Chinua Achebe: Father of African

Literature 1930 - 2013

Lecture 9
http://viennachinuaachebe.wordpress.com/

Derek Barker
www.derekbarker.info
Dr.Derek.Barker@gmail.com

BIAFRA

Conversations
They tackle a number of issues. The classic "language
question" is discussed, of course, and you might, by now
and understandably, find this a bit boring. However, the
discussion goes further than the usual one of "should
African authors write in English or not?" and discussions
on using vernacular, the intricacies of the Igbo language,
etc. take place and I hope you'll find this enlightening.
How teaching impacts upon writing. Toni Morrison feels
that it is impossible to do both, that is, speaking for
herself, she cannot be a teacher and a writer at the same
time. Achebe, on the other hand, did both his whole life.

Conversations
The question of the impact of modern
technology on the younger generation is
posed. Toni Morrison believes that literature
today is more valuable than ever, but that
the new generation lack the ability to
imagine or visualize things that you need to
have in order to read properly. Do you agree?
They go on to discuss fame, the writing
process

Anthills - Themes
History of suffering
Power
Storytelling
Role of women
Oral tradition
Blending of old and new

Anthills of the Savannah

Summary I

Anthills of the Savannah takes

place in the imaginary West
African country of Kangan,
where a Sandhurst-trained
officer, identified only as Sam
and known as "His Excellency",
has taken power following a
military coup

Anthills of the Savannah

Summary II

Achebe describes the political

situation through the
experiences of three friends:
Chris Oriko, the government's
Commissioner for Information;
Beatrice Okoh, an official in the
Ministry of Finance and
girlfriend of Chris;

Anthills of the Savannah

Summary III

and Ikem Osodi, a newspaper

editor critical of the regime.
Other characters include Elewa,
Ikem's girlfriend and Major
"Samsonite" Ossai, a military
official known for stapling
hands with a Samsonite stapler.

Anthills of the Savannah

Summary IV

Tensions escalate through the novel,

culminating in the assassination of
Ikem by the regime, the toppling
and death of Sam and finally the
murder of Chris. The book ends with
a non-traditional naming ceremony
for Elewa and Ikem's month-old
daughter, organized by Beatrice.

Main Protagonists
Beatrice Okoh
Christopher Oriko
Ikem Osodi
Sam

Beatrice Okoh

Chris's fiancee, Beatrice is one of Achebe's most fully

developed female characters. She works for Sam and is
an old friend of Ikem's, so, through her connections to
Chris, Ikem, and Sam, she plays a significant role in the
action of the novel. She was born the fifth daughter to
her parents (one sister has died). Her father had been
hoping for a son, so she was named Nwanyibuife, which
means "A Woman Is Also Something" As an adult,
Beatrice is well-educated, having earned a degree with
honors in English from the University of London, and she
holds an important civil service position as an
administrator in a state office. She also enjoys writing
short fiction, which Ikem reads and admires for its
"muscularity" and "masculine" qualities.

Beatrice Okoh
Beatrice is characterized by sophistication,
intelligence, and independence, but she is also
attuned to the common people on an intuitive
level. Never having planned on a career in the
government, she is very disturbed by
accusations that she is ambitious. In reality, she
desires what she has desired since childhood
to be left alone in her peaceful solitude and not
attract any attention. Achebe places her firmly
in the mythic tradition of the people, making her
a sort of manifestation of Idemili, a goddess
sent to Man to oversee morality.

Beatrice Okoh
Although Beatrice is unaware of the myths
regarding this goddess, she grows into a woman
possessed with wisdom, self-knowledge, and
compassion as she connects with the culture of
her land. At the end of the novel,
sheparticipates in the naming ceremony for
Ikem and Elewa's baby girl by naming the infant
Amaechina, a boy's name meaning "May the
Path Never Close." This is bold not only because
she has given a boy's name to a girl, but also
because the responsibility of naming
traditionally belongs to a man.

