Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)

Here’s an introduction to Chinua Achebe, freely adapted from Wikipedia:

Chinua Achebe, born Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe (1930 to 2013), was a Nigerian novelist, poet and critic, who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature.

His first novel and magnum opus, Things Fall Apart (1958), occupies a pivotal place in African literature. It has been described as the most important book in modern African literature. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into 57 languages, making it the most widely studied, translated and read African novel.

Along with Things Fall Apart, the two subsequent novels, No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964), make up the ‘African Trilogy’.

The trilogy was followed by a fourth novel, A Man of the People (1966) but then this regular output of a novel every two years came to an end and was followed by a 21-year gap. After this long gap came his fifth and final novel, Anthills of the Savannah (1987), a finalist for the Booker Prize which turned out to be his final work of fictions and was itself followed by a long silence of 26 years until Achebe’s death in 2013.

The primacy and influence of his early novels, especially Things Fall Apart, led Achebe to be referred to in the West as ‘the father of African literature’, although he vigorously rejected the title.

A glut of summaries

The text of Things Fall Apart consists of 25 chapters divided into three parts with a glossary of Igbo terms at the end.

It tells the story of Okonkwo, ‘strong man’ and tribal elder of the village of Umuofia in the Igbo society of what would become south-east Nigeria. It paints an in-depth portrait of traditional Igbo society and then shows the impact on it of western Christianity and colonialism. All this is embodied in the story of Okonkwo’s decline and fall.

As the most heavily studied and commentated African novel, the full text of Things Fall Apart is available online in numerous places:

Things Fall Apart online

And there are any number of study guides:

Not to mention scores of book-length academic studies of Achebe and tens of thousands of academic papers on this novel. While selecting which edition to buy online I read various plot summaries. The Everyman Library edition I read it in comes with a summary on the back, a summary in the introduction by contemporary Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and a brief summary in the biographical note.

In other words, this is one of the most over-summarised and analysed-to-death books I’ve ever read. Before I’d read a word of it, I felt tired out by, and over-familiar with, the whole idea.

I can’t see any point summarising the plot or listing the characters, since this has already been done, countless times, probably better, more thoroughly and more sensibly than I could ever do.

Outside the book itself one thing that interests me is the enormous discrepancy between the ‘implied author’, the author’s voice, the omniscient narrator of Things Fall Apart who is an expert in traditional Igbo society of the 1890s, soaked in tribal life and culture and language and custom – and the reality of Achebe’s own life as a sophisticated globetrotting academic, first leaving Nigeria to work for the BBC in London in the 1950s, then travelling round Africa as a young writer in the 1960s, travelling to the US and Brazil as representative of the breakaway state of Biafra in the late 60s, going to teach in America in the 1970s. After being involved in a serious car crash in 1990, Achebe went for medical treatment to the US, was offered what turned out to be a series of academic posts, and never went back to Nigeria. He lived in the States until his death in 2013 i.e. for 23 years i.e. over a third of his adult life.

Reading the list of his awards and honours makes you wonder whether he was one of the most honoured writers of the 20th century. It’s certainly intimidating. If so many thousands of scholars, hundreds of fellow writers, institutions and prize committees think he’s a master, who am I to dissent?

Immersive technique

What becomes clear within just a few pages is how totally immersive the book is. It’s the authority which gets you. Every paragraph, almost every sentence tells you something about the traditional life Achebe sets out to depict. The narrator doesn’t look at Okonkwo, his life and acts, the values of his village and culture, from the outside, with the benefit of hindsight – it feels right from the start like you are right there, inside that world, totally inhabiting it.

Achebe rarely states facts (in the style of, say, the historical novelists Giles Foden or William Boyd, who give you paragraphs of factual explanation which could have been lifted from encyclopedias). Instead the learning is demonstrated by doing. He shows, doesn’t tell. We learn what we learn about Igbo society through the values, expectations and actions of Okonkwo and those around him (the village elders with their countless proverbial sayings, and the older, wealthier villagers who intervene and judge behaviour and infractions, come in particularly handy here).

In a calm, unhurried and unobtrusive way, the novel conveys a vast amount of lore about belief in spirits, customs surrounding marriage, war and the planting of crops, lots of detail about the daily round of village life. Look at the amount of information conveyed in just this one paragraph.

