Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God: The Investigation of Current Environmental Degradation

Abstract

Literature in relation to the natural world and the environment is the subject of ecocriticism. The current global environmental crisis has made it urgent to examine literature from an ecological point of view. By examining the ways in which the natural world and the environment are portrayed in literature, ecocriticism seeks to identify a method to improve the current ecological predicament. The fusion of ecocriticism with postcolonialism has given new life to critical thought overall, providing fresh perspectives on concepts like race, land, environment, wildness, etc. The two African novels, Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1965) chosen for the examination haven't often been studied from an ecocritical angle, but the current paper has attempted to look at how nature and the environment are portrayed in them. This analysis aims to show that, despite pre-colonial African societies being unaffected by nature, colonialism opened the door for its exploitation while neglecting or demeaning the profound values that nature and the environment had for pre-colonial Africans.