Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Tracing Chinua Achebe background - his childhood and schooling in Nigeria

Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, best known for his first novel "Things Fall Apart, which has the most widely read and discussed the book in modern African literature, his writing as an attempt to establish the historical record just described, which proves that not people of African culture for the first time by the Europeans to know that their companies are not crazy, but had a philosophy of great depth and the value and beauty, they had poetry and, above all, she hadDignity.

Novels, especially Things Fall Apart, which now will focus on the translation of 50 years, Achebe Igbo society, the impact of Western and Christian influence on her, and the clash of values during and after the colonial era 's work illustrates era.Achebe Nigerian community through the traumas of colonization and move to a restless nation. In order to combine politics and literature, he idealized the culture of the locals, nor apologize for 'colonial.

Achebe, who in contrast to his Kenyan counterpart Wathiongo Ngugi, who wrote his novels in English, defended the use of English, although the language of the colonialists, the African literature. Achebe's open ear for the spoken language have made him one of the most respected African writers writing in English. His style is heavily on the Igbo oral tradition, and combines simple narrative with depictions of folk tales, proverbs, and oratory.

Raised by ChristianOgidi parents in the Igbo village in southern Nigeria, Achebe excelled at school and won a scholarship to study. He was then the world religions and traditional cultures of Africa was fascinated and began to stories that are published in publications write on the campus.

After graduating, he worked for the radio of Nigeria, which forced him to the metropolis of Lagos parade.

Achebe parents, Isaiah and Janet Achebe Okaf were Anaenechi Iloegbunamconverts to the Protestant Church Mission Society (CMS) in Nigeria. Achebe is the oldest teacher at a mission school, he stopped practicing the religion of his ancestors, but I respect their traditions and sometimes incorporated elements of the rituals in the Christian practice.

Name Chinua not abstract Chinualumogu "May God fight on my behalf, was a prayer for divine protection and stability. The Achebe family had five other surviving children, named in a similar concentrationTraditional English name: Frank Okwuofu John Chukwuemeka Ifeanyichukwu, Zinoba Uzoma, Augustine Nduka, and Grace Nwanneka.

Chinua Achebe was born, 16 Albert Chinualumogu in the Igbo village in Nneobi Ogidi November 1930. His parents instilled many values of traditional Igbo culture, even if they devout evangelical Protestants. Then he called Albert after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria .. His parents are at a crossroadstraditional culture and Christian influence had a significant impact on children, especially Chinualumogu. Since education because Achebe straddling two worlds, the indigenous and the colonial era.

After the girl is born, the family moved to the home village of Ithe Ogidi, in what is now Anambra. State.

Storytelling is a mainstay of the Igbo tradition and an integral part of the community. Chinua's mother and sister said Zinoba UzomaMany of his stories as a child, has repeatedly asked for more. His training was sticking by his father on the walls of her house, and extended his almanacs and numerous books - including a prose adaptation of the Igbo dream of a summer night and a version of The Pilgrim's Progress. Chinua from the traditional village public, such as the ceremonies are often masked the expected new in his later fiction.

In 1936 Achebe entered StPhilips had the Central School. Despite his protests, he spent a week in religion classes for children, but was transferred quickly to a higher grade if the school chaplain made note of his intelligence. It has been said, "have the best handwriting in class and a better reading skills. He also attended Sunday school every week and special services during the months of evangelical thought, often his pocket with her father. A quarrel broke out during a session when the apostates of the newChurch urged the catechists on the principles of Christianity. . Achebe has been following a similar scene in Things Fall Apart

At the age of twelve, Achebe neked away from his family in the village, four kilometers from Owerri, where he was a student at Central School, taught by his brother John. In loving neked, learned Mbar Achebe, a traditional art form that seeks to invoke the protection of the gods with sacrifices in the symbolic formSculptures and collages. When it time to go to high school in 1944, Achebe SA exams at the two prestigious Dennis Memorial Grammar School in Onitsha and the even more prestigious Government College in Umuahia. But he finally decided to accept both the Government College in Umuahia .. He received a scholarship from the State College Area Umuahia, where he met with some of the political future of Nigeria and culturalLeaders.

As the British public school, funded by the colonial administration, Government College was founded in 1929 to train future leaders in Nigeria. She has maintained rigorous academic standards and was vigorously egalitarian, accepting boys, solely on the basis of their ability. The language spoken ATF was tied the school of English factors, not just their skills, but also a common language for students of different language groups in Nigeria to develop. This Achebe laterdescribed as to "set aside their different mother tongues and communicate in the language of the colonizers. The rule was strict and Achebe recalls that his first sentence to ask for another boy who was handed over to the soap in Igbo.

Here, Achebe was promoted twice in his first year, he completed his studies in this way, one of the first two years and spent four years in high school, standards instead of five. Achebe inappropriate school sportsis connected in place of a group of six students very hard. Been study, whose habits were so intense that the head teacher, the reading of books five and six clock in the evening (but also other assets and other books banned are forbidden).

Achebe began to study "wonderful school library and found Booker T. Washington 's Up From Slavery, the autobiography of former American slaves. If Achebe's sad, but he showed another dimensionReality .. He also read classic novels do like Gulliver's Travels, David Copperfield and Treasure Iceland with tales of daring-colonial, as Allan Quatermain H. Rider Haggard and John Buchan, Prester John. Achebe later recalled as a reader who has the advantage of the white characters against the savages "and even has a dislike for Africans. "The white man was good and reasonable and intelligent and brave. Clothed Savages against him were sinister andstupid, or at most cunning. I hated her courage. "

In 1948, in preparation for independence, opened the first university in Nigeria today joined the University of Ibadan as a college with the University of London. Achebe has such good marks in the entrance examination, which has a scholarship for the pursuit admitted reached before the University to study medicine. After a year of hard work, but decided that science was not for him and he switched to English, history and theology.Because he changed his position, but lost his scholarship and had to pay his fees. He received a scholarship from the government, and his family donated money - his brother Augustine even gave money for a trip from his post in government if Chinua able to continue his studies. Since its inception, the university had a strong English faculty and has many famous writers among its alumni. Among them, the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, writer Elec Amadi, poet and playwrightJohn Pepper Clark, playwright and poet Christopher Okigbo, and academic Kole Omoto.

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