Teaching Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and critical literacy in the English classroom: For a democratic Swedish society

Abstract: In the 2014 Swedish national election the Sweden Democrats, a radical right-wing and anti-immigrant party, established itself as the third biggest party and as an outcome, racism has become an everyday issue of the society. This can be seen everywhere, not least in educational settings where, for instance, insulting language use, violation of integrity, sexual harassment and hate crimes are common problems. In the Swedish school system, there are laws that protect students from such discrimination and thus, educators are responsible to counteract racism. Because of that, the aim of this paper is to show how Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958) can be used in connection to critical literacy in the English class in order to facilitate an increased understanding for other cultures in Sweden. This is presented through a postcolonial analysis of the novel where the research questions focus on the similarities and differences between the natives and the colonialists in the areas of political, social and cultural (postcolonial) operations. More precisely, the themes that are addressed are “Religion”, “Politics”, “Economics”, “Social hierarchy”, “Material things”, “Society” and “Encounters”. For the analysis, the novel used is, as mentioned, Things Fall Apart and further, scholar articles treating the novel, critical literacy and postcolonial criticism are used as a background to the study. Also, the Swedish national syllabi for English at upper secondary school is used in order to justify the work. The findings show that there are not only differences, but also a lot of similarities, when it comes to the postcolonial operations of the groups in the novel. These results can, in turn, be used in the Swedish multicultural classroom with the help of critical literacy in order to work for social stability.