Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Post-Colonial Literature
Lesson: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Author: Nandini C Sen

College/Department: Bharati College, University of

Delhi.

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Chinua_Achebe_-
_Buffalo_25Sep2008_crop.jpg accessed 25/8/2015

Introduction to the Author

Chinua Achebe was born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe on the 16 November 1930. He
breathed his last on the 21 March 2013. He was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor,
and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apart (1958) was considered his magnum opus, and
is the most widely read book in modern African Literature.

Biographical details

Achebe is a second generation Christian. He was raised by Christian parents in the

village Ogidi in Iboland of Eastern Nigeria. Achebe received an early education in English,
though interestingly his childhood memories were of being surrounded by traditional Ibo
practices and colonialism. The complexities of cultures shaped his world view. He was a
very bright student and he won himself a scholarship at the University of Ibadan where
he studied Literature and Medicine. His first job was at the Nigerian Broadcasting
Company in Lagos. He later studied at the British Broadcasting Corporation staff school
in London.

It was at this point of time that Achebe started to develop his writing skills. He drew
heavily from the Nigerian oral culture. Starting in the 1950s, he was central to a new
Nigerian literary movement that drew on the oral traditions of Nigeria's indigenous
tribes. While English became the medium for expressing himself, he chose to pepper his
language with Ibo proverbs and served up a truly original Ibo fare.

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart (1958) was his first novel, and remains his best-known work. It has
been translated into forty five languages and has sold eight million copies worldwide.
Other novels include: No Longer At Ease (1960), Arrow of God(1964), and A Man of the
People(1966). All three novels are part of a trilogy that records the Ibo history from the
pre-colonial to the post-independence era.

Achebe left his career in radio in 1966, during the national unrest and violence that led
to the Biafran War. He narrowly escaped harm at the hands of soldiers who believed that
his novel, A Man of the People, implicated him in the country's first military coup.
He began an academic career the next year, taking a position as a Senior Research
Fellow at the University of Nigeria. That same year, he co-founded a publishing company
with Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo. In 1971, he became an editor for Okike, a
prestigious Nigerian literary magazine. In 1984, he founded Iwandi Ibo, a bilingual
publication dedicated to Igbo cultural life.
Achebe's university career was extremely successful: he was made Emeritus Professor at
the University of Nigeria in 1985; he taught at the University of Massachusetts and the
University of Connecticut; and he received over twenty honorary doctorates from
universities around the world. He also received Nigeria's highest honour for intellectual
achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award, in 1987. His novel Anthills of the
Savannah was shortlisted for the Booker Mac Connel Prize that same year.

Achebe was actively involved in the Nigerian politics of the 1960s. He actively
championed the case of Biafra. Shortly after the Nigerian Independence in 1960, there
was a civil war and the Eastern part of Nigeria seceded and a new land called Biafra was
established. The Biafran war which resulted in incredible death and destruction has been
written about by fellow Nigerian authors like Achebe, Flora Nwapa (1931-1993),
BuchiEmecheta (1944- ) and ChimamandaAdichie (1977- ). When Biafra, an Eastern
region of Nigeria declared Independence in 1967, Achebe put off writing long fiction and
spent thirty months travelling to Europe and the United States advocating for the new
country. It was during this time that he produced several short stories dealing with the
complexities of the Civil war and its aftermath.
In 1994 Achebe was forced to flee his country owing to the repressive regime which
threatened to imprison him. He lived in the United States where he held a teaching
position at Bard College till 1999. Later he joined Brown University as a Professor of
Africana Studies.

He served as the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nation‘s Population Fund. He spent
his life writing both fiction and non- fiction ranging from novels, short stories and an
autobiography titled There was a country: A Personal History of Biafra. Achebe has been
decorated with several literary awards including the Man Booker International Prize for
fiction in June 2007.

‗The Father of African literature‘ as Achebe was fondly called breathed his last in 2013 of
an undisclosed illness. He was 82 then. He is survived by his wife Christie, a partner of
over 40 years, his children- Chinelo, Ikechukwu, Chidi and Nwando and several
grandchildren.

