SOURCE: “Realism, Criticism, and the Disguises of Both: A Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart with an Evaluation of the Criticism Relating to It,” in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 25, No. 4, Winter, 1994, pp. 117–36.

In the following essay, Quayson discusses the different critical perspectives portrayed in Things Fall Apart.

It is only when we go to the riverside that we can gauge the size of the water pot.

—Ewe Proverb

No matter how well the hen dances, it can not please the hawk.

—Akan Proverb

The proverbial epigraphs to this essay seek to integrate the enterprise of criticism into a traditional African cultural context. The first points to the relativity at the heart of all critical pursuits: it is mainly in relation to the literary enterprise that the critical one is validated. Furthermore, no criticism can hope to completely encompass the total significance of the literary artifact, just...