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An 8 page paper looking at the nature of intercultural communication in Chinua Achebe's classic novel. The paper defines intercultural communication as necessitating not only a commonality of language but a commonality of viewpoint and assumption. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Achfall.doc
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sense, it is the story of the psychological and social consequences this irresolvable clash. Achebe personifies this encounter in the experiences of one man, Okonkwo, a champion wrestler, a wealthy
farmer, a husband to three wives, a title-holder among his people, and a member of the select egwugwu whose members impersonate ancestral spirits at tribal rituals. In other words, he
is a person of great importance in his village of Umuofia, and thus his fate is representative of the fate of his entire people. Okonkwos suicide at the novels
end is the final desperate gesture, not only of an individual man who cannot function by the rules of the new society, but also of an old order that is
doomed to collapse because it can not "dialogue" with the culture which is taking it over. This dilemma is expressed in a variety of sociological situations in the work of
Clifford Geertz, Stephen Greenblatt, and Jane Tompkins. Fascinatingly, as these writers show, Achebes portrayal of the disintegration of his society in the face of the encroachment of the West can
be tied to the fact that both sides are talking, and neither side is communicating with the other. Intercultural communication, therefore, can be said to necessitate not only a commonality
of language, but a commonality of viewpoint and a commonality of assumption. This brings up the question of the extent to which it is possible for two very different
cultures to find a wide swath of common ground on which they can agree, due to the differences in the way they communicate. In "Indians: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem
of History," Jane Tompkins expresses this clearly: "If you are convinced that . . . there really are no facts except as they are embedded in some particular way of
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