Achebe uses language, which he sees
as a writer's best resource, to expose and combat the propaganda generated be
African politicians to manipulate their own people. Faced with his people's
growing inferiority complex and his leader's disregard for the truth, the African
writer cannot turn his back on his culture, Achebe believes. "A writer has a
responsibility to try and stop [these damaging trends] because unless our culture
begins to take itself seriously it will never....get off the ground." He states
his mission in his essay "The Novelist as Teacher": "Here is an adequate revolution
for me to espouse -- to help my society regain belief in itself and to put away
the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement. And it is essentially
a question of education, in the best sense of that word. Here, I think, my aims
and the deepest aspirations of society meet."