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The Ibos –location and Literatures

The Ibloand

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Nigeria_political.png accessed
25/8/2015

The land of the Ibo tribe or the Iboland has been immortalized by Achebe. It is a
linguistic area which is primarily situated in the lowland forest region of Nigeria, with
minor parts in the Niger-Delta, where the Niger River meets the Atlantic Ocean. The
earliest found settlement in the land of the Ibos dates as far back as 4500 BC. However,
much of the cultural development and customs hearken back to the 10th century when
the Kingdom of Nri arose. It is the oldest monarchy to have been traced in the modern
day Nigeria. In Southern Iboland several groups developed, of which the most important
was the Aro confederacy. Iboland was part of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate of
the British Empire and was later amalgamated into the modern-day Nigeria in 1914.
Nigeria gained its independence from the British Colonial regime in 1960. Shortly
afterwards it was involved in its biggest and bloodiest civil war during Biafra's movement
for secession, which eventually ended in 1970 when this area was rejoined with Nigeria.

African Literature
African Literature is not a homogenized entity. Most literary works coming from the
African continent is categorized under the broad rubric of African Literature. Being a vast
continent with multiple countries, languages and dialects it is difficult to bring all literary
work from the continent under one broad umbrella. Currently Anglophone, Francophone
and Lusophone writing has brought the continent closer to the global literary community.
Essentially a land of orature and oral cultures, the genesis of this literature was through
stories, songs, fables and prose verses which were recited and performed. Praise singers

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

and bards who were popularly known as the ―griots‖ were revered in the society. They
performed the mythological or historical narratives to music. The languages being
peppered with innumerable proverbs would make for excellent story telling which would
be recited and sung and would be passed down from one generation to the next.

The colonial times saw a surge in written forms of literature along with the existing oral
forms. One of the earliest slave narratives was Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). The first Anglophone writing can be
dated as early as 1911 when Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford of the Gold Coast (now
Ghana) published Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation. Theatre as a genre
was introduced and became extremely popular. The noted playwright and author Ngugi
Wa Thiong‘o wrote The Black Hermit, a cautionary tale about "tribalism". The precursor
to Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart (1958) was The Palm Wine Drinkard written by Amos
Tutuola in 1952. While most themes dealt with independence and liberation in the
French occupied Africa particularly Senegal, there was an upsurge of the Negritude
Movement. The greatest exponent of the Negritutde Movement was Senegal‘s Leopold
Sedor Senghor. The Negritude Movement extolled the virtues of ancient Africa in a bid to
sensitize the masses about its lost glory and its great cultural traditions.

Négritude is a literary and ideological philosophy, developed by the Francophone African

intellectuals, writers, and politicians in France during the 1930s. Its initiators included
Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor (a future President of Senegal),
and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals took up cudgels against the
French colonialism and claimed that the best strategy to oppose it was to encourage a
common racial identity for Black Africans worldwide.

The term négritude takes its roots from the Latin "niger", which was used exclusively in
a racist context within France. It would be used to refer to black people as "art nigre".
Cesaire appropriated this word and used it to sing paeans on Africa emphasizing its past
greatness and urging the people to refrain from falling prey to assimilation. The term
was first used in its present sense by Césaire, in the third issue of L'Étudiant noir, a
magazine which he had started in Paris with fellow students Léopold Senghor and Léon
Damas, Gilbert Gratiant, Leonard Sainville, Louis T. Achille, Aristide Maugée, and
Paulette Nardal.

Contemporary writing from Africa boasts of stalwarts like NgugiWaThiong‘o, Buchi

Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo rubbing shoulders with young and vibrant writers such as
ChimamandaAdichie, Chika Unigwe, Leila Aboulela and many others. Literature produced
in Africa is studied and appreciated the world over for its richness, topicality and literary
value. In 1986Wole Soyinka became the first post-independence African writer to win
the Nobel Prize in literature. The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa was introduced in
1980 and is presented for the most outstanding work of the year in African literatures.

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

The famous language debate between Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiong‘o
Ngugi Wa Thiong‘o, a noted writer from Kenya stressed on the orality of the African
languages. According to him, literature from Africa would remain incomplete if it was not
written in the indigenous languages of Africa. For his part, he chose to write in Gikiyu in
order to defy the colonial take- over of his language and the publication industry. He
wrote in Gikuyu while serving term in the prison. His works became a rage. A debate
ensued as to whether the African writer should write in her/his mother tongue or the
language of the coloniser. Chinua Achebe argued that he would use the coloniser‘s
tongue like Caliban to ―talk back‖ to the Prospero like colonisers. The language debate
continues till date with intellectuals taking sides and bringing fresh nuances into the
discourse.

