Decoding the language of Alienation: Reading Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah.

In Anthills of the Savannah (1988) Chinua Achebe discusses a form of government in which one person possesses absolute power without any effective constitutional control, uses brutal military force to gain more power, and for that matter controls the flow of information in the country. Chinua Achebe has used this novel to reflect the socio-political realities of the African continent post independence. The novel delineates all the attributes of the authoritarian state structures : the activities of law enforcement agents, the secret intelligence services, the courts, prison and detention camps used to dissuade defiant citizens. In his endeavour, the novelist combines multiple narrative styles and techniques to construct his story and shows that the successive regimes of the fictional Kangan is made up of the same General Sam and his collaborators who are only driven by sheer greed and hunger for more power. The analysis of data gathered shows that coup d’états are not better alternatives for socio political development: the putschists may be even worse than before because they have no development scheme. Anthills of the Savannah is a critique of post-independence Africa whose leaders have deviated from the aesthetics of democracy to espouse the culture of dictatorship. This paper argues that a close reading of literary fiction can meaningfully contribute to human’s full understanding of the disgusting and enduring problem of authoritarian state structures. Dictatorship, as discussed by the novelist, is theorised as a form of concentrated economic and political power that facilitates Africa’s continued dependency. I use the Marxist critical approach to literature to shed light on the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed.