The Lion Project

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton are two texts that challenge the single-story of two different groups: Africans and Teenagers.  Things Fall Apart is a story about the colonization of Africa in the late 1800s, while The Outsiders is story about a gang of teenagers in the 1960s.  Though they may seem different, they’re quite similar in that they’re both stereotyped in a way that makes them seem like less than they really are .  Adults think they’re smarter and better than teenagers in the same way that the white men think themselves superior to the Africans .  Both stories include texts written by the protagonists’ “superiors” that exploit their stereotypes and perpetuate their single stories.

One thing the Africans’ single story and teenagers’ single story have in common is that they’re both viewed  as being juvenile and unsophisticated.  Strangely enough, Okonkwo, the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, doesn’t do much to challenge the stereotype.  He doesn’t care much for words because “he [has] a slight stammer” (Achebe 4) and therefore uses violence instead of language to convey his feelings, which is viewed as a primitive and barbaric form of communication.  However, Achebe makes it clear that not everyone in the village is like Okonkwo.  Achebe writes that “Among the Ibo people the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten” (Achebe 7).  This completely refutes the idea that everyone in Africa is primitive and unsophisticated—most of them are eloquent speakers and utilize beautiful metaphors to portray their points.  Unfortunately, the white men are blind to this in a similar way that adults can often be blind to the intelligence of teenagers. 

The characters in both authors’ works exhibit a variety of different personality types—some, like Dallas Winston in The Outsiders, dropped out of school and are doing things like “[getting] arrested, [getting] drunk, [riding] in rodeos, [lying], [cheating], [stealing], [rolling] drunks, [and jumping] small kids” (Hinton 11).  Similarly to Achebe, Hinton creates a character that completely embodies his stereotype, which is because she isn’t trying to deny the single story—she’s merely saying that it’s incomplete , especially when it comes to characters like Ponyboy and Johnny.  Like the white men think that the Africans are dumb, “[Johnny’s] teachers [think] that [he’s] just plain dumb.  But he [isn’t]” (75).  Ponyboy and Johnny have a deep appreciation for literature, and are able to have completely mature, sophisticated conversations analyzing certain works such as “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and Gone With the Wind.  As Ponyboy discusses these works with Johnny, he realizes how much smarter he is than everyone thinks, and “it [amazes him] how Johnny [can] get more meaning out of some of the stuff in there than [he can]” (75).  Both Chinua Achebe and S.E. Hinton portray the diversity within these characters’ respective communities and convey that one can’t assume poorly of an entire group because not everyone in the group is the same.

One of the most tragic parts of both texts is how oblivious the other parties (the imperialists and the adults) are to anything outside the single story.  In Things Fall Apart, the District Commissioner has been given the amazing opportunity to observe the beauty and sophistication of the culture and the Ibo people, but instead chooses to focus solely on why they’re simple and savage The last paragraph of the story is spent with him discussing the book he’s going to write about his experience colonizing Africa; he tells that the title of the book will be “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger” (Achebe 209).  The tragedy in this is that the book is spent discussing why the tribes aren’t as primitive as people think, yet it ends with a man discussing the book he plans to write which will only perpetuate the single story.

Similarly, in The Outsiders, there is another text that perpetuates the single story of the teenagers.  However, this text both supports and refutes the single story.  It is a newspaper article written after Dallas, Ponyboy, and Johnny save a group of children from a burning church; the headline is “JUVENILE DELINQUENTS TURN HEROES”.  Though it may seem like it’s portraying the boys in a positive light, it’s still referring to them as “juvenile delinquents” merely based on their age  and what they look like.  In addition, Two-Bit is offended because he argues that “[they] were heroes from the beginning.  [They] didn’t just ‘turn’ all of a sudden” (107).   Ponyboy and Johnny didn’t do anything in the first place to deserve the title of “juvenile delinquents”—they’re just delinquents by association, not because they did anything wrong.  This is similar to how people get their idea of Africa from minorities like Okonkwo instead of acknowledging that not everyone is like that.

Things Fall Apart and The Outsiders are very similar in that they were both created to challenge the single story, yet feature characters who completely embody it.  These characters are created by the authors in order to convey that their point isn’t that the single story is incorrect—it’s that it’s incomplete .  Both authors do an amazing job of portraying why these groups are so much more intelligent and complex than they’re given credit for being.