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart is a seminal text which became extremely popular right from its
publication in 1958. It has been translated into more than 50 languages and has sold
over 2 million copies worldwide. A seemingly unsentimental view of an insider has been
hailed as the true voice of Africa which talks to both the colonial master and the
colonised subjects. To his fellow Ibos, Achebe‘s text acts as a reminder of their erstwhile
culture and to the colonizer, it is a reiteration of the sophisticated culture which the tribe
had before it disintegrated under the onslaught of colonisation. ThingsFall Apart was
published by William Heinemann Limited, United Kingdom – a publication house
responsible for publishing a series of writing coming from Africa.

The Title of the Novel

“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,‖

W.B Yeats ―The Second Coming‖

―The Second Coming‖ is a poem which was composed by the famous Irish poet W. B.
Yeats in 1919. It was first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards
included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem
uses Christian imagery lamenting the situation in Post War Europe. It also bemoans the
loss of faith in the Christian world. Achebe uses these lines from Yeats‘ work to
emphasize the decline of the clannish way of life among the Ibos.Things Fall Apart
depicts a sophisticated way of life in the pre colonial Umofia. It is this world which is
rudely disrupted by the onslaught of the white coloniser and the missionaries. Suddenly
the familiar and the proud world of the Ibos is rent asunder under this twin attack.
According to Kathleen M Puhr it is important to understand the multiplicity of cultures.
She says ―…cultures are not better or worse than others, merely different.‖ (43)

The colonial forces invaded Africa (in this case the Iboland) with a carrot and a stick.
There was the District Administration with its posse of policemen and other law

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enforcement officers. A District Court was also set up. The Christian missionary came
alongside preaching love and benevolence. As the missionaries gained ground, the Ibos
were informed that their gods were fake and trusting in Jesus would not only win them
favours with the white man but also a job worth coveting. The first set of followers was
people whom the Ibos had treated as pariahs – the Osus or the untouchables. The
woman who had given birth to the twins but had lost them owing to the taboo
surrounding these births was the next to join. Nwoye was a rare find for the Mission as
he hailed from a good family and set in the trend of titled men‘s families converting to
Christianity.

With the onslaught of the twin forces of colonialism, the familiar world of the proud Ibos
began to crumble. The threads holding the clans together started to disintegrate and fall
apart.

Achebe’s Role as a Teacher

Chinua Achebe strongly believed that the role of an African writer is that of a teacher. In
his essay titled ―The novelist as Teacher‖, Achebe emphasizes the need for the novelist
to don the robe of a teacher. According to him it is important for an African writer to
teach the masses about their lost heritage. As a teacher – novelist, he wishes to remind
his fellow countrymen about their lost glory. Speaking to the Nigerian Library Association
in 1964, he specifically addressed the role of the writer in modern Nigeria. Before the
African writer could write about contemporary issues, Achebe maintained, he had first to
resolve the question of his own humanity.

As far as I am concerned the fundamental theme must first be disposed of. This
theme—put quite simply—is that African people did not hear of culture for the
first time from Europeans, that their societies were not mindless but frequently
had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and,
above all, they had dignity. It is this dignity that many African peoples all but lost
in the colonial period, and it is this dignity that they must now regain. The worst
thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their self-respect. The writer's
duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to
them, what they lost. There is a saying in Ibo that a man who can't tell where the
rain began to beat him can not know where he dried his body. The writer can tell
the people where the rain began to beat them. (2)

Achebe later restated this position

Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse—to help my society regain

belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-
abasement. And it is essentially a question of education, in the best sense of the
word. . . . 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. (3)

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bb/All_Things_Fall_Apart_(2011_film).jpg
Response to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Chinua Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart was written in response to Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of
Darkness. Reading this novel as part of his school curriculum, Achebe was extremely
disturbed by its biased portrayal of the Africans.In "An Image of Africa: Racism in
Conrad's Heart of Darkness," Chinua Achebe criticizes Joseph Conrad for his racist
stereotypes towards the continent and people of Africa. He claims that Conrad
propagated the "dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination" rather than
portraying the continent in its true form (1793). Africans were portrayed in Conrad's
novel as savages with no language other than grunts and with no "other occupations
besides merging into the evil forest or materializing out of it simply to plague Marlow"
(1792-3). To Conrad, the Africans were not characters in his story, but merely props.

