Rhetorical strategies in the novels of Chinua Achebe

Abstract

This study investigates the rhetorical strategies utilized by Chinua Achebe in creating his five novels: Things fall Apart, No longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A M an of the People and, Anthills of the Savannah. Focusing on stylistic elements in the novels, the study acknowledges that Achebe adopts a deliberate method of telling the story so as to achieve particular effects. The critical approach accounts for the author‟s awareness of his craft and audience. Utilizing theories of rhetoric, there is an effort to reconcile the uniqueness of strategies adopted and their intended political, emotional, linguistic, and intellectual effects on the reader. The integration of theory and reflections on style leads us to recognize that Achebe did not just write for writing sake; he had a deliberate persuasive intention. In the process of accounting for this relationship between the style and the reader, this study strives to identify the textual elements that establish the patterns in the discourse sequences in which each of the novels of Achebe is organized by examining the rules of the text's generative systems; the particular conventions on how the Achebe texts generate sense/meaning. The word strategy in this study has military connotations implying the direction of movements or operations in a literary campaign; both artistic and ideolological. Each of the Achebe novels is seen as a literary maneuver that has a name and a justification for the categorization in rhetorical terms. The compositional ingredients that characterize the novels are sought out and, at the same time, their relation to typical usages and their singular uniqueness and purpose for use stressed. In the end the study attempts to trace and account for the developmental patterns and shifts of emphasis in the storytelling strategies in the novels of Chinua Achebe in an endeavor to evaluate whether the style the author adopts is integral to his worldview and instructive to the reader