Mimicry in Achebe’s Arrow of God

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to study Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God through the lens ofHomi K. Bhabha’s concept of ‘mimicry.’African Trilogy is a significant picture of African people and the history of how they are lured into a new culture. We see in the trilogy an evolution of mimic men – how the native man evolves into an imitator. There are a lot of representations of mimic men available in the trilogy and they can be categorized into various phases of evolution of “mimic man” according to their ambivalence and hybridity level of their contemporary culture and society. The paper concentrates mainly on the characters of Arrow of God like Oduche and Unachukwu as they represent the universal condition and behaviour of mimic men.