Achebe opens his lecture, "An Image of Africa," with the story of a student who sent him
a letter saying how he was happy to learn about the ‗customs and superstitions of the
African tribes‘. Achebe wishes to sensitize his Western audience that the African cultures
were not superstitious but an alternate culture. To this effect he presents his characters
– particularly Okonkwo as an extremely proud human being. The language spoken by
the Ibos is sophisticated and complex. It is interwoven with proverbs. Later he even
depicts an Ibo man who acts as an interpreter for the European. This shows that the
average African can not only speak one language but two – in this case Ibo and English.

Achebe writes, "but they have at least the merit of being in their place" (1787). Conrad
made it clear in his novel that Africans belonged in Africa and not anywhere else. Achebe
shows that the White man enters a territory which is not his – the Iboland. He then,

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

through his various colonial policies wrecks the erstwhile culture and sows classism and
discontent among the masses.

By countering Conrad Achebe proves a very valid point. He shows that his ancestors had
an extremely well formed social structure and were definitely not the savages as
perceived and depicted by the West. He protests against depicting the Africans as
caricatures rather than depicting them as rational human beings.

Proverbs: The Palm wine with which words are eaten

Achebe‘s use of English in order to write his novels has come under criticism from some
quarters. His most noted detractor being Ngugi Wa Thinog‘o who denounces English as it
is a foreign language and chooses to express himself in Gikuyu. Achebe argues that his
fight is not against English – a language acquired by him due to his colonial education.
He loves the language and does not perceive it as a foreign tongue. On the contrary he
uses it with exemplary craftsmanship where the written word of English gets
interspersed with Ibo proverbs. He peppers his language with innumerable proverbs. His
unique experimentation with the language makes the essentially Anglophone text sound
like an Ibo text where the written word wears the flavour of an oral culture.

The usage of proverbs not only beautifies the language, it informs the reader about the
wisdom embedded in the Ibo world. The fact that age is respected is best reflected in the
eloquence of the old and wise people – the fathers and mothers of the tribe. Right at the
outset we are told ―The sun will shine on those who stand before it rather than those
who kneel under them (6) ―If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.‖(6) Both
these proverbs are in the context of the hard working Ibo man – in this case Okonkwo
whose hard work is extolled in all of Umuofia. We are told that it is not by virtue of birth
but by sheer dint of hard work that spells success for the Ibo man.

―A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing.‖ (15) This denotes a strangeness in
action as the toad is perceived to be a nocturnal animal. ―The lizard that jumped from
the high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no one did.‖ (16) This
Proverb is more in the vein of blowing one‘s own trumpet. In this case it seems to imply
that if you don‘t respect yourself, no one else will. ―Eneke the bird says since men have
learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to fly without perching.‖ (16) This proverb
is self explanatory. ―When a man says yes his chi says yes also.‖ (19) This would loosely
translate as God helps those who help themselves.

Through the usage of proverbs in the speech patterns, Achebe achieves what he has set
out to prove. A tribe with such sophisticated skills of oration can- not be dubbed as
primitive or uncivilized. Also apart from the linguistic excellence, the reader is made
privy to a holistic world view where the human beings, animals and nature form the core
of the civilization – each having its own space and importance.

Okonkwo: The tragic hero

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http://tfamaryknoll.wikispaces.com/file/view/okonkwo2.jpg/88051937/509x391/okonkw
o2.jpg

Okonkwo‘s character is partly autobiographical and has been loosely modelled on

Achebe‘s grandfather. He is the central protagonist of the novel who is known far and
wide for his prowess in wrestling. Okonkwo exemplifies the Ibo clannish pride as through
sheer hard work and grit he rises to be one of the greatest men in all Umuofia. The text
opens with a long description of young Okonkwo‘s prowess in wrestling establishing him
as an exemplary warrior.

Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame
rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had
brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the cat. Amalinze was the
great wrestler, who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino. He
was called the cat because his back would never hit the earth. It was this man
who Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest
since the founder of their town engaged in a spirit of the wild for seven days and
seven nights. (1)

Okonkwo‘s start in life was extremely humble. His father had died penniless having
bequeathed nothing to his son – the mandatory barn or a wife.However, not one to give
up, Okonkwo struggles hard to overcome all adversities. He borrows yams from a rich
elder called Nwakibie and starts farming. In the Ibo way of life, a person‘s worth was
delineated by his prowess rather than his lineage. Through sheer grit and hard work
Okonkwo is able to master his destiny and goes on to become one of the most noted and
respected men in Umoufia. Talking about his struggles Achebe writes:

Share-cropping was a very slow way of building up a barn of one's own. After all
the toil one only got a third of the harvest. But for a young man whose father had
no yams, there was no other way. And what made it worse in Okonkwo's case
was that he had to support his mother and two sisters from his meagre harvest.
And supporting his mother also meant supporting his father. She could not be
expected to cook and eat while her husband starved. And so at a very early age

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when he was striving desperately to build a barn through share-cropping

Okonkwo was also fending for his father's house. It was like pouring grains of
corn into a bag full of holes. (4)

That year was also one of the worst in the farming history. The rains were bitter,
incessant and untimely. However young Okonkwo was not one to give up. He toiled hard
and through sheer hard work he was able to have a reasonably good harvest when most
of his fellow farmers had given up in despair. ―Okonkwo remembered that tragic year
with a cold shiver throughout the rest of his life. It always surprised him when he
thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair. He knew that he was a
fierce fighter, but that year-had been enough to break the heart of a lion."Since I
survived that year," he always said, "I shall survive anything." He put it down to his
inflexible will.‖ (4)

In the next two decades Okonkwo had established himself as one of the Lords of the
clan. He had married three wives and had eight children. His barn was full of yams and
he was regarded with awe and envy by most of his clansmen. Yet it was well known that
if anyone deserved this prosperity, it was Okonkwo. He had earned it with sheer hard
work.

"Looking at a king's mouth," said an old man, "one would think he never sucked
at his mother's breast." He was talking about Okonkwo, who had risen so
suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of the clan.

But it was really not true that Okonkwo's palm-kernels had been cracked for him
by a benevolent spirit. He had cracked them himself. Anyone who knew his grim
struggle against poverty and misfortune could not say he had been lucky. If ever
a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo. (5)

Okonkwo‘s tragic flaw lay in his deep seated fear of being perceived as weak. Having
suffered the ignominy of having a wastrel and a failure for a father, his fear of being
likened to him continued to goad him forward. Such was his obsession to disassociate
himself from his father that he bent backwards to prove his masculinity. The Ibo world
view respects a man‘s hard work and prowess but also expects him to be a sensitive and
good human being. In order to emphasize his masculinity, Okonkwo denies the feminine
in him thereby coming across as brusque, hardened and rude – a man incapable of
displaying his softer emotions. It is this obsessive desire to prove his masculinity that
eventually results in his isolation leading to his very tragic death.Okonkwo‘s brusqueness
is seen right from the outset. In a friendly meeting of the clan members he had been
contradicted by a kinsman. ―Only a week ago a man had contradicted him at a kindred
meeting which they held to discuss the next ancestral feast. Without looking at the man
Okonkwo had said: "This meeting is for men." The man who had contradicted him had
no titles. That was why he had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's
spirit.‖ (3) The clan elders had however supported the man in question and Okonkwo
had been forced to apologise. This aggressiveness towards anything which is perceived
by Okonkwo as ―female‖ eventually leads to his downfall. It is to be noted that though
Okonkwo is a titled man, the clan comes out in support of the man whom he had
insulted.

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

His most brutal act is the murder of Ikemefuna, a child who had been entrusted to his
care by the clan. Ikemefuna had lived with Okonkwo‘s family for three long years. He
addressed him as father and was loved and regarded as an older sibling by Nwoye,
Okonkwo‘s son. When the oracles pronounced Ikemefuna‘s death, the elders had a word
of caution for Okonkwo. Ezeudu tells Okonkwo, "That boy calls you father. Do not bear a
hand in his death." Okonkwo was surprised, and was about to say something when the
old man continued: "Yes, Umuofia has decided to kill him. The Oracle of the Hills and the
Caves has pronounced it. They will take him outside Umuofia as is the custom, and kill
him there. But I want you to have nothing to do with it. He calls you his father." (22)

In spite of being warned it was Okonkwo whose machete cut Ikemefuna down. Crazed
with the fear of being misjudged by his people, he kills the boy whom he had loved as
his own. Not only does it reflect a breach of faith forged between a father figure and a
son, it also goes against the grain of the Ibo way of life. Obeirika was to remind him
later. ―What you have done will not please the Earth. It is the kind of action for which
the goddess wipes out whole families." (24) The fear of being perceived as weak is
deeply entrenched in his mind so much so that he says, ―"When did you become a
shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in all the nine
villages for your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to
pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a
woman indeed." (23)

