Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe, in my opinion, is a masterpiece. It was published in 1958 and is part of a thematic trilogy that includes the books- No longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964). The book is set in the 20th century and describes the Igbo culture of the lower Nigerian tribe. The protagonist of the novel, Okonkwo, helps Achebe not only depict the life of the clan but also showcase its rise and fall.
Understanding Achebe
Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 in Igboland, which is located in the south-eastern region of Nigeria. The Igbo lineages were organised in self-contained villages with societies of elders sharing various governmental functions. While Achebe was growing up in such a village, his parents converted to Christianity but his other relatives continued to practice traditional Igbo faith. This childhood experience is a large part of Achebe’s inspiration for writing Things Fall Apart. He, himself, experienced the “cultural crossroads” which he describes in the novel. For this reason, Achebe spends more than half of the novel explaining the lives of people in these tribes, showing not only the good but also the reason why the tribes ultimately could not survive the impact of Western colonisation.
In the article- After Empire, Ruth Franklin states that while growing up, the novels Achebe read were by colonial writers like Joyce Cary. In Mister Johnson, Cary describes Africans as “jealous savages”, “senseless and unhuman”. Things Fall Apart is hence, Achebe’s attempt at portraying the truth of the society. He shows all aspects of the culture, its journey and in the process, he begins “the literary reclamation of his country’s history from generations of colonial writers“.
The novel in a nutshell
Igbo culture revolves around an agrarian society in which they follow a polytheistic religion, where the many gods represent each facet of life. This is in complete contrast to Christianity which is a monotheistic religion and does not fit with the Igbo way of life. So, Achebe traces his own culture in the novel with the help of the fictional town of Umofia. The novel begins with Okonkwo, “a man of action, a man of war”, who due to his father’s failings learnt to become a “fierce fighter”. Okonkwo has three wives, the eldest- who is not named, Ekwefi and Ojiugo and is shown to rule “his household with a heavy hand”. In the first half of the novel, Achebe describes the farming traditions, patriarchal laws and the clan’s heavy belief in evil spirits. In order to make any decisions, the clan consults the spirits of its deceased relatives. These ancestors are represented by the people by putting on masks and serving as judges. While this ceremony represents the spirit of the clan, it also becomes the reason why the members of the clan start to lose faith in their traditions.
Members of the clan with time begin to question their traditions. Their unchanging belief in superstitious causes Okonkwo’s “greatest friend” Obierika to question the elders and the clan’s punishment. After the explosion of Okonkwo’s gun accidentally kills a young boy, he is sent into exile for seven years. Obierika contrasts this punishment to the clan’s superstition that twins “were an offence on land and must be destroyed”. Because of this, Obierika questions why it was okay for him to throw away his innocent twins while Okonkwo “had to suffer so grievously for an offence he had committed inadvertently”. Another incident that made the clan question its teachings was after the arrival of the colonisers. From the beginning, the clan had believed that the forest, regarded as the Evil forest, was a place where nothing could survive. However, once the colonisers enter, they build a church in this forest and are able to survive, flourish even. This questioning of beliefs ultimately resulted in people converting from one faith to the other.
At the end of the novel, Okonkwo returns to the clan. He is prisoned with a few others by the District Commissioner, for burning the church they had built. In his anger, once he is released Okonkwo kills a white messenger. While performing this action, Okonkwo believes that the clan will support him like they’ve supported his violence before, but this time, they do not. At the end of the novel, he commits suicide and his life is reduced to a paragraph in the District Commissioner’s book called ‘The Pacification of the Primitive tribes of the Lower Niger’.
The use of the epigraph
Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer./ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
This epigraph to the novel is a quote from William Butler Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’. It was written by Yeats when Ireland sought freedom from British colonisation. Hence, using the poem as an epigraph allows Achebe to warn the reader of the colonial intervention that takes place at the end of the novel. A line from the poem is also used to name the novel- Things fall apart.
The last message
Through the novel, Achebe points out the violence and injustice that existed in the Igbo way of life. After the colonial intervention, he again points out the cruelty of the District Commissioner and the extreme measures he takes. Achebe tries to point out the need for changes and growth in each society. He also uses Mr Brown, a peaceful white man and Obierika as examples of thinking minds who learn from each other’s cultures. Ultimately, it is not a religion that brings about the destruction but violence and brutality from both communities that cause things to fall apart.
