Text and Context — Global Perspectives

MYP Unit Framework

Key Concept: PERSPECTIVE Related Concepts: Context. Culture. Interpretation. Global Context: Identities and Relationships (How do CULTURE and HISTORY shape the stories we tell?) Statement of Inquiry: Literature cannot be understood in ISOLATION — a text's MEANING is shaped by its CULTURAL and HISTORICAL CONTEXT, and reading across cultures reveals both the UNIVERSALITY of human experience and the RADICAL DIFFERENCE of other ways of being.

Inquiry Questions

1. Context — The Invisible Hand

What Is Context?

'The HISTORICAL moment. The CULTURAL values. The AUTHOR'S identity and experiences. The INTENDED AUDIENCE. All of these shape a text — even when the author never mentions them explicitly.'

Reading With and Against Context

• Reading WITH context: Understanding what the author MEANT for their original audience.
• Reading AGAINST context: Critiquing the text from OUR perspective — asking what the text LEFT OUT, assumed, or got WRONG.

2. Core Text — Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)

The Author and His Mission

Chinua Achebe was an IGBO writer from Nigeria. He wrote 'Things Fall Apart' in ENGLISH — deliberately. 'I want to tell the story of African culture from the INSIDE. Not as the "primitive savage" of European novels. But as a COMPLEX, SOPHISTICATED civilisation — with its own philosophy, its own wisdom, its own TRAGEDY.'

The Novel

Okonkwo is a respected warrior in an Igbo village in the 1890s. He is PROUD. He is FEARED. He has worked his way from NOTHING. He is determined never to be 'WEAK' like his father.

Then: WHITE MISSIONARIES arrive. They bring Christianity. They bring colonial administration. Okonkwo's world — the world of Igbo tradition, religion, and law — begins to DISINTEGRATE. 'Okonkwo is a TRAGIC HERO. His FLAW is his PRIDE — and his inability to ADAPT. But he is also a VICTIM of forces BEYOND his control — the overwhelming power of European colonialism.'

Key Discussion

'Achebe titled the novel from Yeats' poem "The Second Coming": "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." Yeats was an IRISH poet writing about the collapse of European civilisation after WWI. Achebe — an AFRICAN writer — uses the Irish poem to describe the collapse of AFRICAN civilisation under European colonialism. This CHOICE is a profound literary statement: the tragedy of colonialism is not only African. It is UNIVERSAL.'

The Question of Language

'Achebe wrote in English — not Igbo. WHY? He said: "I feel the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a NEW English — still in full communion with its ancestral home, but altered to suit its new African surroundings." Achebe's English is INFUSED with Igbo proverbs, rhythms, and worldview. It is English — but it is AFRICAN ENGLISH. The language itself becomes a SITE of cultural negotiation.'

3. Extended Text — Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi, 2000)

The Form — Graphic Memoir

'Persepolis' is a GRAPHIC NOVEL — a memoir told through black-and-white COMICS. Why this form? 'Satrapi said: "Drawing is a UNIVERSAL language. A child can understand a drawing. An adult can understand it at a DIFFERENT level." The simple, stark images convey the HORROR of the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War — without sensationalism.'

The Story

Marjane Satrapi grows up in Tehran during the IRANIAN REVOLUTION (1979). She is TEN years old. She watches: the Shah overthrown. The Islamic Republic established. Women forced to wear the VEIL. Her uncle EXECUTED as a political prisoner. WAR with Iraq. Bombs falling on Tehran.

'Through the eyes of a child, Satrapi shows how IDEOLOGY — religious, political, revolutionary — enters the INTIMATE spaces of family, school, and personal identity. Marjane's struggle is EVERY adolescent's struggle — who am I? Where do I belong? — but it is heightened and made DANGEROUS by the political context surrounding her.'

4. Comparative Analysis — Okonkwo and Marji

Your Summative Assessment

Task: 'Contextual Analysis Essay' Choose ONE text we have studied. Analyse how its HISTORICAL and CULTURAL CONTEXT shapes its meaning. Consider: What was happening in the world when this was written? What was the author's position — and PURPOSE? How would the text have been RECEIVED by its original audience? How do WE read it differently today?

ATL Skills