Things Fall Apart

Even though Chinua Achebe died in 2013, he wrote extensively about his own life and works. Below is an excerpt from an essay in which he discusses why he wrote Things Fall Apart:

This theme—put quite simply—is that African people did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; that their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity. It is this dignity that many African people all but lost during the colonial period and it is this that they must now regain. The worst thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their dignity and self-respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost.

From “The Role of the Writer in a New Nation,” 1964.

After reading the novel and creating your pamplet, reflect on how well you think  Things Fall Apart manages to accomplish the above-stated goal. What “depth, value, and beauty” does Achebe depict in the Ibo people? How does he depict them as human, with human dignity and human failings?