Achebe Reader Response

Chinua Achebe Reader Response

After reading “Girls at War” and “The Madman” I tried comparing each story to my personal life and to apply each lesson Achebe was implying in his writing.  If one looks into a job field where you either have to help someone and take a chance in harming themselves in the end, or to do nothing but work and help yourself to succeed and let them fall the supposedly right answer would be to help yourself. In the context of “Girls at War”, one basically has to live and do for oneself in order to survive or you can be the hero and die trying to do what’s right. I can compare “The Madman” to my life when looking through a school perspective, just as the Europeans came in and changed the views of Africans and some of the culture, schools can have the same effect.

My views on the world are slim and that it can be a dark, cruel, and unfair place for people of a certain class, race, and ethnicity. Both stories kind of go along with my views of the world. Through “Girls at War”, I agree with how Gladys started off living her life working and searching vehicles, but when we meet her again throughout the story, she has transformed into a prostitute. I agree in living and trying to make money to have a life and survive, but I disagree with selling one’s self to do so there are other ways to make money. I also disagree with the treatment of the starving crowd in beginning when Nwanko whom is fortunate to have food cannot offer just a little to the crowd. Lastly I disagree with how self- centered Nwanko was in the end even though he lived for staying put and doing nothing, I believe that he should have at least attempted to help Gladys rescue the soldier.

In “The Madman”, my views were not affected in any way from how I normally think because with what happened in the story happens in colonization and society daily. Beliefs of one group of people can be torn apart and replaced with the beliefs and lifestyles of others until the previous group’s original beliefs are gone.  I do not agree with how fast people are to call others crazy for their actions, but I do agree with Achebe’s reaction and purpose for writing this story. The Europeans came in thinking hardly about what and whom they were affecting by colonizing, forcing the Africans to think and believe what they believe and considering those who did not comply as “madmen” and bad. People are equal and should be able to live the lives they want and should be able to have their own believes as well.

Achebe even though he is brutally honest he points out the facts that other authors will not confront in a face to face kind of way. To him violence is the key when all else fails and I agree that in order to live the life you want, and to be who you are one must fight what’s keeping them to do so.