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    Famine as a Function of Empire in Arrow of God and Star of the Sea

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    Conley_ku_0099M_10972_DATA_1.pdf (156.9Kb)
    Issue Date
    2010-05-22
    Author
    Conley, Erin B.
    Publisher
    University of Kansas
    Format
    39 pages
    Type
    Thesis
    Degree Level
    M.A.
    Discipline
    English
    Rights
    This item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.
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    Abstract
    This paper speaks to several broad questions about the relationship between culture and nature as represented in Chinua Achebe's novel Arrow of God and Joseph O'Connor's novel Star of the Sea: How are the categories nature and culture constructed through colonial and scientific discourses? To what extent do Achebe and O'Connor engage in discourses that frame nature and culture as inextricable categories? What worldviews are inchoate to competing discourses about nature and culture, and how are these worldviews negotiated in the texts? And finally, despite colonialism's difference in kind between Ireland and Nigeria, how do O'Connor and Achebe both present ecological distresses as a long term consequence of colonialism? The truly fascinating aspect of pairing these texts together emerges from the observation that O'Connor and Achebe approach their representations of competing worldviews with drastically different motivations in mind. While O'Connor's text clearly calls the British Empire to task for its involvement in the deaths and emigration of millions of Irish people during the Great Famine, Achebe's novel uses a more self-reflective lens. While both novels use famine as a locus for discussing colonialism's wide scale disruptiveness, Achebe's famine is also an accusation against Igbo people rather than empire because famine in Arrow of God is represented as the drastic consequence of betraying Igbo ways of life through embracing colonial ones.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1808/6974
    Collections
    • English Dissertations and Theses [449]
    • Theses [3901]

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    Contact KU ScholarWorks
    785-864-8983
    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    785-864-8983

    KU Libraries
    1425 Jayhawk Blvd
    Lawrence, KS 66045
    Image Credits
     

     

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