FROM FICTION TO REALITY IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S A MAN OF THE PEOPLE
Authors:
Dr. Epounda Mexan Serge
Abstract:
The Nigerian Chinua Achebe is and remains one of the major’s icons of literature in the black continent. His novels portray the life of African people in general and that of Nigerian people in particular. After portraying the Ibo traditional society and the challenge with a foreign civilization in Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964), Achebe revealed the sorry situation of this people during the colonial reign in No Longer at Ease (1960) then he came to pull off his literary adventure by writing A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987) where he points out the post-independent evil doings and reality. It is in this respect that we consider literature as an impersonation of human activities where the writer portrays a picture of what people do, say, and think in society. That is why in literature, there exist many stories describing human life or activities through characters who, by their behaviour (actions, words, reactions) convey several messages of different nature. It is then the behaviour of characters, though fictitious, that expresses their nature. It is in this context that the current paper intends to demonstrate that the behaviours of some characters in A Man of the People corroborate post-independence African reality.