10 Chinua Achebe : Things Fall Apart – The Text

Prof. T. Vijay Kumar

Contents

• Introduction

• Significance of the title

• Yeats and Achebe

• Characters

• Plot

• Structure of the novel

• Theme

• Narrative technique

• The novel as a tragedy

• Conclusion

Introduction

Things Fall Apart is the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s first novel. It was published in 1958, two years before Nigeria became independent in 1960. It is easily the most widely read text of African literature worldwide. The novel deals with the theme of colonial encounter. Although British presence in Nigeria goes back to the 18th century, Britain took firm control of Nigeria by the 1880s. In recognition of the strong presence of Britain in West Africa, Nigeria was ‘given’ to Britain at the Berlin Conference of 1884 where European powers divided Africa among themselves to avoid conflicts. Thus, the British colonial period in Nigeria is from 1885-1960.

The time of action in Things Fall Apart is the late 19th century, around the 1890s, and the place of action is Umuofia, a fictional village in Eastern Nigeria. The dominant ethnic group in Eastern Nigeria is the Igbos—the Yorubas being the major ethnic group in Western Nigeria.

Things Fall Apart is about the rise and fall of a self-made man called Okonkwo. In spite being the son of an unsuccessful father, Okonkwo emerges as an important leader of his community due to his hard work and determination. However, Okonkwo perishes in his attempt to resist the sweeping changes introduced by the colonial rule. While the first part of the novel depicts Okonkwo’s rise as a key member of his community, despite the handicap of being the son of an unsuccessful and ‘effeminate’ father, the later part of the novel describes the fall of Okonkwo due to his inflexibility and flawed understanding of the values of his culture.

TitleThe novel takes its title from WB Yeats’ poem titled “The Second Coming” (1919). Achebe uses the following lines from Yeats’ poem as an 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.

However, Achebe does not use these lines merely for the sake of novelty or as an embellishment. There is in Achebe a deep understanding of Yeats’ vision of history and civilization which is outlined in Yeats’ non-fictional work titled A Vision (1925).

Yeats and Achebe

According to Yeats in A Vision, every civilization is an ordered structure created out of  chaos. In the process of creating a structure, every civilization includes and privileges certain values while excluding and undervaluing others. While the elements that are left out of the structure constantly keep attacking it from outside, the values that are marginalized or neglected form the internal cracks that threaten the structure from inside. Civilizations, thus, collapse from both within and are overwhelmed from without. Their fall is the result of a combination of the widening of internal cracks and the attack from outside forces. The fall of a civilization, according to Yeats, is natural, inevitable, and is a part of the process of evolution. However, all civilizations are replaced by an alternative structure that appears to  be its exact opposite, built as it is from all that was overlooked and undervalued. This is a view of history and of the rise and fall of civilizations that Achebe seems to subscribe to. Hence, Achebe’s use of Yeats’ lines as an epigraph of the novel is based not merely on esthetic considerations but on a deep understanding and agreement with Yeats’ overall philosophy of the rise and fall of civilizations.

Characters

Okonkwo, the tragic protagonist, is the central character of the novel and the novel revolves around him. He is a wrestler, a warrior, a self-made man, and an important member of his community. Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, is another important character in the novel because the relationship between father-son is an important theme in the novel. Unoka is the exact opposite of Okonkwo: he was a failure and he was considered a ‘womanly’ person because  he loved ‘womanly’ things like music and did not like ‘manly’ things like war.

Okonkwo’s son Nwoye is the next important character. Nwoye is very unlike his father Okonkwo and is more like his grandfather Unoka. Like his grandfather, Unoka too loves music and stories—qualities that Okonkwo considers ‘womanly’. Later in the novel, Nwoye converts to Christianity and the primary attraction for him in the new religion is its music. Another son-like character in the novel is Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna is a boy from another  village who is under guardianship of Okonkwo. Ikemefuna is a kind of boy Okonkwo would have liked to have as his son. But in the course of the novel Ikemefuna is sacrificed in the novel and his death creates a chasm between Okonkwo and Nwoye which eventually leads to Nwoye converting to Christianity.

Ezinma is Okonkwo’s favourite daughter and she has all the qualities that Okonkwo is fond of. So much so, Okonkwo often wishes that Ezinma were born as a boy. Despite his fondness for her, however, Okonkwo never expresses his affection for her for fear of being considered unmanly—in his view display of affection is a ‘womanly’ quality.

Thus, we have fathers (Unoka and Okonkwo), sons (Okonkwo and Nwoye), son-like characters (Ikemefuna), and daughters who the fathers wish were sons (Ezinma). Then there are a couple of other character among whom the more important one is Obierika. Obierika is Okonkwo’s best friend. He is a wise man and Okonkwo respects and admires him. The character of Obierika acts as a counterfoil to that of Okonkwo in the novel. While Okonkwo is a man of action, Obierika is a man of thought, and he often corrects Okonkwo’s misunderstanding of the values of his culture. Then there is the character of Uchendu, Okonkwo’s maternal uncle in whose house Okonkwo takes shelter during the seven years of exile from Umuofia. It is Uchendu who exposes Okonkwo’s faulty understanding of the cultural values of his community, particularly of the importance of the female principle.

