Page: 01-06. Okonkwo’s suicide and caliban’s submission: a comparative study from postcolonial perspectives.

M. J. AZAD1

1=Md. Jahidul Azad, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Prime University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.

E-mail: jahid_azad10@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

The study was conducted at the Department of English, Prime University, Dhaka, Bangladesh during July-December, 2016.  The present study attempts to fit ‘Okonkwo’ of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and ‘Caliban’ of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the same group as both of them are the victims of colonial segregation and shows how despite similar treatment of them by the colonizer they differ in their reactions, namely the former committing suicide and the latter accepting the colonial aggression. The exertion took a hard and critical look into the impact of colonialism and its way of acceptance in Achebe’s Okonkwo and Shakespeare’s Caliban from postcolonial views as both of them subjugated as a victim of colonization in a different way. Hence this study is an attempt to show an insight of colonial suppression by pinpointing the impact of colonization over the colonized minds as one committed suicide and the other submitted to the colonial power respectively. It is further shown within the discussion how suicide is sometimes admirable and more worthy than submission as seen in the cases of Okonkwo and Caliban correspondingly.

 Keywords: Suicide, Submission, Postcolonial viewpoint, Colonial segregation and Exploitation.