ABSTRACT
This study attempts an exploration of how unity and coherence through contradictions are achieved in Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart, Iyayi‟s Violence and Habila‟s Measuring Time.
It is significant to state that the choice of these texts is informed
by the need to comprehend how various generations of Nigerian writers
have negotiated the contradictions, tensions, distortions and
challenges, which have characterized the social, historical and
political landscape of Nigeria. In addition, this study reflects the
many dimensions of contradictions, distortions, tensions, injustice and
disillusionment prevailing in the selected texts. It touches on
character juxtaposition, comparative analysis, differences and
interrelationships among structures in the texts. It however achieves
unity and coherence by showing the connection of representations in the
texts. For instance, Achebe‟sThings Fall Apart projects unity
and coherence of the African culture as well as Western religion through
distortions and tensions evident in the text. The writer‟s skilful
portrayal of the two cultures, co-existing side by side, is one of such
structuralists binarism achieved in this study. Iyayi explores unity and
coherence by pointing out the insensitive nature of the government. He
encourages the masses to unite in the struggle towards a desirable and
functional social order in the country. Habila‟s Measuring Time depicts
family disunity and its effect on the individual character. He achieves
unity and coherence in the text, emphasizing on individual
contributions towards the unity and development in the community.
Structuralism as a reading method is appropriate. This is in relation to
its distinctive features of binary oppositions, the primacy of the text
and the generation of meaning through differences, etc. The deployment
of these features enhances the understanding of the contradictions,
distortions and tensions predominant in the texts. The study therefore
establishes that in spite of these contradictions, complexities,
disintegrations and distortions the texts display some levels of unity
and coherence towards a desirable functional society.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 Introduction
The study attempts to explore and examine how literary texts achieve unity and
coherence through contradictions in Chinua Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart (1958), Festus Iyayi‟s
Violence (1979), and Helon Habila‟s Measuring Time (2006). The study foregrounds the manner
in which the selected Nigerian novelists appropriated and engaged the social realities, changes,
challenges, sensibilities experienced in Nigeria to recreate and express a new consciousness.
To understand the nature of this new consciousness, the contact of Africa with the
Western world is significant in the modern literary imports of Nigeria and Africa at large. The
contact significantly impacted on the formation of literature from the oral to the written form, the
language use from indigenous languages to the English language, the change in thematic values
of cultural encapsulation, the issues of colonialism and post-independence disillusionment, etc.
This contact with the Western world and its implication has drawn critical attention in Oswald
Spengler‟s Decline of the West (1918), Franz Fanon‟s Wretched of the Earth (1968), Walter
Rodney‟s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), Austine Amanze Akpuda‟s
Reconstructing the Canon, Joseph Conrad‟s Heart of Darkness (1988), and many other literary
and critical texts. These works essentially explore and articulate the many dimensions of
colonialism. One of such relevant comments to this study is credited to Simon Gikandi
(2007:54):