Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe?

Question

I have a long list of questions on this book and I have finished them all except the last one and was hopping for some help. The questions is...

In the last paragraph of the novel, the point of view shifts, although the narrative is still third person. Whose point of view is shown in this paragraph? Why do you think Achebe makes this shift. What tone, or attitude, does Achebe adopt in this paragraph?

Answer 1

In the final paragraph of the book Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe seems to be saying that not all things that are written about his culture are exactly right. He is demonstrating that actions and events can be very much misinterpreted. The character of the commissioner serves as a direct example of how ignorant and unconcerned some of these people who wrote about these events actually were. The commissioner is very inconsiderate and knows nothing of the culture or the man that he plans on writing about in an ethnography that he is working on. Achebe writes an entire book on Okonkwo and I think that he is saying that if this were a European account of Okonkwo there would be a much different view point, and outlook on the entire clan.