Southwest Licking School District
Literature Selection Review
Teacher:
K. Berry
School:
Watkins Memorial High School
Book Title:
Things Fall Apart
Genre:
Fiction
Author:
Chinua Achebe
Pages:
209
Publisher:
Doubleday/Delacorte
Copyright:
c1959, 1994
Book Summary and summary citation: (suggested resources include book flap
summaries, review summaries from publisher, book vendors, etc.)
The bulk of the novel takes place in Umuofia, a cluster of nine villages on the lower
Niger. Umuofia is a powerful clan, skilled in war and with a great population, with proud
traditions and advanced social institutions. Okonkwo has risen from nothing to a high
position. Through hard work, he has become a great man among his people. He has
taken three wives and his barn is full of yams, the staple crop. He rules his family with
an iron fist.
One day, a neighboring clan commits an offense against Umuofia. To avoid war, the
offending clan gives Umuofia one virgin and one young boy. This ultimately begins
Okonkwo’s spiral out of control and triggers both his greatest sense of pride and his
greatest regret. Okonkwo’s decision to willfully kill an innocent boy spiritually breaks
both Okonkwo and his family.
A series of mishaps lead to Okonkwo’s exile from his tribe, and during this exile, the
white man comes to both Umuofia and Mbanto. The missionaries arrive first, preaching a
religion that seems mad to the Igbo people. They win converts, but generally the converts
are men of low rank or outcasts. However, with time, the new religion gains momentum.
Okonkwo returns to Umuofia to find the clan sadly changed. The church has won some
converts, some of whom are fanatical and disrespectful of clan custom. Worse, the white
man's government has come to Umuofia. The clan is no longer free to judge its own; a
District Commissioner judges cases in ignorance. He is backed by armed power.
Ultimately Okonkwo’s clan calls a meeting to decide whether they will fight or try to live
peacefully with the whites. Okonkwo wants war, but he knows his people will not choose
it. His act of resistance will not be followed by others. Embittered and grieving for the
destruction of his people's independence, and fearing the humiliation of dying under
white law, Okonkwo world falls apart.
Provide an instructional rationale for the use of this title, including specific
reference to the curriculum map(s):
•
•
Students will compare and contrast the tones, themes, and symbols found in
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to those in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
Students will analyze methods of direct and indirect characterization and
determine how these methods help develop the story’s theme.
Include two professional reviews of this title: (a suggested list of resources for
identifying professional reviews is shown below. Reviews may be “cut and pasted” (with
citation) into the form or printed reviews may be attached to the form)
Review #1 – by Linda Strong-Leek (African Studies Quarterly)
Before beginning this feminist analysis, we must review the historical and cultural
context in which Things Fall Apart was written. Things Fall Apart, first published in
1958, was initially written as a response to colonialist representations of Africa and
Africans in literature, specifically Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson (1989).3 Cary's work
positions Africans in the typical colonialist frame: as individuals without motives,
forethought, or knowledge other than base responses to their environs. As JanMohammed
(1986) states, "colonial literature is an exploration of a world at the boundaries of
civilization; a world that has not (yet) been domesticated by European signification." It is
a world perceived as "uncontrollable, chaotic, unattainable, and ultimately evil."4 Against
this context, Achebe's novel allowed European readers to perceive Africans through an
alternate lens. The Igbo society described by Achebe has definitive and complex social
systems, values and traditions. Achebe presents customs such as the abandonment of
multiple birth babies, and the sacrifice of human beings as conventions and not barbaric,
inhumane rituals. He brilliantly places his characters within an ancient civilization with a
labyrinthine system of governance and laws.
Consequently, Achebe's main character, Okonkwo emerges early in the text as a
traditional hero, who has within himself the ability to languish or attain his goals.
Achebe's readers understand that European colonialists do not precipitate Okonkwo's
ultimate downfall. Instead, it is Okonkwo's seeds of self-destruction, which are deeply
concealed in his desire to be the antitheses of his "feminine" father.
Moreover, though Achebe's text is written in English, the language of the colonizer, it
remains authentically African.
Review #2 – by Richard Lacayo (from TIME Specials: All Time 100 Novels)
A novel of great power that turns the world upside down. The Nigerian novelist Achebe
reached back to the early days of his people's encounter with colonialism, the 1890's,
though the white man and his religion make an impression upon the story only in its later
stages. Instead of being treated as onlookers to the arrival of the colonial power, either
passive or menacing, here the Africans are center stage, capable all the while of nobility
but also cruelty, wisdom and bewilderment. Okonkwo is an ambitious man within the
Umuofia clan of the Igbo tribe. Determined to be a lord, he observes its rules, even the
harshest of them, though that observance will eventually drive away his own son. Achebe
guides us through the intricacies of Igbo culture, its profound sense of justice, its
sometimes murderous rules, its noble and harmful machismo. By the time the British
colonial administrator arrives towards the end of the book to dismiss the natives as
savages, we know how profoundly mistaken that word is.
What alternate text(s) could also fulfill the instructional requirements?
Title:
Black Boy
Author:
Richard Wright
Title:
Beloved
Author:
Toni Morrison
Title:
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Author:
Zora Neale Hurston
Document any potentially controversial content:
• Violence, moral dilemmas, subject of pride as it leads to human downfall
Keeping in mind the age, academic level, and maturity of the intended reader, what
is the suggested classroom use: (check all that apply)
General education (advanced English)
GRADE LEVEL(S): 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
INTEREST LEVEL(S): 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Date Submitted to Website: 8/21/2011
Suggested Professional Literary Review Sources:
School Library Journal
Horn Book
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)
Library Journal
Book Links
Publisher's Weekly
Booklist
Kirkus Review
Wilson Library Catalog
English Journal (and other resources of the National Council of Teachers of English)
The Reading Teacher (International Reading Association)
Literature for Today’s Young Adult