Wang AP Lit

By the turn of the twentieth century, the fever of imperialism had spread across Europe. European nations across the continent began to send trade expeditions to Africa with the hopes of discovering profitable raw materials as well as new consumer markets. Men, inspired by the ideas portrayed in Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden,” opted to leave their familiar homes to “civilize” and “Christianize”  peoples whom they perceived as their inferiors. Many Europeans believed that the colonization of Africa would bring great success and prosperity to their countries. Yet, at the same time, some questioned the glory in conquering other lands and peoples. Such was the case with author Joseph Conrad. In his great work Heart of Darkness (1899), Conrad examined how men’s minds changed as they obsessed over acquiring African ivory. Throughout the novel, Conrad’s diction underscores his argument that the colonization of Africa corrupts the humanity of men. Conrad immediately establishe...

In her short story “The Headstrong Historian,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pays tribute to Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart while adding her own distinct voice. Like Achebe’s classic novel, “The Headstrong Historian” paints rich portraits of Nigerian tribal culture before the advent of white missionaries and the Nigerians who grapple with culture clashes and changes. The short story immediately establishes its ties to Things Fall Apart when it mentions that the character “Obierika”–a name which readers may recognize as the close friend of Achebe’s protagonist Okonkwo–is the late husband of Adichie’s protagonist Nwamgba (198). Moreover, when Nwamgba and Obierika struggle to conceive a child, Nwamgba “suggests he go and see the Okonkwo family about their daughter” as a potential wife and mother to his child (204). These developments create the expectation that the short story will have a similar, if not identical, narrative to Things Fall Apart : that the advent of the white missio...