Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: Is Imperialism Alive and Kicking?

Chinua Achebe's masterpiece "Things Fall Apart" gets its title from W.B. Yeat's famous poem "The Second Coming", which is based on the aftermath of World War One. In Thing Fall Apart, Avhebe, through the use of his grand talent to capture the human qualities that are common to everyone across the globe demonstrates his profound opposition to imperialism.

This simple novel about a man (Okonkwo) whose life is ruled by his own short comings and fears almost majestically demonstrates how foolish the Western and European cultures have been (and still are.?). For the first 3/4ths of the novel, Achebe entrenches the reader in the everyday lives of the a Nigerian tribe. The reader becomes immersed in the lives and customs of a culture that almost seems like it comes from an episode of the twilight zone; a culture so different that, at first, the reader connects such words as "savage" and "uncivilized" to it. However, after the British empire arrives to "civilize" it, it suddenly becomes unclear as to who is "savage" and who is "civilized".

Reflection: Has America learned from the mistakes of the past...or are we merly repeating them? For instance, the way that we seem to so freely march into other countries and declare what is right and what is wrong, how we tend to think that we are bringing them the correct form of "civilization"... What are we really doing, and what are we really saying? What message are we giving off to the rest of the world?

What do you think?