Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart

Gikandi praises Chinua Achebe for “the Invention of African Culture as Ur-texts of our literary tradition"

He underlines Achebe’s "tremendous influence works have had on the institutions of pedagogy and interpretation and the role his fictions have come to play in the making and unmaking of African worlds".

No doubt that with the publication of Things Fall Apart (1959), his very first novel, Achebe became known in as a great writer, not only African but world-wide.

Since then, his writing has centred con the ‘reconstruction of Africa, unveiling the culture, values and traditions.

His aim has not only consisted in educating Western audiences, but also African ones, since in many cases they have lost their traditions due to colonisation.

He declared that "I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past-with all its imperfections -was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them".

And this is exactly what takes place in Things Fall Apart. Here Achebe presents a community with their system of governing, pride, values and respect of their laws and Gods.

Things Fall Apart is the story of Okonkwo and his tribe, but also of colonisation, occupation, and the destruction of an African village, in fact, we could say the devastation of Africa.

Is a metaphor of the dismantling of Africa by white colonisers, which aims, “to heal the pain of the wound in our soul” (p.

It is the negative encounter of two different civilizations and cultures, the imposition of one over the other and its devastating consequences.

Achebe, like Morrison, seeks to show us, that these African villages and their habitants, called barbarians, savages and primitive, had and have a solid culture, traditions, values and pride.

Achebe wants us to see this world not from the perspective of the white colonisers, but from the people who are affected by their onslaught, and the total lack of respect for their culture.

The title of the novel is revealing since already indicates that something has come apart.

The novel starts with the story of Okonkwo (First Part, chapters 1-13), a proud and great warrior of the tribe, and its first section narrates the life and traditions of the tribe.

By doing this, Achebe wants us to learn about this tribe, which is all tribes, and shows us their humanity, fears, superstitions, etc.

It shows us their daily life, before the invasion by the white people, which is most revealing since this process took place all over the world.

The second part (chapters 14-19) brings the arrival of the white people, missionaries, who supposedly are God’s emissaries that attempt to destroy their religion, customs, consider heretic, and eventually their dignity and their language.

The tribe fights this invasion at first, but as it also happened with the Incas, or the Aztecs, some of their own people, now ‘converted to the new religion’ turn on their own.

This brings the beginning of the end, to be followed by the usurpation of their lands, as it also happened in all the civilisations conquered by the West, couple with the carnage that always followed.

In the third part (chapters 20-25) we attend to the destruction of the village, nothing is left of the past glory and health of the tribe.

  As is usually the case, Church, Government and Capital are

collude to wipe out this unnecessary obstacle to progress.

Understanding what happen here is to understand the present History and legacy of colonization.

  The past indeed produced the current present, which in many

parts of Africa is devastating and unforgiving.  In terms of the internal structure of the novel, it is axed in

two levels:  First, around Okonkwo, who, with his towering presence,

dominates the entire novel:

He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a severe look. He breathed heavily and it was said that when he slept his wives could hear him breathe. When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and he could not get his words out quickly enough he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had no patience with his father. (p. 3)

  Second, around Umuofia, the clan of nine which inhabits in

the Iboland.

Between the two a tension grows, a tension between the individual, Okonkwo, and the community, Umuofia.

  Eventually, this confrontation between the desire to maintain

at all cost the ancestral traditions, and the need to change facing the new reality, will also contribute to the downfall of the tribe and its village.

  This downfall is also due partly to the Okonkwo’s

inflexibility and authoritarian character, marked by his exile and his despise for his father, which lead to the death of his own son Nwoye who wanted to live a different life, and not to follow the traditional customs.

This is coupled with his lack of discipline to obey the council, reflected in breaking the one week truce, by beating his young wife, and to this the priest of the earth goddess says:

  Your wife was at fault, but even if you came into the Obi and

found her lover on top of her, you still would have committed a great evil to beat her." His staff came down again. The evil you have done can ruin the whole clan. The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse to give us her increase and we shall all perish. (p. ??)

  The doom of the end cascades in a series of fateful incidents

which announce the end:

The death and killing of Ikemefuna which is presented in a symbolic manner and operates in various levels:

  First, first announces the destruction by introducing the

Locusts, symbol of devastation in the crops: "And then quite suddenly, a shadow fell on the world, and the sun seemed hidden behind a thick cloud" (p.??).

  Secondly, the “thick cloud” of the Locusts here also means

colonialism which will be there as a curse for centuries to come

  Finally, also represents Okonkow’s destruction and his exile

for seven years.

The killing of the white people’s messenger

The accidental killing of Ezuedu’s son, a clan’s member   Then the obliteration and the punishment comes, announcing

the end:  As soon as the day broke a large crowd of men from

Ezuedu's quarter stormed Okonkwo's compound, dressed in garbs of war. They set fire to his houses, demolished his red walls, killed his animals and destroyed his barn. It was the justice of the earth goddess, and they were merely her messengers.

They had no hatred in their h arts against Okonkwo. His greatest friend, Obierika, was among them. They were merely cleaning the land which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman. (p.???)

