Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

By Chinua Achebe

It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

I'd always heard about Things Fall Apart, but been a little reluctant to read it because, you know, who wants to spend their free time basically taking lessons in English literature, but I happened to already have this on the shelf, and the challenge was a good kick in the pants to do it.

Don't fall into the same mistake!  It's actually a very simple, easy read - it's much shorter than I thought it would be, and the style is very matter of fact and not torrid or melodramatic at all.  Things Fall Apart centers around Okonkwo, a warrior whose greatest feats lie behind him, and who sees nothing but weakness in the changes coming to the village.

I don't know why great literature is so obsessed with tragic heroes.  Or tragic figures, since I don't think Okonkwo is ever really a "hero" in Things Fall Apart.  Protagonist, surely, but from Chapter 1, we know that he's too worried about his standing in the village hierarchy to suffer pangs of conscience when he beats his sons for not being manly enough. And it is somewhat tragic what happens to him, but the tragedy hanging over the book is that we, as readers from the future, know what lies in store for Umuofia and Mbanta: the loss of cultural traditions and the breaking up of tribes, the insidious takeover by the white Christians.  And while the people have survived, and while I can't argue that all of their original cultural traditions were super great, still, it is a tragedy that it is lost.  Notre Dame cathedral burned today, and while Catholicism hasn't always been a force for good, still it's hard to see this thing that has lasted for centuries burned away in a night, and it feels like that in Things Fall Apart as well.  I could try to stretch the analogy further by allowing that the cause of destruction was not intentional but caused in both cases by some cold and crucial indifference to the existing structure, but I'm already too sad already. 

I suppose it is a talent of Achebe's that you're not actually rejoicing when Okonkwo dies. Considering he kills three people in the course of the book, including his own foster son, and random a sixteen year old, you'd definitely forgiven for hoping he gets what he deserves.  Of course, for what we might consider morally the worst of those - murdering his foster son even though he's been excused from attending the killing at all - there is no punishment at all, except for his own semi-guilty conscience.  And for the murder we might consider the most excusable - the attempt to stop a hostile takeover of Umuofia by the Christians - he submits himself to the worst punishment, death. That's how you know it's a tragedy, when the villain dies for the wrong reasons and it's not fair.  

I did appreciate some of the negative reviews on Amazon. "There are endless discussions in the novel about the cultivation and economics of yams. I don't get why the author spent so much time discussing yams." Let's be real, there was a lot of yam-talk. But for a book that's kind of about the destruction of native cultures and traditions via the onset of Christianity, it's a pretty soothing, easy read.  There's not a lot of character development - we hear very little about the rest of the family, and they exist only as two-dimensional ideas for Okonkwo to butt up against, but this book really only works as an allegory, and not as, like, a thriller.  

What's interesting is that although the point of the book seems to be Okonkwo's downfall, we spend very little time on the events directly leading up to it.  I almost feel like this would work just as well as a short story.  The first two sections of the book, in which Okonkwo lives in Umuofia and then becomes exiled, and then lives in Mbanta until his exile expires, are so much scene setting.  It's interesting, since it's a relatively uncommon setting for a book, but does have the sense of nothing really progressing, narratively.  It's also a little disjointed, as the book is more like a series of vignettes than a more typical a then b then c.  But overall, an enjoyable enough way to wallow in shitty missionary history via a great author.


32: A Book Written By An Author From Asia, Africa Or South America