Okonkwo’s prosperity was visible in his household. He had a large compound enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His own hut, or obi, stood immediately behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had her own hut, which together formed a half moon behind the obi. The barn was built against one end of the red walls, and long stacks of yam stood out prosperously in it. At the opposite end of the compound was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment to her hut for the hens. Near the barn was a small house, the ‘medicine house’ or shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral spirits. He worshipped them with sacrifices of kola nut, food and palm-wine, and offered prayers to them on behalf of himself, his three wives and eight children. (p.12)

It’s the calm authoritativeness of this tone which put the reader right there, not only in the physical location, but in the mindset of the people who live there.

Okonkwo

One aspect of this lack of hindsight or outside commentary, of the way we are plunged right into the tribal world he wishes to convey, is the way Achebe doesn’t sugar coat his portrayal of the central figure. Okonkwo is depicted entirely in his own terms, without external commentary and, in particular, authorial criticism.

Thus we learn that he was a strong man, defined by his ability to win wrestling competitions, but also his achievements in war. We learn of his success in farming which means the storehouse in his large compound is always full of yams and so he can afford to maintain a household of three wives and 8 children.

Achebe doesn’t strive to make Okonkwo an attractive figure, indeed there are lots of reasons to find him unattractive or even repellent, by modern standards.

Domestic violence

Most obviously, his family are all terrified of his capricious temper.

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children.

When one of his wives, Nwoye’s mother, dares to ask him a question:

‘Do what you are told, woman,’ Okonkwo thundered.

He regularly beats his wives for even small infractions of routine and duty. When his third wife, Ojiugo, goes to visit a neighbour and is gone too long, Okokwo beats her ‘very heavily’ on her return. His other wives beg him to stop but ‘Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through’. Later, on a slight pretext, Okonkwo gives his second wife ‘a sound beating and left her and her only daughter weeping.’ When his second wife, Ekwefi, makes a slighting remark he grabs a rusty old gun he owns and tries to shoot her as she scrambles over the wall of his compound to escape. (He misses.)

He thinks his eldest son, Nwoye, is getting lazy and so regularly beats him. This fear of a tyrant’s capricious moods reminds me of the extended portrait of Idi Amin in Giles Foden’s terrifying novel ‘The Last King of Scotland’, and of Wojchiec Jagielski’s parallel portrait of Amin and of the psychopathic figure of Joseph Kony, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, in his book ‘The Night Wanderers’.

Warrior

In my review of Jagielski’s account of the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda I wondered whether the endless civil wars and insurgencies which so many African countries seem to be plagued with should be regarded not as a new phenomena but as a return to pre-colonial culture when every tribe was at war with all its neighbouring tribes.

Achebe’s account of the conflicts between the village of Umuofia and its neighbours seems to bear that out. We are told that Okonkwo has fought in two tribal wars and killed five men (p.47). He is a ‘strong man’ in his culture and Achebe explains what that means without any hesitation.

In Umuofia’s latest war he was the first to bring home a human head. That was his fifth head; and he was not an old man yet. On great occasions such as the funeral of a village celebrity he drank his palm-wine from his first human head. (p.10)

Weak father

The narrator suggests that a lot of Okonkwo’s behaviour is a reaction against his father, Unoka, who was perceived, within their culture, as being weak. Unoka borrowed lots of money and died in debt. He spent the borrowed money on palm wine and partying. He didn’t work hard at the main male occupation of planting yams and so didn’t have many in his yam store (a major indicator of wealth). People laughed at his poverty. He didn’t like fighting. He left his son no title. (The clan employs just four titles; only one or two men in each generation attain the fourth and highest; p.86.)

Okonkwo is depicted as growing up ashamed of his weak failure of a father and determined to be the opposite. This partly explains his permanent bad temper. He holds himself to a high standard of behaviour, it has required unremitting effort to get to where he is today, he feels he can’t afford to relax and so snaps at the slightest sign of dereliction of duty, whether by his 12-year-old son or any of his wives. Hence the fiery temper they’re all afraid of, hence the constant tellings-off and beatings.

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruet man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father…And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion-to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness. (p.11)

Thus:

Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength. (p.22)

Hence his unstinting work ethic. Hence his success, which all agree is well deserved.

If ever a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo. (p.21)

Superstitions

Jagielski’s book is saturated for 300 pages with the belief in spirits of the Acholi people he describes. Achebe’s narrative also is soaked in belief in spirits and the best way to appease them.

Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them. Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits. Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string.

