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abstract |
The tortoise plays a central role in Igbo orality, in folktales in particular, whose
didactic character has been adopted by Igbo written literature right from the start.
Achebe included one of the most popular tortoise folktales, the one about the reason
behind the shape of the tortoise’s shell, in his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958),
placing it in the mouth of Ekwefi, Okonkwo’s wife, as she tells it to her daughter
Ezimma. Adichie, widely considered as Achebe’s literary daughter, uses the same folktale
in her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2004). In this novel, which contrasts Igbo traditional
religion with Kambili’s father’s radical Catholicism, the tortoise folktale is told
by ‘Papa Nnukwu’, the grand-father, in the children’s aunty’s home on the University
Campus at Nsukka. Another Nigerian novelist, Nwapa, devotes a whole chapter of her
Iduu (1970) to a story-telling evening session. Here, we consider the reasons behind
the use of folktales and the importance of the tortoise in these three novels, which
can be seen as representative of the Igbo contribution to Nigerian literature. |