Christopher Oriko
In his youth, Chris attended Lord Lugard College
with his friends Ikem and Sam. Even then, he
served as the "buffer" and mediator between the
athletic and outgoing Sam and the intelligent
and pensive Ikem. As adults, the three occupy
prominent roles in Kangan's new military regime,
and Chris's role as Commissioner for Information
again puts him in the position of gobetween as
Sam and Ikem engage in a contest of wills. Chris
stepped down as editor of theNational
Gazetteto accept his position on Sam's Cabinet,
after which Ikem became the newspaper's editor.

Christopher Oriko
Chris is now Ikem's boss, but he himself reports to Sam,
which puts him in the uncomfortable position of trying to
get Ikem to comply with Sam's will. Although Chris sees
Sam becoming mad with power, he is reluctant to give up
his position in the Cabinet. Chris finally asserts himself
when Sam orders him to fire Ikem, thus beginning a
harrowing series ofevents. Fleeing for his life, Chris
comes into contact with the "people" and begins to
understand his country better. Chris is killed trying to
save a girl from being raped at a chaotic party, and his
last words are, "The last green." This is a reference to
arunning joke he, Ikem, and Sam shared in the early
days, when they imagined themselves as three green
bottles arrogantly situated on a shelf, each bound to fall.

Ikem Osodi
Ikem is the outspoken and reformminded editor of
the stateownedNationalGazette,a position that
often puts him in conflict with his boyhood friend,
Sam, who is the president of Kangan. Part of his
duty is to broadcast Sam's messages to the people,
which are Sam's way of feeling that he is radiating
power from the capitol out to the people. Ikem, on
the other hand, believes strongly that the press
should be free and independent of government
regulation. He and Chris often debate the
effectiveness of Ikem's editorials, but Ikem feels that
even if they are futile, he should continue publishing
them.

Ikem Osodi

Despite the fact that he is a Londoneducated

intellectual, Ikem is very sensitive to the needs of the
common people. His editorials are often harsh in their
criticism of the new ruling regime, which makes Sam
regard him as treacherous. Ikem states that the best
weapon against ineffective or unjust governments is not
facts, but passion. Unlike Chris, Ikem is an extremist who
is not interested in working gradually toward progress
and so uses his powerful position as a journalist to call for
change. Speaking to a group of students, Ikem discusses
the role of the storyteller in depth, insisting that it is the
role of the writer to ask questions and make challenges.
He concludes his speech to the students by proclaiming,
"Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!"

Ikem Osodi
Ikem also makes a joke about putting Sam's
head on the country's coins, which leads to false
reports that Ikem called for the beheading of
the president. His fate already orchestrated,
Ikem is taken in the night by government secret
police and killed. Still, his presence continues to
be felt among the people and his friendsa
presence strengthened by the fact that he
leaves behind a girlfriend close to giving birth to
their child.

Sam
Sam is the new president of the military regime in power
following a coup, aposition he holds due in no small part
to the efforts of his schoolmates Chris and Ikem. He is
described as being very athletic and very charming,
having adopted the ways of an English gentleman. Early
in the novel, Ikem comments on Sam's "sense of
theatre," adding that Sam "is basically an actor and half
of the things we are inclined to hold against him are no
more than scenes from his repertory to which he may
have no sense of moral commitment whatsoever."
Although he attended the prestigious Royal Military
Academy at Sandhurst, Sam is fully aware that he is
unprepared for his new government leadership role.

Sam
However, he soon becomes blinded by power,
insisting on being called "Your Excellency" and
seeking to be elected "President for Life."
Military school trained Sam and his fellow cadets
to remain aloof from political matters, and Sam
was, at first, quite terrified in his new role. His
solution was to gather together his friends and
give some of them government positions from
whichhe could seek their advice. Once he
overcame his fear, however, he began to relish
his power, becoming extremely upset at even
the mildest demonstrations against him.

Sam
Chris can see that Sam is now a dictatorinthemaking and considers him a "baby monster," but
Sam is only concerned about securing as much
power for himself as he can without interacting with
the people of the country. In fact, he is starving a
dissident province in hopes of forcing them to
comply with his authority. He soon becomes
consumed with paranoia, anger, and insecurity, and
when his political ambitions are disappointed, he
recalls being told how dangerous boyhood friends
can be. After he arranges for Ikem's murder and
Chris has fled, Sam himself is killed during a coup
and buried in a shallow grave.

Anthills of the Savannah

Quotes

Ife onye metalu' ['what a man commits'] - a statement

unclear and menacing in its very inconclusiveness. What a
man commits...Follows him? Comes back to take its toll? Was
that all? No, that was only part of it ... The real burden of that
cryptic scripture seemed to turn the matter right around.
Whatever we see following a man, whatever fate comes to
take its revenge on him, can only be what that man in some
way or another, in a previous life if not in this, has committed.
That was it! So those three words wrapped in an archaic
tongue and tucked away at the tail of the bus turn out to be
the opening segment of a full-blooded heathen antiphony
offering a primitive and quite deadly exposition of suffering.
The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous,
those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper!

Anthills of the Savannah

Quotes

While we do our good works

let us not forget that the real
solution lies in a world in
which charity will have
become unnecessary.

Anthills of the Savannah

Quotes

Storytellers are a threat. They

threaten all champions of
control, they frighten usurpers
of the right-to-freedom of the
human spirit in state, in
church or mosque, in party
congress, in the university or
wherever.

Anthills of the Savannah

Quotes

It is only the storythat saves our

progeny from blundering like blind
beggars into the spikes of the
cactus fence.The story is our
escort;without it,we are blind.Does
the blind man own his escort?
No,neither do we the story;rather,it
is the story that owns us.

Anthills of the Savannah

Quotes

It is the story that owns and

directs us. It is the thing that
makes us different from cattle;
it is the mark on the face that
sets one people apart from
their neighbors.

Anthills of the Savannah

Quotes

In the vocabulary of certain radical

theorists contradictions are given the
status of some deadly disease to
which their opponents alone can
succumb. But contradictions are the
very stuff of life. If there had been a
little dash of contradiction among the
Gadarene swine some of them might
have been saved from drowning.

Anthills of the Savannah

Quotes
Charity is the opium of the privileged; from
the good citizen who habitually drops ten kobo
from his loose change and from a safe height
above the bowl of the leper outside the
supermarket; to the group of good citizens (like
youselves) who donate water so that some
Lazarus in the slums can have a syringe boiled
clean as a whistle for his jab and his sores
dressed more hygienically than the rest of him; to
the Band Aid stars that lit up so dramatically the
dark Christmas skies of Ethiopia.

Quotes
she was sensitive enough and intelligent
enough to understand, and her literary
education could not but have sharpened her
perception of the evidence before her eyes: that
in the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the
destinies of post-colonial African societies two
people starting off even as identical twins in the
morning might quiet easily find themselves in
the evening one as President shitting on the
heads of the people and the other a nightman
carrying the peoples shit in buckets on his
head.

Questions
Does the novel represent a
pessimistic dismissal of a functional
African state as an impossibility?

Questions
What are the significance of Anthills?

Themes
History of suffering
Power
Storytelling
Role of women
Oral tradition
Blending of old and new

Journalism

Anthills of the Savannah is not a repudiation of journalism

or of the notion of objectivity. Instead, Achebe calls for
balance. Ikem writes dozens of impassioned editorials,
but it is finally through his prosepoem that he connects
with Chris, and through his speech that he poses a
threat to the president. If Kangan is ever to be a just
nation, its rulers and its people must combine old and
new, objective and subjective, editorials and poetry.
They must use both their heads and their hearts. The
precise combination is beyond Achebe's ken to describe.
As Ikem shouts to his audience, "Writers don't give
prescriptions. . .They give headaches!"

Hope

Anthills of the Savannah describes a truly dreary

historical moment, in which monstrous halfwits
wield the instruments of survival and destruction,
the "yam and the knife." Yet Achebe establishes
hope as a given, as the only conceivable
response to suffering, the only one that
challenges its permanence. It's a courageous act,
urging such a thing upon us neither pessimism
nor optimism but a running argument with
despair. And one worth waiting thirty years for.


January 17: Anthills of the Savanna
(1987) + Consolidation of all five novels
January 31: Exam
Enjoy your reading!