In particular the villagers regularly consult the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves. When Okonkwo offends against the tradition of the Week of Peace by beating his wife during it, he is intimidated by Ezeani, the priest of Ani, ‘the earth goddess and source of all fertility’, into making a mighty penance (one she-goat, one hen, a length of cloth and a hundred cowries).

Sexism

‘Sit like a woman!’ Okonkwo shouted at her. (p.33)

I imagine every female reader of the book has been offended by Achebe’s depiction of women, and hundreds of thousands of feminist students and academics have noted and critiqued it. But it’s part of Achebe’s technique of acceptance of tribal lore and customs, the good, the bad and the brutal. They’re all described flatly and frankly, all taken together completely oblivious of whether they offend modern sensibilities, and it is this frankness which gives the book its extraordinary power.

Anyway, in Okonkwo’s society women are very much second-class citizens. They must obey their father and then their husband in everything. They are breeding stock and their job is to bear and rear children.

She was about sixteen and just ripe for marriage. Her suitor and his relatives surveyed her young body with expert eyes as if to assure themselves that she was beautiful and ripe. (p.51)

They are involved in agricultural work but of certain defined types:

His mother and sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women’s crops, like coco-yams, beans and cassava. Yam, the king of crops, was a man’s crop. (p.18)

And:

Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another was a very great man indeed. (p.25)

There is no insult worse than being called a woman (p.19). The word agbala means both ‘woman’ and also ‘man who lacks a title’ i.e. a woman is like the lowest form of man. When Okonkwo hears his 12-year-old son grumbling about women, it makes him happy.

That showed that in time he would be able to control his women-folk. No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man. (p.39)

Brutality

Cutting off the head of your enemy, cleaning it and using it a drinking vessel indicates a pretty brutal culture. Okonkwo’s routine beating of his wives and children gives the reader a sense of a widespread culture of brutality in the domestic sphere. We are told it is a tribal tradition to take twins, put them in earthenware pots and throw them away in the jungle, presumably because they’re perceived as bad luck (Achebe doesn’t casually mention this custom, but makes a point of it, mentioning it on pages 95, 107 and 109).

But nothing in the first six chapters had prepared me for the abrupt decision by the village elders to kill Ikemefuna, the hostage boy who had lived with Okonkwo for three years, for him to be hacked down by machete, or for Okonkwo to join in hacking him to death. Having read so many books about the Rwanda genocide it was difficult for the echoes of millions of Africans hacked to death with machetes and hoes not to come screaming into my mind at this moment.

Part 1

A woman of their tribe, the wife of a man named Udo, is killed by a neighbouring tribe. The elders meet and arrange compensation, which is that a virgin from the offending tribe should be sent to Udo to be his new wife, and a young lad from the offending tribe be handed over to our guys.

The elders decide that this boy, Ikemefuna, aged 14, should reside in Okonkwo’s household temporarily. We are shown the poor boy’s distress and unhappiness, being parted from his family for no wrong that he’s done.

Chapter 5

The feast of the New Yam approaches. Detailed description of wives and daughters cooking in Okonkwo’s obi.

Chapter 6

Description of a wrestling festival, an entire day of wrestling matches in front of the assembled village, with cheers and praise for each victor.

Chapter 7

For three years Ikemefuna lives in Okonkwo’s household. He is a pleasant boy, gets on with everyone, a fount of folk stories, Okonkwo’s own son, Nwoye, grows to love and look up to him.

A huge plague of locusts arrives. They haven’t had one for years, only old men remember when. The villagers welcome the locusts because they are good to eat (roasted in clay pots, spread in the sun to dry, then eaten with solidified palm oil if you want to try this at home).

Okonkwo is informed that the elders have decided that the boy Ikemefuna must be executed. Ogbuefi Ezeudu, the oldest man in this quarter of Umuofia, warns Okonkwo to have no hand in his killing. Next day men come, confer with Okonkwo, then tell Ikemefuna he’s going to be taken back to his village. He makes tearful farewells, especially to Nwoye, then sets off with the men. A long trek out beyond the village and into the sandy paths through woodland. A man walking behind him makes a sound to warn the other men, draws his machete and hacks Ikemefuna down. Contrary to Ogbuefi’s advice, Okwonko steps forward and joins the other men hacking Ikemefuna to death.

When Achebe wrote this he wasn’t to know that Africans hacking fellow Africans was to be practiced on an industrial scale in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Rwanda, but we know, and a million ghosts walk over the text at this moment.

