 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 th
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 firs
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
 Understanding what happen here is to understand the presen
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'
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 merel
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
 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 th
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 rebellio
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 God
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 al
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 differen
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 aspec
of Achebe's female characterization, though, lies in
determining if his depiction of women simply represents th
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 acquisition
and necessarily subordinates them to men and the
maintenance of patrilinear culture”.
 In all of this I find a condescending, patronizing and selfaggrandising 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 o
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.