I believe that Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe would be best analyzed through the post-colonial lens. In the beginning of the story, the author concentrates on the hegemony of Umuofia. We learn about Umuofia’s “dominant values, sense of right and wrong, and sense of personal self-worth” before the white colonists appear (234).
When the colonizers appear, there is a clash between two hegemonies. Both hold strongly to their own beliefs while understanding each other’s cultures and way of life. In the end there can only be one dominant culture while the other is told to “conform and be quiet; deny yourself, and all will be well” (234). The dominant hegemony tries to make the lesser culture conform to their religion by telling them that their gods do not exist and that there is only one God. They take in the unwanted, such as twins and outcasts and make it seem as a kind religion with kind white men. But the religion is used as a front to justify “their cruel treatment of the colonized” that they deem as “heathens” that must be saved (236). Their true objective is the power to control Umofia and take their natural resources while offering them products that the colonized “were made to believe they desired by the colonizers” (236). The colonizers had “built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia” (Achebe 146). This is used as a distraction, while the white colonists try to turn them into slaves with no power to make their own choices.
While they had power and a well formed government, the colonizers only saw savages who abandoned twins and mauled dead children. They were seen as uncivilized humans who “quickly became the inferior and equally ‘evil’ Others” (236). This concept is called alternity, where the “others,” who were in power and had respect, are seen “as different and inferior” humans, or subhumans (236).