Chapter 8

We learn that Ikemefuna’s killing was commanded by the Oracle. Okonkwo’s friends say nobody had any choice in the matter but chide him for taking part. It’s the kind of action will bring curse a whole family. For days afterwards Okonkwo is depressed and listless. He needs activity or, lacking that, talk with friends.

The negotiation of a bride price for Akueke, the ripe 16-year-old daughter of Okonkwo’s friend, Obierika. Description of her elaborate formal wear and body painting. Discussion of different customs in the adjacent villages i.e. the variety of folk customs.

Chapter 9

Okonkwo’s favourite daughter, Ezinma, falls ill with a fever, iba. Extended passage describing ogbanje children i.e. spirits of dead children who go back into the womb to be reincarnated and plague their mothers. Because Ezinma’s mother has borne no fewer than ten children of which nine died young. Account of how, a year previously, a holy man Okagbue, had been brought in to find the fetish or iyi-uwa which Ezinma, like all ogbanje, had buried deep by an orange tree.

Chapter 10

Description of the trial, by the nine egwugwu or ‘masqueraders who impersonate the ancestral spirits of the village’, of Uzowulu, accused of beating his wife so badly and regularly that her in-laws came and rescued her, refusing to hand her back. Hence this big trial which is attended by the entire village.

Chapter 11

Ekwefi and Ezinma are telling each other folk tales when Chielo approaches, the priestess, possessed by the god Agbala, and insists the Ezinma goes away with her, carries her off piggyback. Distraught, Ekwefi decides to follow them in a long passage through the black night haunted by evil spirits, first towards the nearest neighbour village, and then back to the circle of hills amid which lies the tiny opening in the rocks which gives entry to the cave of the Oracle.

Chapter 12

Okonkwo’s friend, Obierika’s wife cooks up a feast for kin attending the uri of his daughter, the day when her suitor would bring palm wine as a gift to her relatives. It is a communal feast prepared by many women, and accompanied by ritual gifts. Eating, drinking, singing and dancing goes on till late into the night.

Chapter 13

Ezeudi, eldest man in the village, dies, the message carried at night by the ekwe, a type of drum made of wood. The funeral is a long complicated cultural event, with eating, and dancing funeral dances. Spirits appear i.e. men in costumes, often terrifying the mourners. The world of the living and of spirits interpenetrate. After all:

A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors. (p.85)

As the dancing and firing of guns and clanging of machetes reaches a crescendo, there’s a disaster. Okonkwo’s gun explodes by accident and a piece of metal pierces the heart of the dead man’s 16-year-old son who now lies dying right in the heart of the ceremony, right in front of everybody.

There is nothing for it but for Okonkwo to flee the clan and live in exile for seven years. It is carried out peaceably. His belongings and yams are stored in the obi of his friend Obierika. Then Okonkwo and his family flee back to his motherland, to a little village called Mbanta, just beyond the borders of Mbaino. Then Ezeudi’s kinsman storm Okonkwo’s compound, kill his animals and burn it to the ground. They have no malice, They are merely acting out the justice of the earth goddess.

Part 2

Chapter 14

Okonkwu is taken in by his mother’s family. They give him land to build a compound on and yams to sow and tend. The eldest surviving family member is his mother’s brother, Uchendu. He performs cleansing ceremonies. It was the time when the long summer heat was broken by heavy rain. Okonkwo has to start out all over again and often acts defeated and depressed.

He has arrived at the time of the marriage of the youngest of Uchendu’s five sons to a new bride, a process of numerous ceremonies spread out over months. Description of the ‘confession’ ceremony.

Uchundu calls his extended family together and delivers a stern lecture to Okonkwo, telling him that many in that family assembly have had harder knocks and setbacks to overcome than he, Okonkwo, has. So he needs to man up and look after his wife and children.

Chapter 15

In the second year of Okonkwo’s exile his friend Obierika comes to visit him and is presented to the old patriarch, Uchundu. He brings news of the arrival of the white men. One first appeared in the village of Abame. The holy men consulted the oracle which said white men would bring destruction, so they killed him. Obierika then heard from survivors who made it to Umuofia that the white men returned with a horde of Africans and massacred almost the entire population of the village of Abame.