Plot

Okonkwo is a self-made man. Despite the legacy of a weak and effeminate father, he emerges as an important leader of his community. Because of his stature, Okonkwo is given the custody of Ikemefuna, a young boy surrendered to Umuofia by another village as fine for the killing of young woman of Umuofia. Ikemefuna is later sacrificed as instructed by the village oracle and his death in the hands of Okonkwo creates a rift between Okonkwo and his son Nwoye which eventually leads to Nwoye’s breaking away from his father.

Another crucial event in the novel is that of Okonkwo accidentally killing a clansman. Since it was an inadvertent act, it is considered a ‘female’ crime and Okonkwo is ordered to live outside Umouofia for seven years. Okonkwo reluctantly takes shelter in Mbanta, his  maternal uncle’s village. During his absence from Umuofia, the white man arrives and introduces a new religion, administration, judiciary, and police. (The Kenya writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o once termed “the Bible, the coin, the gun” as the holy trinity of colonialism).

When Okonkwo returns to Umuofia after his seven-year exile, he finds that the village has changed in many respects. He tries to regain his lost position in the community through his acts of bravery. When the village decides to demolish the church set up by the white man because of a crime committed by a new covert against the ancestral spirits, Okonkwo takes an active part in the action. However, the village elders, including Okonkwo are arrested by the white man and are humiliated in the prison. They are finally released after the village pays a collective fine. After their return, the village meets once again to decide on the next course of action. Okonkwo makes a strong argument in favour of waging a war against the white man.

While the meeting is going on, messengers of the white man arrive with the intention of stop the meeting. In a fit of anger, Okonkwo beheads one of them with his machete.

Okonkwo expects the village to approve and even appreciate his strong action. Unfortunately, however, the village is now divided and people no longer speak in one voice. Instead of a unanimous approval, Okonkwo hears them asking ‘Why did he do it?’ When Okonkwo realizes that people are no longer with him and that the community now has divided opinion, he is deeply disheartened. He knows well the consequences of killing a white man’s messenger and instead of being captured and punished by the while man, he decides to end his life. He commits suicide by hanging himself from a tree in the village centre. And ironically, nobody from the village for which Okonkwo fought for, even touches his dead body because committing suicide is considered an abomination among his people. So, his body remains hanging till the white man arrives with his retinue and brings it down. So, this is the story of a man who tries to resist change, to fight against alien values, and to oppose colonialism and pays a price for it.

The structure of the novel

Things Fall Apart has 25 chapters which are divided into three parts. Part I is the longest with 13 chapters and Part II and III consist of six chapters each. In a way, the structure of the  novel is influenced by Yeats’ poem which provides the title. If we read not just the four lines used by Achebe as the epigraph but the two lines that follow the four lines, we can understand the structure better. Thus, the relevant lines from Yeats’ poem read:

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.

The  blood-dimmed  tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

The additional two lines help us appreciate the structure of the novel. The first part, which is the longest, deals with the ‘setting’. It gives a detailed description of ‘the ceremony of innocence’ and establishes the validity of an organic community that is self-enclosed and self-reliant. Part II is more concerned with the development of the ‘plot’ and it covers the seven years of Okonkwo’s exile. Okonkwo remains in the background in this part of the novel as it describes the arrival of the white man and the ‘blood-dimmed tide’ let loose by him on the indigenous communities. Part III focuses on ‘action’ and the white man is in the foreground in this part. It depicts things falling apart as a result of the intrusion of alien values and portrays the tragedy of the ‘the ceremony of innocence’ of being drowned.

The simplicity of Things Fall Apart is deceptive and the structure of the novel reveals the craftsmanship of Achebe. The two important events which have far-reaching consequences, the sacrifice of Ikemefuna and the accidental killing of a clansman by Okonkwo, take place at crucial junctures in the plot. One of the grudges that Okonkwo nurses against the white man is that it has deprived him of a son, a successor. Attracted by the music and the gentleness of the new religion, Okonkwo’s son Nwoye abandons his family, his religion and converts to Christianity. However, the gulf between Okonkwo and Nwoye begins with the death of Ikemefuna who acted as a sort of bridge between the father and the son. The second turning point in the plot is that of Okonkwo committing a ‘female’ crime because of which he loses everything that he has earned in his lifetime through personal effort.

The two crucial events take place in Chapter VII and Chapter XIII respectively. With six chapters on either side, Chapter VII in which Ikemefuna is killed comes exactly in the middle of Part I which comprises 13 chapters. Similarly, with 12 chapters on either side, Chapter XIII in which Okonkwo commits the ‘female’ crime occupies the very centre of the novel which consists of 25 chapters. This shows Achebe’s careful orchestration of the important events in the plot of the novel.

