Idioms of the Occident:Oriental study of Things Fall Apart

Orientalism is a western style of Eurocentric universalism that exerts authority and western superiority over the east by identifying it „the Other.‟ The Orient, a colony, is represented in terms negative attributes- decadent, lazy, stupid, sensual barbaric mystical and magical. This attitude shaped the destiny of the natives and these attributes helped the imperial power their domination and colonial enterprise in the East. The novel, Things Fall Apart, with its locale in Nigeria, unfolds the story of colonization of an indigenous community in Igboland. This paper is an attempt at tracing the attitude of the western, the Occidents who treated the natives as the Other i.e. separate and outside the civilized European centre. Therefore, it became a justification for the western domination, usurpation, imposition of their colonial rule. The novel becomes a site for interaction between the Orient and the Occident; the Colonizer and the Colonized.