Enriching Sociology 100: Using the Novel Things Fall Apart

ciology for several years, and each semester new students bring their own perspectives to the study of sociology, making the content fresh and new. In order to help students understand sociological concepts in more experiential ways and to give them a glimpse into a culture that may be different from their own, I have turned to the use of a novel, Things Fall Apart, by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (1959), as supplemental reading to the main text. I discovered this novel when taking a graduate course in regional literature that emphasized diversity. The London Sunday Times cited Achebe as one of the "1,000 Makers of the Twentieth Century" for defining "a modern African literature that was truly African" (as cited in Achebe 1959:212). This astonishing novel gave me a glimpse into a way of life that had puzzled me. I am particularly interested in Things Fall Apart because I grew up in Cameroon, Africa, the country directly east of Nigeria, and attended school in Nigeria, the setting of Things Fall Apart. Although Achebe's work is fiction, it rings true with what I witnessed in Cameroonian society. Written with an African village elder as narrator, the novel helped me understand aspects of African culture that had puzzled me: how polygamy functions so that women sharing one husband can live in harmony, how women stand in relation to men, how the egwugwu can be both familiar and mysterious and exercise social control. In assigning this novel to introductory sociology students, my purpose was 1) to help students understand sociological concepts through a fiction reading experience, 2) to give students a glimpse into a culture different from their own, 3) to internationalize the curriculum, and 4) to provide a shared reality within which to discuss sociological concepts. As I reviewed the literature, I found support for this approach. Myles Clowers and Steven Mori (1977) have used observations by fiction writers to demonstrate key sociological concepts. They state that fiction, while not replacing the conventional sociological text, is an extremely effective supplement that can motivate students and help them understand sociological concepts. Janet Cosbey (1997) points to a growing trend to use literature to illustrate sociological concepts and she states, "The sociology of literature has long recognized that literature reflects society" (p. 227). Lewis Coser (1972) writes that "literature is...social evidence and testimony. It is a continuous commentary on manners and morals... [It] preserves for us the precious record of modes of response to peculiar social and cultural conditions...It provides the social scientist with a wealth of sociologically relevant material, with manifold clues and points of departure for sociological theory and research" (pp. xv-xvi). He suggests that literature helps to overcome students' initial r sistance to sociological theory, allowing students to "clothe the dry bones of social theory with the living and plastic tissue which grows from literary imagination" (p. xviii). In addition, I have found that using a novel provides students with a shared reality within which they can relate and discuss sociological concepts in a common context. As the world gets smaller, students need to examine other cultures, as well as their *Please address all correspondence to the author at Kilian College, 300 East 6th Street, Sioux Falls, SD 57103; chartman@kilian.edu. Editor's note: The reviewers were, in alphabetical order, Benjamin D. Albers, Janet Cosbey, and Teresa Sullivan.