Most Meaningful Takeaway

Hi

In today’s post I will be discussing one of the ideas that have been mentioned during an interview of Chinua Achebe.

The author of “Things Fall Apart”, Chinua Achebe, mentions during one of his interviews from august 2 2000 that literature has great power consisting in the ability of making us “identify with situations and people far away”. The reason I found this idea interesting is because it highlights one of the things that literature can do.  Literature gives us a different perspective of the world, the perspective of a different culture through the eyes and mind of the author. In the very beginning of the interview, Chinua Achebe mentions that at the time he wrote the novel “Things Fall Apart”, “there was no African literature as we know it today”. Some of the questions that could be asked here is how did this situation change?  What made people be more opened in terms of accepting other pieces of literature from different cultures?

 Well, it is possible to say that humans are by nature inclined to have a need of understanding the world and more importantly to socialize and to find other people they can identify themselves with. Therefore through the means of literature, not only can an individual gain knowledge about different aspects of the world but he or she could be given a different version of the same story which has been previously learnt. Having more versions of a story allows us to analyse and draw conclusions for ourselves, not simply accepting a fact which is being given to us by other means. This is what could satisfy an individual’s need to understand the world. Furthermore, literature can offer insight into the lives of people from different places around the globe having also the advantage of being able to send in the same time the emotions and perspective of the author to the audience.  Having more information about a culture including the successes and struggles of its members could help one identify with them which is the first step in the process of socializing. In conclusion this could be both the answer to the questions above and the most meaningful takeaway for me from this interview. Literature is an element that helps shaping an individual and keeps the world improving. One has to understand this in order to continue developing and accepting new pieces of literature from different culture is one of the most important steps that have to be taken.