Though Okonkwo‘s chi had always been favourable, misfortune dogs him when he
inadvertently kills a youth during the ritual funeral dance. He is banished from Umuofia
for seven long years. Though his mother‘s people are extremely kind to him, Okonkwo
regards these years of banishment as wasted years. It is at this time that Nwoye joins
the Christian missionaries causing further distress to Okonkwo. His return to Umuofia
was not what he had envisaged it to be. Things around him had changed and his position
in his village was not the same anymore. ―Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not
just a personal grief. He moaned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling
apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably
become soft like women.‖ (134)

Okonkwo was one of the six men from Umuofia who were invited for a ‗palaver‘ with the
White District Commissioner. They were imprisoned for no reason and tonsured before
being let off – an insult which no self respecting Ibo man could forgive. In Umuofia the
clan met in order to take adecision on the matter when the White man‘s messenger
interrupted them. In a fit of anger Okonkwo killed him. He had expected his clan to rally
round him but was shocked to hear murmurs of ―Why did he do it?‖ (150) Okonkwo
knew his people would not go to war. Something around him had changed and things
had truly fallen apart.

Next morning Okonkwo was found hanging from a tree. His friend Obeirika was
distraught with grief but was unable to cut the body loose as it was an offence against
the Mother Earth. Okonkwo could not be given a burial by his clansmen either as
committing suicide was seen as abominable. Crazed with grief Obeirika says, ―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....‖ (150)

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Okonkwo‘s death was indeed triggered off by his face off with the White administration.
However the progress towards his alienation had begun long back. The fear of being
dubbed as effeminate forced him to wear a rough exterior. He had alienated himself
from his family and Nwoye could never forgive him for what he had done to Ikemefuna.
Okonkwo was sad and lonely which became worse due to his banishment from Umuofia.
Unlike Obeirika he had not learnt to mould himself according to the changing times only
to realise at one time that he was standing alone – sadly marginalised.

The Social Fabric of the Ibos

Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart represents the cultural roots of the Ibos in order to
provide self-confidence to his own people.He sees his duty as a writer in the new nation
as that ofone sensitizing his people to the dignity which they had lost during the colonial
period.He sets out to illustrate that before the European colonial powers entered Africa
that the Ibos "had a philosophy of great depth and valueand beauty, that they had
poetry and, above all, they had dignity"(Rhoades 2) The Ibos of Umuofia are depicted as
an essentially agrarian economy. To this effect the celebrations in the village are centred
round planting, harvesting and such like. Also celebrated are marriages, child birth and
funerary rituals. The entire clan comes together to celebrate each occasion with grace
and dignity.

The New Yam festival would be held every year before harvest began. The festival was
held in the honour of goddess Ani, the earth goddess. Yam foo foo and vegetable soup
would be the staple food which would be cooked in plenty. The festivities would continue
with the drums beating announcing the start of yet another wrestling match – a
favourite of Okonkwo and Ekwefi.
The meetings in the village would be presided upon by men of some eminence. Both
parties would be allowed to speak before ―Evil Forest‖ would pass judgement. Being
sympathetic to both the complainant and the opposing party, the judgements would
most often be fair. Achebe, talking of the importance of ideals, refers to theexample of
village life based on a kind of equality. "This," he says,
is what the Igbo people chose, the small village entity that was completelyself-
governing....The reason why they chose it [this system]was because they wanted to be
in control of their lives. So if thecommunity says that we will have a meeting in the
market place tomorrow everybody should go there, or could go there. And everybody
could speak (Achebe 2001, 43).

However, the Ibo world is far from utopic. Unoka, the music loving father of Okonkwo
was regarded as a failure because he failed at farming – a job which determined one‘s
position in the society and enabled one to take titles. Nwoye too reflects his
grandfather‘s spirit. He enjoys the stories in his mother‘s hut and shrinks from the
―masculine‖ tasks his father wishes him to do. His respect for his father‘s way of life is
shattered because of the punishment meted out to the innocent Ikemefuna. The twins
were regarded as an anomaly and they were thrown into the evil forest and left to die.
The Osus or the untouchables were the worst sufferers. They had to wear their hair long
as a mark of their caste and no self respecting Ibo would share a meal with them. All
these and many others show the Ibos as a tribe with their share of greatnesses and
flaws adding to the Realism of the novel.