Another aspect that is important to underline here, is how Achebe represents the place of women:

First as subdued to the man, ruler of the house and everything around

  But then also, places women in a particular site, where they

are venerated as the following quotation shows:

Can you tell me, Okonkwo, why it is that one of the commonest names we give to our children is Nneka, or mother is supreme? We all know that a man is head of the family and his wives do his bidding. A child belongs to his father and his family and not to his mother and her family. (p.???)

  And he responds:  It is true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father

beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say 'mother is supreme.' (p.???)

Achebe focuses on the interrelationships between the individual and the community with their respective qualities, values and believes.

  He reveals this by means of representing their vibrant rituals

traditions, customs, by the obedience to their gods, and to the elders.

  The Missionaries  This is the society invaded by the missionaries, a completely

different culture, organized around the hearth, nature and its cycles of fertility and drought, life and death.

A society with rigid codes of conduct, strong values and traditions, and this is what allowed them to succeed in their community: the bond with the community and its obeisance is central to their survival.

The missionaries’ indoctrination falls in deaf ears, since they not only do not understand one God and the Trinity, but they are not willing to abandon their onw Gos who have served them well.

  You told us with your own mouth that there was only one

god. Now you talk about his son. He must have a wife then. (p.??)

 

However, Nwoye joins the new religion as an act of rebellion more than conviction, and other members of the tribe will follow.

  For Nwoye,  It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him.

He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion; something felt in the hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul. The question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikernefuna who was killed. He felt a relief with in as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye's callow mind was greatly puzzled. (p. ???)

The missionaries’ presence and teachings become attractive to some members of the tribe as they hear about commerce of help them to grow, schools, that everyone is equal in Gods love.

  The emphasis moves form the collective to the individual,

the salvation is of one’s own and no longer in the hands of the tribe.

  For Okonkwo this is betrayal and a terrible curse, since he

sees the new religion destroying the ancestral Gods that bounded the tribe and the very social fiber of the community.

 

Okonkwo considers Nwoye’s new religion a crime that is devastating his community:

Now that he had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in its stark enormity. To abandon the gods of one's father and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination. Suppose when he died all his male children decided to follow Nwoye's steps and abandon their ancestors? Okonkwo felt a cold shiver run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation. (p.???)

This passage reveals precisely the undoing of a civilization, of a people and their culture, by the imposition of a culture that thinks and believes that there ways are the only right ones, that there is only one God, theirs, and civilization superior to others, thus they can tame and civilize the savage, quash the barbarian and bring it to become a fully civilized individual.

When Enoch, the son of the Snake priest, takes away an Egwugwu’s mask which represent the underworld of the dead, kills an ancestral spirit, destroying what gave stability to the tribe in its do and don’ts.

  The tribe is divided and things fall apart as Obierika points

out:

The whiteman is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on things that held us together and we have fallen apart. (p. ???)

  After killing the court’s messenger, Okonkow, kills himself,

committing another act unforgivable by the tribe.

That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself, and now he will be buried like a dog,' he cried. (p.???), say Obierika.

In this regard, Achebe seems to tell a story which is “unspeakable” facing the District Commissioner’s intent to write a book, not about them, but about The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. Two very different stories, Achebe’s narration of a great man, Okonkow, who is central to his story, and that of the Disctrict Commissioner that relegates Okonkow stories, to a mere paragraph.

The Representation of women

No doubt that women readers and critics have taken issue with Achebe’s representation of women in his novels, including Things Fall Apart.

  For instance, Andrea Powell, states that Achebe’s novels

“reveal real blind spots when it comes to important gender issues that continue to plague many postcolonial African countries”, particularly regarding the practice of Polygyny, that is, man with several wives.

And she adds that “Achebe seems to dismiss the issue of African polygyny, which I consider an important gender concern for feminists the world over, as a nonissue”.

In fairness, Achebe is writing about a historical period where polygyny was a standard practice for hundreds of years, and to criticise from the present does not make much sense.

There is another point here too: Western feminism is characterised for a form of imperialism, where they do not respect other cultures’ traditions and customs.

The fundamental drawback of polygyny, according to Powell, is the competition bickering and infighting between wives of the same man and between women of the same tribe.

She argues that this prevents solidarity between women, and therefore hinders any attempt to emancipation from their condition within polygyny.

Powell argues that “The difficulty with assessing this aspect of Achebe's female characterization, though, lies in determining if his depiction of women simply represents the social reality of his setting or if Achebe himself actually endorses the sexist treatment of women in the novel”.

Well, it could be both. After all the novel was written in 1959 when the feminist movement had not yet began, and therefore it would be unfair to expect an African man to be a “feminist” before the fact.

But yes, looking at Okonkwo’ behaviour one may have a critical attitude towards him: Okonkwo believes that "(n]o matter how prosper is a man [is], if he [is] unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he [is] not really a man" (P???)

Powell asserts that: “The institution of polygyny itself promotes the male perception of women as mere acquisitions and necessarily subordinates them to men and the maintenance of patrilinear culture”.

In all of this I find a condescending, patronizing and self-aggrandising typical of Western women and men, preaching their values, gods and “civilisation” to others, without any acknowledgment of their own barbaric practices in over ninety percent of the world.

There are quick to judge, but looking at their own past and present racist, discriminatory and inhuman practices is out of the question.

Achebe may not be perfect, but he has done more for his people and Africa than any white culture has ever done, and this cannot, and should not be easily dismissed.