Chinua Achebe and the Politics of Form

Abstract

Instead of proceeding through a reading of the text, then, I will essay a purely formal approach to the novel in order to suggest that prior to any specific content, Arrow of God already has a politics, and that Achebe achieves this politics through two generic revolutions. In the current context it is probably unnecessary to point once again to the epoch-marking significance of Things Fall Apart, whose form only seems natural today because of its tremendous influence and success. Arrow of God marks a radicalization and perfection of this form, whose outlines I would like to clarify. The first formal revolution carried out by Arrow of God is within a genre we might call the "village novel," a genre that predates Achebe in the postcolonial world by a generation, and that we can represent in a Nigerian context with Onu- ora Nzekwu's Wand of Noble Wood and Things Fall Apart itself. The key to Achebe's revolution is the rigorous suppression of the ethnographic voice. The simplest way to explain what is meant by the ethnographic voice would simply be to point to G. T. Basden's Niger Ibos, which Achebe has named on more than one occasion, along with Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, as a spur