Themes

The central of the novel is, of course, colonial encounter—the encounter between an indigenous culture and the alien values introduced by colonialism. However, there are several other important themes in the novel and one of them is the theme of the father-son relationship. As mentioned earlier, there are father and sons in the novel and the relationship between them is anything but simple. Unoka is an unsuccessful father and his son Okonkwo rejects him. In fact, the one fear that rules Okonkwo’s life is his fear of being considered a failure like his father. However, despite achieving ‘success’ his own son Nwoye deserts Okonkwo. The father-son relationship is further complicated by father and son-like figures. Ikemefuna grows up calling Okonkwo ‘father’ and he is the kind of son Okonkwo would have liked to have. Ezinma is Okonkwo’s favourite child and the father often wishes that she were born as a son. Sons abandoning fathers and fathers losing sons are a major tragedy in a culture that looks at the father-son relationship as representing the link between the past, present, and future.

Another important theme is the perceived opposition between masculinity and femininity or the male and the female principle. Okonkwo’s life, we are told, is dominated by two fears:  the fear of failure and the fear of being considered womanly. He, therefore, pursues success doggedly and banishes from his life everything that he considers womanly—such as music, stories, display of affection and so on. He never expresses his affection towards his daughter, or towards anyone for that matter, as he considers a display of emotions—except the emotion of anger—as a sign of weakness. But ironically, Okonkwo constantly comes into conflict with the female principle: he commits a female crime, and seeks shelter in his maternal uncle’s village during his exile. It is during his exile that Okonkwo’s uncle tries to make Okonkwo understand the importance of the mother. Okonkwo does not also realize that the supreme power in his Igbo culture, which he considers a manly culture, is Ani, the Earth Goddess. Thus, Okonkwo’s flawed understanding of the place of the female principle in his culture becomes a major cause of conflict in the novels.

The conflict between tradition and modernity is another important theme in the novel. Okonkwo resists change and strives to preserve what he understands as the traditional values of his community. However, as Obierika, the wise friend of Okonkwo often tries to tell him, tradition is not static and change is inevitable. But Okonkwo fights against a change that is inorganic and imposed and he perishes in that attempt. Thus, besides colonial encounter, the father-son relationship, the opposition between masculinity and femininity, and the conflict between tradition and change are some of the important themes in Things Fall Apart.

Narrative technique

Although Achebe uses the ‘western’ genre of the novel, and the colonial language English, he tries to bring in the features of indigenous oral narratives into the written text. Some of features of oral narratives that we can observe in the novel are the use of proverbs and their immediate explanation as if to a live audience; the use of the community’s narrative voice instead of an individual’s; offhand and casual references to history and to the origins of the community; stories within stories where individual stories are often complete in themselves; foreboding (the very first reference to Ikemefuna describes him as the “doomed lad” and his story as a “sad story”).

A prominent feature of oral narratives is the use of proverbs. Part I of the Things Fall Apart abounds in proverbs while they are more or less absent in Part III. Proverbs are culture specific and Achebe uses their presence and absence in different parts of the novel as an indicator of the changed values of the community. Early in Part I, we are told that “Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten”. However, by Part III, which is dominated by the white man’s point view, the perspectives changes and the District Commissioner finds their “love of superfluous words” an “infuriating habit”. The use of proverbs is possible only when people share certain common values and in third part of the novel which portrays the disappearance of precisely such a common understanding, the use of proverbs becomes meaningless. Thus, Achebe varies language, and the sentence structure to signify the change in the values of the society.

Tragedy

Things Fall Apart is often read as a tragedy in the classical Greek sense of the word. Read in this way, we can see Okonkwo tragic hero—a noble character involved in a battle with forces much bigger than himself and ultimately falling because of a fatal flaw. In the case of Okonkwo, the fatal flaw would be his lack of a nuanced understanding of the core values of his society. However, Achebe’s novel is more than the tragedy of an individual. It is also the tragedy of a community and a way of life. It is the tragedy of a society whose downfall is brought about by a combination of internal weaknesses and external attack. Besides superstitions and inhuman practices, the greatest flaw of the Igbo community is their lack of foresight. It is a community that is seen to be living only in the present with an inability to foresee the future in conceptual terms. However, the downfall of the community is catalyzed by the intrusion of an alien culture and the interruption of its evolutionary process by the colonial rule. Thus, the end of the novel brings us back to its beginning, to the title which indicates Achebe’s agreement with Yeats’ view of the collapse of civilizations as the result of a coalition between internal flaws and external pressures.

Conclusion

To sum up, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) is a classic portrayal of colonial encounter. In this novel Achebe offers a sympathetic, yet a critical insider’s view of the Igbo community. Through this novel, Achebe seeks to counter the myth of Africa manufactured and perpetuated in colonial discourse. In particular, by treating Africa as a subject rather than an object, Achebe presents an alternative to the image of Africa found in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Things Fall Apart, thus, is a valuable novel in itself because of its content and form, but is also a seminal text for its contribution to African literature as a whole.