Things Fall Apart, uses stories as a "means to achieve the poetics of verisimilitude and a realistic representation of experience" (Obiechina 6). Many stories in African literature, both oral and written, attempt to explain events that cannot be proven by a certain deity or act as a way to teach morals to young members of society. Using the Things Fall Apart stories as metaphors and comparisons between pre- and post-colonization Africa, Achebe, through Okonkwo's speculations, consistently portrays Westerners as the bane of African societies. “At first a fairly small swarm arrived. They were messengers sent to explore the land. And then a slowly moving mass appeared on the horizon, like a boundless black sheet moving towards Umuofia. It soon covered half the sky, and the solid mass was now broken by tiny eyes of light like glittering stardust. It was an extraordinary sight, full of power and beauty” (Achebe 39). In this quote, Achebe prefaces the colonization of Umuofia with a story, portraying Westerners as locusts: foreign, curious, and invasive. Achebe uses these pieces of traditional culture to aid him in his writing; act inconspicuously as literary devices, cleverly implanted without the reader's knowledge. In this way, an author has the ability to manipulate the plot and add