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

The Position of Women

The Ibo Women

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Achebe has come under severe criticism for his depiction of women. Women are shown
to be the weaker sex and at the mercy of their men. She is depicted as kneeling before
the husband, being beaten up by him and over all - a suppressed entity. A man‘s
success is measured by the number of wives he keeps so effectively she is commodified
as well. On the face of it the world of Things Fall Apart appears to be a masculine world.
Historically the Ibo woman is known to have been quite the opposite. She is known to be
a great trader and is quite capable of taking care of herself and her children.She trades,
works in the farm and is financially independent.It is said that what Achebe left out, his
contemporary Flora Nwapa filled in by rewriting the woman‘s story into the discourse in
her famous novels Efuru and Idu.

However a close look at the novel shows that in this apparently masculine and
patriarchal world, the feminine exists in all walks of Ibo life. The Agbala, mouthpiece of
the great Oracle is a woman. The Earth goddess is the most potent among goddesses
due to the society‘s reliance on agriculture. One of the most vibrant characters of the
novel is Ekwefi who chooses Okonkwo as her husband. She walks away from a previous
marriage to enter into his hut in order to be his wife. When Ezinma falls ill, Ekwefi
follows the Agbala right into the shrine – something which even Okonkwo is fearful of
doing. A popular Ibo name is Nneka meaning Mother is Supreme.

The society is divided into male and female – there are male stories and female stories.
The male stories extol war while the feminine stories are hummable songs with

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

moralistic endings. This story telling happens in the mother‘s hut which is frequented by
the children. The crops are male and female – yam being the male crop and cassava, the
female crop. In the tribal world of the Ibos the men and women are equal contributors to
the economy, yet Achebe‘s world appears essentially male. I argue that the essentially
male world depicted by Achebe has an all pervasive female world which coexists with the
male world. Destruction befalls those who deny the feminine principle and Okonkwo‘s
tragedy is reflexive of it.

Conclusion

Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart is a story of the humanity – its faults and foibles, its
greatnesses and abysmal lows. It is a universal story with far reaching popularity which
has touched the lives of millions of readers globally. The language being simple, it has
been prescribed in schools and colleges across the globe. Achebe‘s trilogy depicting
Nigeria‘s past, present and future has catapulted him to the position of a prophet who
was able to look into the seeds of time and predict the future of his people.

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Glossary

Ibo – The Ibo people are an ethnic group of South Eastern Nigeria

Iroko - A large hardwood tree from the west coast of tropical Africa

Umuofia – A fictional village in Iboland where Okonkwo resides

Mbaino - A rival village to Unuofia

The New Yam Festival – Harvest festival which takes place in the end of the rainy season
in early August

Evil Forest -- The nine egwugwu or judges represents a village of the clan and their
leader was called Evil forest.

Osu – A group of people regarded as untouchables. The Osus were not allowed to shave
their hair as a mark of respect to the freeborn.

Nneka – Meaning literally ―mother is supreme‖ – a popular Ibo name

Chi – Personal God

Agbala – The Oracle. Achebe bases the Agbala Oracle (the Oracle of the Hills and the
Caves) on the Awka Oracle that was destroyed by the British. Chielo was the priestess of
Agbala.

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 Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Bibliography

Primary Text

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann, 1996.

Secondary Texts.

Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." The
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed.Vincent B. Leitch. New York:
Norton, 2001. (1783-1794).

Baldwin, Gordon. Strange Peoples and Stranger Customs. New York: W. W. Nortn
and Company Inc, 1967.

Booker, M. Keith. The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood

Press, 2003.

Booker, M. Keith. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe [Critical Insights].

Pasadena, Calif: Salem Press, 2011.

Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New
York: The Macmillan,1942.

Girard, Rene. Violence and the Sacred. Trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1977.

Rhoads, Diana Akers (September 1993). "Culture in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall
Apart". African Studies Review. 36(2): 61–72.

Roberts, J.M. A Short History of the World. New York: Oxford University Press,
1993.

Rosenberg, Donna. World Mythology: An Anthology of the Great Myths and Epics.
Lincolnwood, Illinois: NTC Publishing Group, 1994.

Institute of Lifelong Learning, University of Delhi