Proverbs in Things Fall Apart: Classification, Context and Meaning

This research paper deals with the use of proverbs in the Novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. As a descriptive work, its aim is to describe the proverbs in the Novel, classify them, interpret and explain the meaning of the proverbs in the context. Due to the purpose established, qualitative research method was the chosen, specifically the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This research method gives the needed approaches that lead to the thematic and subjective conclusion, that result from the interpretation and explanation of the proverbs and their meaning on the context they appear in the Novel. The study has shown that Things Fall Apart has a sum of thirty four proverbs, where thirty two are said by men and two exclusively by women. The proverbs found were classified based on their theme. In the Novel we can find religious proverbs, psychological proverbs, social proverbs and ethical proverbs. Because of the peculiar traces of four specific proverbs and the limits imposed on the number of papers this work should have, only four proverbs were analyzed, interpreted and explained. Among the proverbs, one is used as an appeal to the moral sense, the second, as a mean of persuasion, the third, for encouragement and the last, as an incentive to hard work for success.