Things Fall Apart – Title

Postcolonial literatures, as a literature of cultural, political, and social transformation, endeavour

to subvert colonial discourses by adapting traditional cultures to newer conditions. They aim at
cultural revivalism and are theoretically defined as the textual process through which formerly
colonised people assert their difference from, resistance to and negotiation with European
colonial masters and cultures and develop strategies to tackle contemporary globalisation and
neo-colonial processes of domination by Euro-American powers. Chinua Achebe, in Things Fall
Apart (1958), provides a revisionist take on the colonial encounter between the Igbo people and
British colonisers. As a colonised subject, he engages in what Bhabha theorises as an “inscription
and articulation of culture’s hybridity”, “a double articulation” and “a complex strategy of
reform” enmeshed in the duality of deference and disobedience characteristic of the last stage of
‘mimicry’.

Achebe’s subject emerges from a hybrid ‘third space’ meant for articulating resistance. It is
necessary to first identify a critical context of historical, cultural, and linguistic in-betweenness
within which it may be placed. In a 1998 interview, Achebe expatiated on the novel’s subject,
claiming that he was interested in the “process of colonialization, of dispossession of a people of
their land, of their culture, of their name”, in catching as many epochs as possible of the
colonialization story. However, his radical subject and methods of representation raise several
theoretical debates regarding where the postcolonial writer situates their past, and how they can
represent it in the colonizer's language.

Achebe’s title, perhaps inadvertently, incites such a discourse of postcoloniality. He borrows the
phrase “Things Fall Apart” from W.B Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’, quoting it in 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.

Yeats employed the metaphor of an unleashed falcon’s gyratory flight to signify the cyclical
movements of Western history, periodically convulsions as one epoch ends, and another begins.
Achebe appropriates and subverts Yeats’ Eurocentric vision, depicting an African civilization
convulsed and overwhelmed by the arrival of European colonizers. Things Fall Apart functions
as a stridently nationalist literary recuperation aimed to demonstrate that the Nigerian past was
assuredly not an ‘antithesis of...civilization’. As the first African novel to ‘write back’ to the
European centre, it expressly contested and subverted colonialist discourses in a literary form
employed by Western writers to perpetuate the disparaging stereotyping of Africa. its people and
cultures.
Achebe’s approach to the tragic fate of the Igbo community falling apart is radical in that its
ironic open-endedness fosters numerous internal paradoxes. Furthermore, as Afam Ebeogu and
Abiola Irele argue, by establishing an inextricable link between the tribal hero, Okonkwo and his
community’s fate, Achebe delineates not only Okonkwo’s predicament but depicts a cultural and
historical tragedy. In a 1967 interview with Robert Serumaga, Achebe explicitly delineated the
political implications of the relationship between history and tragedy in the novel. Achebe
engages with history, aiming to write a national history of Igboland, an adversarial history meant
to decentralise distorted Eurocentric narratives, and finally, a metahistory foregrounding how the
postcolonial writer can locate how things fell apart.

In this he goes against the normative depiction of Africa in Eurocentric English literature.
Achebe critiques Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson. Cary's picture of Africa as unchanging and static
develops from his vision as an English official writing within the culture system which sought to
justify colonialism. Achebe responds to such a view: “it was clear to me that it was a most
superficial picture of - not only of the country - but even of the Nigerian character, and so I
thought if this [Mister Johnson] was famous, then perhaps someone ought to try and look at this
from the inside.” Achebe’s title, with its reference to Yeats' concept of vast historical cycles,
implies that in challenging Cary's story, he also challenges a whole vision of history and a
particular ordering of society and literature.

In repudiating such 'superficial’ observation, Achebe challenges not only the vision but also the
mode of storytelling. His approach to the novel is comparable to Brecht's approach to epic
theatre, influenced by folk and oral forms and conventions. Achebe rejects the monologism of
Eurocentric forms in favour of dialogic novel in the Bakhtinian sense, to nuance the complex
interaction among the forces that bring about the disintegration of Igbo society. The novel’s
tripartite structure traces the process of disintegration (both individual and collective). Part 1
focuses on the portrayal of Okonkwo and his psychology, and that of the social, political, and
religious life of Umuofia; Part 2 on Okonkwo’s exile and the beginning of the colonisation
process; and Part 3 on the eventual confrontation between Achebe’s protagonist and the British
forces which strikes a deathblow to Umuofian society. Or so it seems. Arguably, Achebe does
not polarise the Igbo and the British as binaries but examines their internal and external
complexities authentically.

Thus, in Part 1, Achebe engages in painstaking ethnography, to present the insider’s view of the
Igbo community. He delineates the several codes and values that they embody, the texture of
their lives, their political systems, and religious cosmology. Igbo society embodies a military
ethos, a democratic appreciation of individual effort, and worships a cult of masculinity.
Contrary to the Hegelian ethno-centrism that saw Africa as stagnant without a past or future, here
is evident the black aesthetic that Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott in I Am Because We Are
describe as the formation of identity through a “set of shared beliefs, patterns of behaviour,
shared assumptions.” In its insistence upon “solid personal achievements” and the fact that “a
man was judged according to his worth and not the worth of his father”, the Igbo community is
progressive.

