An Ecocritical Approach to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God

Abstract

Ecocriticism is the study of literature in relation with environment and nature. The urgency of examining literature from an ecological point of view is occasioned by the present environmental crisis swept the globe. Ecocriticism tries to find possible solution to correct contemporary ecological situation by analyzing the ways nature and environment are represented in literature. The bringing together of ecocriticism and postcolonialism has given a new impetus to the whole critical thought where the ideas of race, land, environment, wilderness etc. are given new insight. Though the two African novels undertaken for analysis have rarely been viewed from an ecocritical perspective, the present paper would make an attempt to examine how nature and environment are being treated in them. Such an examination is intended to establish that, while the pre colonial African society lived in an inviolate state of nature, it was colonialism that opened the door for exploitation of nature, ignoring or denigrating the deep meanings that nature and environment held for the African people in the pre colonial period.