Colonial Discourse in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Counter-Discourse of Decolonization in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Scholars have examined several aspects of the ideological processes the narrations in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe enact. The allegorical mode of representations through which it conveys those processes can be re-read as imperial/colonial discourse. Consistent with theoretical arguments, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart on the other hand, represents the reaction of an African writer to canonical works that present negative stereotypes of Africa and Africans. In light of the foregoing, this study does a comparative textual analysis of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as a good example in the canon of colonial discourse and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart as a good example in the canon of counter-discourse of decolonization. Through close reading, the study extends the argument further by investigating the strategies both texts adopt to achieve their aims and the effectiveness thereof. Consequently, the flawed views of the African through imperial/colonial discourse which have shaped the social construction and contemporary representations of the African are corrected. By conducting this study, we largely contribute to the evolving debate on counter discourse to the narratives presented by early European writers.