The structural perception of chinua achebe’s things fall apart

Abstract

Although the novel is a Western literary genre, African writers handle it with a slight difference; this approach helps them produce works with African specificity. That is the case with the structure of Things Fall Apart, which largely derives from African tales. And the application of the combination of Paulme’s theory and Ducrot and Todorov’s one in this novel brings evidence about the presence of the morphological features of the African tale in the structure of Things Fall Apart. The organisation of this story is based on more than one character because the main protagonist alone cannot make the story. In many cases, the unravelling of the plot can be perceived through the protagonist’s actions and behaviour as well as the antagonist’s ones.