Achebe emphasises upon this fact through the juridical system of the Egwugwu, highlighting
how matters of the land, whether personal, or in larger cases of martial disputes concerning the
whole community, are presided over and arbitrated fairly by ancestral presences. As Achebe
observes: “the land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors…A
man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer to his
ancestors.” The various rituals such as those concerning marriage negotiations are also shown to
be judicious and courteous, exemplifying a high degree of social cohesion not only within
Umuofia, but among all nine Igbo villages.

Achebe’s recollection of the legendary wrestling match between Okonkwo and Amalinze the
Cat, a Barthesian “sum of spectacles” conveying symbolic overtones establishes him as a quasi-
mythic national hero. His titles, his agrarian industriousness, and authority are lauded in and
outside his village, and he is considered the “greatest warrior” of his clan. Yet, while Achebe
celebrates Okonkwo’s unwavering determination, strong work ethic, and fierce singularity, he
does not eulogize the hero. Instead, he employs contrastive parallelism based on an ideological
conflict between Okonkwo and his father, Unoka, to expose the hero’s flaws. Unoka's non-
achieving, romantic, and escapist spirit makes him a pariah within the strongly martial Umuofian
culture. In opposition, Okonkwo’s aspiration and high social standing characterise him as a self-
made man who “did not have the start in life which many young men usually had”.

Achebe subtly interrogates the patriarchal and patrilineal society’s obsessive preoccupation with
masculinity grounded upon the repression of finer human qualities like empathy and a
degradation of the feminine through such intergenerational friction. Okonkwo’s belief that
showing emotion or “affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was
strength” and anger. He ill-treats his wives in ways unbecoming of a hero, exhibiting
chauvinistic masculinity. In his hatred for the ‘feminised’ Unoka, he pre-empts judgement upon
his father, which even the Igbo pantheon reserves until after death, flouting a core communal
value. Okonkwo’s conformity is perversion. equating ‘manliness’ to fierceness and violence, he
becomes a menace to his society even within the limits of its code.” The novel’s title undercuts
this process via Yeats’ image of the messiah as “rough beast” whose gaze is as “blank and
pitiless as the sun.”

Okonkwo’s character throws light upon inequities inherent in the community. The gendered
nature of their thought is often undeniably misogynistic, embroiled in a dual sex-politics wherein
women like Ezeani, the priestess of the Earth Goddess Ani, and Chielo, the Agbala’s mouthpiece
hold immense power over the community, while ordinarily women are marginalised by the
patriarchy. The starkest display of such gendering is seen after the killing of Ikemefuna. In his
fear “of being thought weak”, Okonkwo dehumanises himself, participating in the ritual sacrifice
of the boy. He pursues distinction with such obsessive single-mindedness that it degenerates into
egocentrism. Ezeudu’s funeral rites provide an ironic, proleptic view of all that Okonkwo could
have been. Achebe has him commit the ‘feminine’ error of inadvertence in accidentally killing
Ezeudu’s young son. The nemesis that he had tried to avoid by even killing his surrogate son
causes his ultimate downfall. Okonkwo’s exile rings a premonitory threat to the old-world falling
apart as Achebe problematizes his hero’s masculinity with the retrogressive topographical
dislocation into the feminine motherland where ‘Mother is supreme’.

In Part 2, Achebe focuses attention upon the gradual onset of the colonising mission earlier
foreshadowed in the ‘the Tortoise and the birds’, a deceptively simple fable that allegorises the
coloniser’s arrival. Just as with the Miltonic locust imagery of the previous chapters, the tortoise
embodies the nefarious and opportunistic influence of the colonising power and the culture abuse
they commit. In Chapter 20, Obierika declares that:

“The white man 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 the things that held us together and
we have fallen apart."

This points towards the history links of white colonisation with the evangelical mission - the
theological perspective regarding the conversion of the minority sections of the natives whom
the colonisers sought to attract and use as mediators in colonial administration. Colonial
aggression rooted in economic and political interests were inextricably linked with the spiritual
and religious angle of salvation to be achieved through the new religion, which in turn fulfilled
the aims of the imperialists. Achebe creates a counter-discourse to the usual Eurocentric vision
deeming the white men a “little band of fugitives”, subverting notions of otherness, wherein the
whites are like ‘albinos’ or ‘lepers’. He further depicts the structural binary of blackness and
whiteness in the Igbos who side with the British. They are, as Fanon calls, black men with white
masks.

