G.D. Killam wrote:
So much has been written about the anthropological and Sociological significance of Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God – Their evocation of traditional nineteenth- and earlier twentieth – century Ibo village life-… that the overall excellence of these books as pieces of fiction, as works of art, has been obscured.42
Very little has, either before Killam or since been published that goes behind the novels, exploring their mysteries, examining Achebe’s assumptions, testing his allusions, defining the novels’ context. There is no denying that there is much that is mysterious and complex about the novels. To trained Africanist scholars, some of the questions raised from the texts can be easily answered. But this is not always so obvious to Achebe’s common readers. They encounter artfully devised mysteries, ambiguities, pseudo-historical persons and events, sometimes actual persons and events; they are confronted with a cosmology that is alien and possibly incoherent, a pattern of social and family behavior of unclear origin, political systems that defy explication through conventional wisdom. In fact, the more alert the reader, the more sensitive, the more he or she suspects that there is far more to the novels than unlimited re-reading will reveal. In this case, they are entirely correct.
Achebe’s common reader will, as experience has shown, enjoy Things Fall Apart on the first reading, willingly suspending questions while appreciating the texture of life in Umuofia, being carried along the thin thread of plot involving the harsh ambitious hero
42 G. D. Killam, The Novels of Chinua Achebe. London: Heinemann, 1969, p. 1.
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Okonkwo and his offenses against the Earth Goddess. He or she will be engaged by the complex effects of the coming of the white man, and fascinated by the spectacle of a society falling apart, as the title of the novel predicts. The white chauvinist may complain briefly that Achebe has blackened the white man and civilized the savage, while the black chauvinist will delight in recognizing the falsity of the very notions of the “African primitive mind” and the “civilizing influence of the European.”
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart portrays Africa, particularly the Igbo society, right before the arrival of Europeans. Things Fall Apart analyzes the destruction of African culture by the appearance of the white man in terms of the destruction of the bonds between individuals and their society. The focus on the fictional novels of Chinua Achebe aims to provide a scholarly exegesis of the texts and introduce readers to important contextualizing historical and cultural perspectives it defines. A brief examination of the burgeoning literary scene in post-war West Africa and the experimentation with the novelistic form that early African writers were undertaking during the period under examination would be carried out. In several ways, the fictional novels of Achebe, especially Things Fall Apart represent a direct response to a whole canon of books written about the history and cultures of Africa by European writers from the sixteenth century. A review of the history of this writing and its ideological imperatives would be undertaken with the view to providing the background on the discourse about the African novelist as a witness to history. The question at the heart of the discussion is the kind of history described and how it is represented. The underlying racist discourses of some of the works by European writers were to be echoed in much of the later European fiction that was set in Africa. Achebe writes in “African Voices”:
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“The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa
produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad
light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do
with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery. … This
continued until the Africans themselves, in the middle of the
twentieth, took into their own hands the telling of their
story.”43
Achebe has variously projected himself as a chronicler of the transition brought to Igbo society by the colonial encounter, with the function to teach:
that African peoples 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 that it is this dignity that they must regain.44
The colonial experience was a destructive assault on Africa and on the psyche and self-evaluation of the African. Perhaps the writer of fiction can be permitted to recreate the past in order to establish what actually took place, different from the standard expositions of that reality through the Eurocentric framework. After the publication of Arrow of God, Achebe wrote more intensely about the theme of colonial confrontation and the black writer’s consciousness to it:
Without subscribing to the view that Africa gained nothing at
all in her long encounter with Europe, one could still say, in
in all fairness, that she suffered many terrible and lasting mis-
fortunes. In terms of human dignity and human relations, the
encounter was almost a complete disaster for the black races.
It has warped the mental attitudes of both black and white.
In giving expression to the plight of their people, black writers
43 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/08/an-african-voice/306020/
44 Chinua Achebe, “The Role of the Writer in the New Nation,” in Nigeria Magazine, 81, 1964, 157
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have shown again and again how strongly this traumatic
experience can possess the sensibility.45
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God must be seen as such expressions of a response to that “traumatic experience” referenced above.
In looking at the tragedies of Achebe’s individual characters, his readers must not lose sight of his expressed emphasis on the society in conflict and transition. Though much of the narrative of the novels is centered on the main characters, the novels do aim essentially at the states and reactions within the Igbo community at the most crucial points of the colonial penetration and subjugation of the Igbo people and their spirit.46 Achebe’s treatment of the society in all its facets, and the society’s confrontation with Europe, must therefore be given the strategic positions they hold in the total novelistic exploration of the theme.
