Things Fall Apart

Achebe really challenges the assumptions of what European influence did in Africa. During colonization, I think Europe only saw Africa as the "White Man's Burden." The rationale for colonization was to purify a race, to educate, to civilize. Such ethnocentrism tears cultures apart, but in the excerpts from Monday, that was not communicated. The struggle to combat the African savages was the only perspective portrayed. Achebe alters that perspective by suggesting possible outcomes of colonization contradictory to the typical hypotheses to reveal a world more complex and less black and white. This makes it a powerful rhetorical weapon against stereotypical viewpoints on Africa.