This insider-outsider dichotomy is seen most strongly in Nwoye, whose defection to Christianity
is a rebellion against his father’s and his society’s authoritarian diktats. Yet, despite Achebe’s
acute criticism of the colonising power, he acknowledges the flaws in his own cultures - the
image of the twins left to die in the wild haunts Nwoye so strongly that he opts to embrace a
religion that advocates mercy instead of normalising killing. It is a long culmination of the
resentfulness that has been growing in him since Ikemefuna’s killing. However, Achebe is quick
to show how the eccelsiatical mission is only a garb behind which “the white men had also
brought a government” and “a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in
ignorance”.

Institutional oppositions between the new and older faith, like the conflict between Mr. Kiaga
and the outcasts exemplifies the coloniser’s neurotic obsession with taming the natives.
Okonkwo senses the threat to his cultural heritage, the impending shift of the cultural centre, and
the devastation of the community. As the British “divide and rule”, ruthlessly annihilating those
who do not submit to them, the destruction of the pre-colonial Igbo order is inevitable. However,
Achebe represents the sad fate of the Igbo community with an uneasy awareness of the
contradictions inscribed in an emergent syncretic culture. His regret at the loss of a pristine
culture mingles with the realisation of its reprehensible potential. Contrarily, while the ruthless
economic exploitation, urbanisation and westernisation is deprecated, its possibilities for vertical
mobility, freedom and self-fulfilment are highlighted, as Achebe foregrounds the productive
ambivalence and ambiguous intricacies of the colonial influence.

The molestation of the village leaders in the local office triggers the community’s eventual
falling apart. As the malevolent new government disregards wrongs done to the colonised
subjects, the question that plagues Okonkwo’s mind is: will Umuofia go to war? Unfortunately,
he realises that during his seven-year exile, Umuofia has changed. In his final act of resistance,
he stands alone. He is the man who “fails alone” in trying to defend his national heritage.
Equating Okonkwo's demise with the collapse of Igbo culture, Achebe suggests that Okonkwo
“was one of the greatest men in Umuofia", implying that Okonkwo’s suicide represents the
larger collective suicide that the Umuofia has committed.

However, this is counterpointed to the heavily ironic perspective of the District Commissioner
who presents Igbo society from the outside as an object of anthropological curiosity, deeming its
collapse not as an African tragedy but as a European triumph. Achebe demonstrates that, within
a colonial context, the Foucauldian power-knowledge nexus is not merely a speculative theory
but an inescapable reality. The District Commissioner’s final thoughts are intriguing:

“The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make
interesting reading. [...] He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought:
The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.”

The irony in these statements redefines one’s point of view on the events of the novel. Achebe
provides a rather complicated yet significant qualification of what has gone before - a distinctly
new ending that reflects his own ambivalent attitude to the colonisation story he writes.

As the newly anointed protagonist leaves deep in thought about how the dead man’s story might
enter the wider colonial picture, Achebe’s title, and epigraph from Yeats — “things fall apart, the
center cannot hold” — acquires new force, inflected with the strained power relations of
colonialism. In these moments, the protagonist is undone, and becomes little more than a small,
anonymous part in a vastly different story. Just as Yeats’ speaker stands on the precipice of a
cataclysmic historical paradigm shift, gazing into the past and future, telescoping history and
prophecy within the fires, the reading District Commissioner gazes at the projected annihilation
of Umuofia and of stories like Okonkwo’s, standing at the diegetic border of Achebe’s text and
at the crossroads of a continent’s history. Achebe shows how the historic cataclysm of
imperialism is reduced to the banality of a bureaucrat’s colonial history as the periphery of
Umuofia is breached under the sign of an apocalyptic vision of the dissolution of civilizations.

Achebe’s masterstroke in Things Fall Apart is that his title hints at a latent metanarrative. In
‘The African Writer and the English Language’ he writes: “The African writer should […] aim at
fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.”
As he re-views and re-writes the story of his community’s past appropriating the language of the
coloniser, what falls apart is the Eurocentric stranglehold upon the representation of the Other.
The linguistic paradox is highlighted by direct reference to the western literary tradition in the
Yeatsian title, which now belongs also to the Achebe. It is not only a reminder of that tradition
but is also appropriate to the novel's record of the destruction of a civilization; at the same time,
one recalls that Yeats' theory of the cycles of history ignores African history, as does European
thought generally. Achebe’s narrative voice is posited in opposition to the pre-existing
hegemony European colonisers as it represents a collective voice through which the artist speaks
for his society. Achebe rarely lets his reader forget the otherness of Igbo culture and the language
which embodies it. He normalises not ‘explaining’ his culture to the world, insisting upon, and
celebrating its otherness.

Achebe’s perception as he looks back to the paroxysms that lacerated Nigeria with the arrival of
the British colonial power, and the irredeemable historical rupture that this event had brought to
Igbo civilization, exhibits an awareness of the cataclysmic changes that it wrought upon his own
time. Thus, the novel, with its lack of teleology suggests that the domain of postcoloniality is not
simply a process which is dialectical and reductive, but a multifaceted process within which
several currents jostle and clash, falling apart and gyrating into new worlds that readers must
learn to read critically and palimpsestically.