Chapter 16

Two years later Obierika returns to visit Okonkwo. During that time white Western Christian missionaries have arrived and built a church in Umuofia. Missionaries also arrive in Mbanta, five blacks led by one white man. A comical account of the white man’s attempt to proselytise, as translated by an outsider with a heavy accent. Most think the tale of the Trinity is nonsensical, but the appeal to love, and the music of the hymn they sing, appeals to Okonkwo’s sensitive son, Nwoye.

Chapter 17

When the Christians ask for some land to build a church the village elders give them part of the evil forest.

Every clan and village had its ‘evil forest’. In it were buried all those who died of the really evil diseases, like leprosy and smallpox. It was also the dumping ground for the potent fetishes of great medicine men when they died. An ‘evil forest’ was, therefore, alive with sinister forces and powers of darkness. (p.105)

The villagers expect their evil spirits to strike down the Christians but when it doesn’t happen, they gain more converts. When Okonkwo learns his son is attending church he grabs and starts beating him. Uchundu happens to arrive and tells him to desist. Nwoye walks away without a word, leaves Mbanta and returns to Umuofia where the Christians are building a school. Later, alone by his fire, Okonkwo worries that his entire culture, all belief and customs, will be erased. How could he have sired such an effeminate son?

Chapter 18

The Christians thrive and attract more converts, albeit generally the lowest weakest members of the clan. Rumour comes that they have set up not only a church but a government in Umuofia and are judging miscreants. That they hanged a man for killing a missionary. Trouble caused when the leader of the Mbanta church, Mr Kiaga, accepts osu. These are the caste of permanent outsiders, cursed, distinguished by their long dirty hair, something like the untouchables of India. Kiaga makes an impassioned defence of all being free and equal in the eyes of God, which confirms many in their faith and the osu convert en masse.

One of the Christians is alleged to have killed one of the village’s holy pythons. This gives rise to a debate among the elders. Okonkwo wants to drive the Christians out with extreme violence but is overruled, much to his disgust.

Chapter 19

Okonkwo’s seven year exile approaches its end. He sends money to Obierika to begin to rebuild his compound in Umuofia. And he throws a huge feast for his extended family in Mbanta.

Part 3

Chapter 20

Okonkwo is determined to return and regain his place in his village, determined to build a bigger compound and attain the highest title. But he finds Umuofia much changed. Some men of high caste have thrown away their tribal titles to convert. The white man has built not only a church but a court where the District Commissioner tries cases and a prison where black men are locked up.

It is an important fact that the administration i.e. the court and prison, are served by black men from a long way away, who have no sympathy with the clan in fact despise it.

These court messengers were greatly hated in Umuofia because they were foreigners and also arrogant and high-handed. They were called kotma.

His friend Obierika explains that there are only two white men, driving them out or killing them would be easy. The problem is the number of tribesmen who have converted and committed to the new regime. What to do about them? Hence the title of the book:

‘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.’ (p.125)

Chapter 21

The white head of the mission in Umuofia is Mr Brown. A lot of its success is due to the way he is calm and respectful of local belief. He has many long debates about religion with an elder in a neighbouring village named Akunna. Brown realises a frontal assault won’t work so he builds a school and a hospital. Soon the locals realise that being able to read and write opens opportunities to earn good money in the court or prison.

From the very beginning religion and education went hand in hand. (p.128)

Okonkwo is disappointed that his return doesn’t cause much stir. The mental world, the horizons of the village people have been immeasurably expanded.

The new religion and government and the trading stores were very much in the people’s eyes and minds. There were still many who saw these new institutions as evil, but even they talked and thought about little else, and certainly not about Okonkwo’s return. (p.129)

Okonkwo’s son Nwoye has now taken the Christian name Isaac and gone to the capital of the British colony, Umuru on the big river, to attend the training college for teachers. When Mr Brown makes a courtesy call on Okonkwo the latter tells him next time he’ll be carried out of his compound.

He mourned 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.

Chapter 22

Mr Brown succumbs to illness and returns to Britain. He is replaced by the Reverend James Smith who is much more doctrinaire and unforgiving. One of the most zealous converts, Enoch, confronts the masqueraders dressed as gods at the annual ceremony to honour the earth deity, and tears off his mask, thus revealing him to be an ordinary mortal. Ripples of shock throughout the village.

All night the Mother of Spirits haunted the village and in the morning all the egwugwu from all the surrounding villages assembled in a show of strength, made a huge song and dance and then marched on Enoch’s hut which they trash. Then on to the church. The black converts flee but the Reverend Smith stands his ground, along with the interpreter, Okeke.

