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  DOI Prefix   10.20431


 

International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature
Volume 7, Issue 8, 2019, Page No: 26-40

The Kola Nut: Its Symbolic Significance in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Bawa Kammampoal1*, Suuk Laar2

1.Associate Professor, English Department, Universite de Kara, Kara, Togo.
2.Senior Assistant Registrar, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Consultancy Services, University for Development Study, Tamale, Ghana.

Citation : Bawa Kammampoal, Suuk Laar, The Kola Nut: Its Symbolic Significance in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature 2019;7(8):26-40.

Abstract

The family is often considered as a basic social unit. But in Achebe's world, "caring" is the definition of the family which, to him, consists of related people who care about each other.All families need to be nurtured and strengthened from time to time. All social and cultural practices find their justification in the notion of family, either supporting or distorting it.One of these social customs embodied in the kola nut as well as the language used in its blessing before consumption, is depicted in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart to show both its importance and the civility with which the Igbo people conducted their daily routines or affairs from time imemorial.With this novel, he invites mostly people of colour as well as his own people to read his story as something marked by the history of mistreatment, disenfranchisement, and dispossession to mean that race and ethnicity are not erasable marks; rather, they are the most compelling and effective determinants of cultural difference and literary specificity: language carries the idiosyncratic stamp of the individual and the mark of a nation as well. Thus, the Kola-nut ceremony is among the things which the Igbo deemed very important at any formal or informal gatherings and an apology given for its unavailability.This nut, though not very pleasant to the taste, is very much in evidence on many social occasions for it has great cultural value in fulfilling socioreligious functions.It is shared among friends on the one hand as a token of comradeship or goodwill, and on the other it is offered to a visitor as a sign of hospitality.The primary materials used for arguments in this study is Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Other fictional works of the author, his essays, and interviews have also been used as reference sources.Some critical works on the writings of the novelist by other critics have been used as secondary sources for the collection of data. All these materials have been closely examined from the theory of sociological criticism, new historicism as well as the reader response theory.


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