The portrayal of Umuofia as a contact zone Salindri Dulara Rajakaruna College

Chinua Achebe’s autoethnographic novel “Things Fall Apart “written in 1958 can be viewed as an attempt to destroy the misleading conceptions about Igbo culture that were given to the world by European writers. The way novel presents the arrival of “white man” and his behavior among the Igbo people reflects the presentation of Umuofia and surrounding villages like Abame and Embanta as contact Zones. Further it has been shown how the life of those villagers are affected through the process of colonization.

According to the Pratt (33), contact zones are “social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts with highly asymmetrical relations of power such as colonialism, slavery or their aftermaths as they lived out in many parts of the world today. “As mentioned in the above, Umuofia and surrounding villages become social spaces where Igbo culture and European culture meet, clash and grapple and Igbo society is greatly affected with the process of colonization practiced by “white man” or the Europeans.

The first encounter between Igbo and the “white man occurs in “Abame”. The encounter reflects the imbalance of power where majority of the people Abame “was killed, except the old and the sick who...