform the ceremony to honor Ani, as goddess of earth, who roles a greater part for the fertility of the ground. The feast is held every year before the harvest. Every people in Umuofia look forward to the New Yam festival as it is the sign ...

3. Proverbial Wisdom The glory of Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart is his use of proverbs and adages of oral culture. What sets him apart from other African writers is the fact that he is, by far, more successful than others in flawlessly translating his working of African terms from one medium to another, from an oral tradition to an alien form of European origin without obliterating the freshness and vigor of the former, and despite the vast difference separating the two cultures. His characteristic mode of writing, in other words, fulfills Achebe’s own idea that the ”English of the African will have to be a new English, still in communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings. “In his own fiction, he succeeds in creating an English that is not only, as critics have pointed out, “detached”, “stately”, and “impassive”, but also singular in its ability to bring a whole range of human experience before our mind’s eye by his consummate use of imagery d...

2. Legends There are a number of legends found in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The first legend is about how the darkness of the night hides much evilness beneath it. Everybody fears it, and the children are warned not to do something taboo in the night to avoid the evil spirit. As it is found in the following quotation: The night was very quiet. It always quiet except the moonlight nights. Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them. Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits. Dangerous animal became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string. (Achebe, 1958: 7) From the quotation above, it is known that the Umuofia’s people fear the darkness because they believe that there is much evilness beneath the darkness of the night. The interesting fact is that they never call a snake with its name because snake symbolizes the power of evilne...