SOURCE: “Ezinma: The Ogbanje Child in Achebe's Things Fall Apart,” in College Literature, Vol. 19–20, No. 3–1, October–February, 1992–1993, pp. 170–75.

In the following essay, Aji and Ellsworth examine how the character Ezinma operates on both a cultural and a literary level in Things Fall Apart.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1959) is commonly read as a testimony of the cultural confrontation during the period of British colonialism.¹ For the non-African it is an obvious beginner's text to discover the West African, specifically Igbo, culture. The book is at once a cultural resource, a historical novel, a morality tale, and above all a great literary work that celebrates its own cultural milieu and renders it familiar to others. Although written in English, Things Fall Apart is an African storyteller's story, making greater use of African folktale elements than of Western narrative conventions. In the Igbo village-clan Umuofia, time is measured by generations...