Things Fall Apart Take-Home Test

Things Fall Apart Take-home Test

For this assessment, you will answer three of the following six questions with a well-formed, one-paragraph answer. The three paragraphs do not need to form a fluent essay. Focus on internal transitions and support. You will be graded on both your thinking of the text (content) and your ability to craft a focused topic sentence with textual evidence as support (paragraph organization). Make sure to include cited, direct quotations for each answer.

Remember to consider your organization. We have been practicing explication with the t-charts. I commented on many of your attempts. Explication does more than just repeat the sense of the quotation. Where you choose to include a quotation in your answer, make sure to provide the context of the quotation (introduce), quote accurately (state), and explicate (show how the quotation supports your point). Be careful not to rely on the quotation to make your point for you. Show your readers how you see the connection.

You will notice some of the questions below offer more than one question. I write assessments this way to offer multiple ways to look at a broader subject. Do not feel obligated to address all the parts in your answer. Remember you only have one paragraph, so focus on only one approach to the each subject. You can really only get the answer “wrong” if you do not support your view.

Possible questions (answer only three):

•In the book When Things Fall Apart, how do people of differing beliefs become hostile towards each other? Note the parts played not only by the voices of extremism, but also by those of moderation. How does this hostility help us understand Achebe’s project?

•How does Achebe establish a sense of community in the village? What shows the strengths and weaknesses of it? Why does the church seem to so easily separate the long-standing community/culture?

•Trace one aspect of the power structure you see in Things Fall Apart. How does it affect the production/destruction of the clan culture?

•What differences do you note in the way of thinking and in the language of the two sides in the conflict—the villages and the new church? How do these differences explain the shift of power? How do they help you understand the action of different characters?

•‘History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era. Literature brings us as close as we can come to reinhabiting the past’ (Scott Herring).

How does Chinua Achebe, in Things Fall Apart, help us to ‘reinhabit the past’?

•‘Achebe’s tone in Things Fall Apart is that of the traditional storyteller – calm yet intent, distanced but caring, measured but eager to carry the listener towards the tale’s conclusion.’

Use examples from the novel to explore the paradoxes in this comment.