The egwugwu deliver a speech saying they will restrain themselves from killing Smith out of respect for his brother, Brown. But they will smash down his (red-earth) church, and this they do.

Chapter 23

The District Commissioner (DC) returns from a trip and invites the six head men to a meeting. Here he lulls them into a false sense of security then has the court officials, in effect the black police, jump them, handcuff them and throw them in the cells. The DC says he’s decided to fine them 200 cowries for breaching the peace, and promises they’ll be well treated while the money is collected, but the moment his back is turned, the kotma shave their heads and whip them. The six headmen are plunged into despair.

The court messengers or kotma then tell the villagers that they must pay a ransom of 250 cowrie shells, planning to keep the 50 surplus shells for themselves. Here we see the seeds of the institutionalised corruption which will cripple all African nations.

Instead of celebrating the festival of the full moon, the entire village is silent and subdued as if in mourning.

Chapter 24

A great meeting of the village, to which people from other villages come, starting off early in the morning. A series of speakers set off to address the great assembly on the destruction the white man is bringing to their life, when round the corner come the five leading ‘court messengers’ or kotma.

Okonkwo, all the fury and frustration of his entire life, and his unjust exile, pent up inside him, leaps from his seat to confront the lead messenger. He refuses to be cowed and rudely informs Okonkwo that the meeting is to be terminated. All his fury bursts and Okonkwo draws his machete and hacks the man to the ground then chops his head off.

The world spins round him but already he knows Umuofia won’t rise to support him. All their brave words are void. They have become women. He lives in an effeminate world. He flees.

Chapter 25

When the District Commissioner goes with armed men to arrest Okonkwo, his friend Obierika takes them through Okonkwo’s compound to the tree where Okonkwo has hanged himself. He then explains at length that a man who kills himself is unclean which is why they cannot cut him down or bury him. He asks the DC to get his men to do that. Then the village elders will carry out the appropriate cleansing rituals.

In its last paragraph the entire novel undergoes a massive heave, like tectonic plates, a vast shift of focus. For 25 chapters the narrator has entirely occupied the minds and customs of the villagers and soaked us in their mindset and culture. Now in these last few paragraphs the perspective changes to share with us the thoughts of the English District Commissioner. It tells us that in his many years of ‘bringing civilisation to different parts of Africa’, he has learned not to demean himself with simple tasks like cutting down a hanged man. He will leave that to his men. Meanwhile what the leaders have just told him about their attitude to suicides might well make a chapter in the book he’s been pondering for some time about native customs.

Well, he reflects, in a killing aside, maybe not an entire chapter. Maybe a paragraph. After all, he thinks, with what the entire preceding text has shown us to be breath-taking ignorance,

Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. (p.146)

Thus we see how the rich and complex life of a major figure, a complex nuanced character, Okonkwo famed throughout the nine villages, is erased, elided, destroyed, reduced to a small paragraph in a colonial book of African anthropology. It’s a really cutting, stinging ending.

For the Brits haven’t killed anyone, let alone carried out some awful colonial massacre. The book is all the more powerful for showing that they did something much worse. They erased entire cultures. They destroyed people’s identities. They took away people’s reasons for living.

Thoughts

I doubt I can say anything which hasn’t already been said a thousand times before. I bet there are hundreds of scholarly papers relating the novel to the sociological and cultural impact of white Europeans on traditional black African cultures. And just as many pointing out the book is a tragedy which complies with the Greek idea of a central figure crippled by a tragic flaw. In Okonkwo’s case his flaw is his righteous anger, his resort to violence in the belief that he is more righteous and validated than everyone around him. Thus the immediate cause of his death is the blind rage which overcomes him when the chief court messenger provokes him.

But the overriding impression the book leaves is of its immense poise and finish. Miraculously, it doesn’t feel dated. It feels timeless in the way of a true classic. It feels like it has always been true and always will be. All the incidents hang together and are of a piece. It feels immensely solid and authoritative.

Tiny footnote

The W.B. Yeats poem the title is taken from (The Second Coming) was obviously a favourite of Achebe’s. Twenty-five years later, in his long essay, The Trouble with Nigeria, he casually uses another phrase from it, ‘mere anarchy’ (chapter 7).

Credit

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was published in 1958 by Heinemann. References are to the 2010 Everyman edition.

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