The theme of Things Fall Apart is stated clearly on page 160: ‘He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’ With the arrival of the white man and his new religion and administration, traditional society’s cracks and weaknesses, hitherto concealed by the common fear of the ancestors and the gods, break open and the once-stable community collapses. In order to impress on the reader the tragedy of its collapse, Achebe devotes great skill in evoking his society as it used to be; and this is one of the reasons for the novel’s enduring appeal. Those who open this novel hoping to find a description of noble savagery where the tensions of modern Western society do not
45 Chinua Achebe, “The Black Writer’s Burden,” in Presence Africaine, 59, 1966, p135
46 D.Ibe Nwoga, “The Igbo World of Achebe’s “Arrow of God” in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1981, pp. 14-42
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exist are likely to be disappointed. Umuofia society is proud, dignified, and stable, because it is governed by a complicated system of customs and traditions extending from birth, through marriage to death. It has its own legal, educational, religious, and hierarchical systems, and the conventions governing relations between the various generations are as elaborate as any to be found in a Jane Austen novel.47
One way to highlight aspects of the pre-colonial era in Things Fall Apart is to focus on Achebe’s description of pre-colonial Igboland. The title of the book Things Fall Apart in itself connotes a historical timeline and a historical event. It can be argued that Achebe’s focus on pre-colonial Igbo society highlights the idea that there was a time when Igbo society was relatively intact and this was way before the period when it fell apart due to the intervention of colonialism. The story of the novel is narrated as a cultural history. Achebe highlights pre-colonial Igbo society by providing detailed descriptions of the judicial process, the social and community rites, the marriage traditions, the process of communal leadership, religious tenets and practices, and the opportunities for virtually every individual to ascend the clan’s hierarchical order of success through their individual efforts. Through the lenses of the village of Umuofia, Achebe depicts an elaborate synthesis of pre-colonial Igboland. Harry Nii Koney Odamtten argues that that the community of Umuofia is presented with its socially constructed understanding of a cosmos: encompassing an integrated and co-dependent world of material (living things including human beings); ethereal such as Ani, the earth goddess; and animate/inanimate objects such as the shrine of agandinwayi, the legendary
47 Eustace Palmer, “Achebe” in An Introduction to the African Novel, Africana Publishing Company, 1972, p 48-72
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one-legged old woman.48 This avid reference to the cosmos of Igbo society as represented in ‘Umuofia’ can be said to be a reflection of the spirituality of traditional African/Igbo society and its significance to the functioning of the societies it espoused. Achebe is careful to portray the complex, advanced social institutions and artistic traditions of Igbo culture prior to its contact with Europeans. Yet he is just as careful not to stereotype the Europeans; he offers varying depictions of the white man, such as the mostly benevolent Mr. Brown, the zealous Reverend Smith, and the ruthlessly calculating District Commissioner.
Things Fall Apart can best be understood by focusing on the first part of the novel. In the first part; chapters 1-13, Achebe relates the story of the undiluted, unalloyed, normal life of Umuofia people before the advent of Europeans. The narrative focuses on the common solidarity shared by the people. Some of the traditional traits of the expressed by the people included the respect for law and order, respect for elders, hospitality, holiness, diligence, and a high sense of spirituality. The narrator attests to this trait by observing:
but there was already a strong and ordered culture stemming
from religious beliefs and respect for authority and
tradition. P.39
The people of Umuofia expressed a strong solidarity that was deeply rooted in their traditional institution as represented in their marriage customs, wrestling competitions, New Yam festivals, the Week of Peace festivals, in their family unity, and their system of law and justice.
48 Harry Nii Koney Odamtten, “The Significance of Things Fall Apart to African Historiography,” in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 11:2, 2009, 161-165
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Africanist historians and scholars of African history have had the arduous task of converting African notions of time and history into their western-derived historical timelines. J.F.A. Ajayi and K.O. Dike offered the following insights on Africa-derived modalities of history:
A belief in the continuity of life, a life after death, and a community of interest
between the living, the dead, and the generations yet unborn is fundamental to all
African religious, social, and political life. Thus although the serious writing of
African history has only just begun, a sense of history and traditional has always
been a part of the African way of life.49
Ajayi and Dike additionally assert that African history and traditions of origin were made and transmitted orally, not in writing, but through factual and symbolic traditions like genealogies and reigns of kings, or literary traditions such as stories, fables and proverbs, as well as through formal institutions like initiation, age grades and secret societies.
Evidence of these modes of historical consciousness abound in Things Fall Apart and attest to its use by scholars who teach African history in the West. The African use of the concepts of time and history is a significant feature of Things Fall Apart. A typical example of this is seen in the following narrative by Obierika, the best friend of Okonkwo:
Three moons ago, on an Eke Market Day a little band of fugitives
came to our town. Most of them were sons of our land whose mothers had been
buried with us…During the last planting season a white man had appeared in
their clan. (TFA, p138)
The concept of ‘three moons ago’ is a reference to the celestial bodies, while the ‘Eke Market Day’ and ‘last planting season’ represent Igbo anthropocentrism, a concern with
49 Dike, K. O. and Ajayi, J. F. A. “African Historiography,” in International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, Vol. 6, New York: Macmillan, pp. 394-399
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the here and now of human living.50 The best reference to the African cycle of birth to the afterlife is the narrative about Ezinma, Okonkwo’s ogbanje child, who haunts her mother by being continually reborn after death, a cycle which only comes to an end when the child’s iyi-uwa is found. Iyi-uwa is a distinct kind of stone that holds great significance because it constitutes a link between an ogbanje and the world of the spirit. The child is only spared from death if the iyi-uwa is discovered and destroyed. It can then been argued that collectively, the Igbo concepts of seasons, reincarnation and celestial movements are ways by which the Igbo symbolized time. These forms of temporality have enabled Africanist historians to signify times by which certain events occurred in Africa.
From a Western perspective, Igbo traditional beliefs might appear to be quite superstitious. An example of this is the belief in such supernatural phenomenon as ogbanje. Some social practices of the Igbo seem extraordinarily cruel, especially the abandonment of twins at birth and the mutilation of infant corpses identified as ogbanje. However, in spite of such practices lies a society which, while quite set apart in its ways from European cultures, was nonetheless sophisticated and complex. Various traditional aspects of Igbo life and culture are highlighted in Things Fall Apart. Through the entire household of the tragic protagonist Okonkwo, Achebe’s readers learn of the Igbo concepts of family and gender. Okonkwo’s social position, his fame as a wrestler and title-taker and prosperous farmer, his membership of the Ndichie (male elders), his friendship with Obierika, and his guardianship of Ikemefuna, the pawn from the neighboring village of Mbaino, give insight into Igbo thought and culture. These literary
50 Op