“Things Fall Apart” is a historical novel written by renowned Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.
He is one of the leading figures in African literature and is often known as the father of African literature.
The novel depicts pre-colonial life in Nigeria (a country in Africa) and life after the incursion of Europeans. It is also written as a response to Josep Conrad’s novel, “Heart of Darkness,” in which he portrays Africans as uncivilised.
In other words, it is not only against Josep’s novel but all other novels and works that contain a biased representation of Africa.
“Things Fall Apart”: Novel Summary
The novel begins with a depiction of everyday life in Nigeria, with no obstacles.They have their own culture, religion, and understanding among themselves.
They have everything that is needed for a society to run smoothly. They have courts in the form of elder’s counsel, in which they deal with the cases of their society.
They have a religion and their own traditions of marriage. Every year, they conduct festivals and other ceremonies.
The life looks well going, but when white men come into their society, the things start falling apart. Because white men abolish their entire life structure and force them to accept what white men have brought to them.
The protagonist of the novel is Okonkwo, who is a powerful wrestler and a wealthy, self-made man.
He is a successful farmer who earns a large amount of income from farming every year. He has three wives and eight children. Because of his physical power, he is feared in his village and all other surrounding villages.
Unlike him, his father had lived a notorious life. He had been very lazy and never worked enough to sustain his life. Eventually, he died sinking in debt.
After the death of his father, Okonkwo fears not being like his father. The fear of failure drives him to achieve good status. He works very hard, from dawn to dusk, and he wants his son to be like him.
He always teaches them to work hard and beats them if they do not. In his early age, he defeats an undefeatable wrestler in his village (Umuofia) and attains a famous status in all villages.
He has a compound with four rooms, one for each of his wives, as well as his own room.And separate rooms for his harvested crops.
Few people in his village have a life like his. Due to his strives towards his work, his stocks of vegetables and other products never finish through the year.
He has firm control over his household. His wife is scared of him a lot because he hates laziness and recklessness in work. Once, one of his wives went out without cooking food for him, and he beat her very much.
One day, during a funeral ceremony for one of his noble village fellows, his old gun accidentally fires, killing the dead fellow’s son in his hand.
Keeping in view the customs and traditions of the village (umuofia), as a punishment, he is set to be exiled for seven years from his fatherland to his motherland.
He lives in exile with his mother’s kinsmen. They give him a plot of land on which to build a house and farm.After living the five years of exile, in the last two years, white men from one of the coast areas came to his native village in the form of missionaries.
They gradually spread to other villages, erecting churches to preach their new religion to the villagers.They ask the people to leave their religion and convert to another. They employ various strategies in order to gain converts.After some time, they settle themselves there and establish a court in Umuofia at the centre of all the other villages. When someone goes against them, they bring him to court, and if he is found guilty, he is punished or sometimes hanged.
The other villagers grow very afraid of these situations. They many a time try to take them out of their land but will not be able to do it. This is because their own people marry white men.
After living seven years in exile, Okonkwo comes back to his native village. He has an unsustainable fatigue from fighting against the white men, but he cannot accumulate people for war because there no longer exists unity among his people.
He sees everyone living under the fear of white men. He many a time suggests war against the white men to the villagers, but no one tends to show interest.
Okonkwo cannot choose to live a life of slavery. He finally kills one of the missionaries and commits suicide.
Opinion On The Novel
According to my opinion, Chinua Achebe’s writing about Igbo society avoids the temptation to presentIt is a perfect world. He demonstrates both their good and bad practises.
He does not only show the invasion of white men as the reason why things fall apart in Igbo society but also the problems that existed in their own society.
He describes several inequalities in Igbo society.The biggest problem, he describes, is their positioning and treatment of women. Chinua Achebe shows it as a patriarchal society in which women are treated very badly. They are confined at home and have no authority over anything.
Marriages and every other decision are taken by men. After it, every cowardly action, even a man’s, is attached to women. For example, when Okonkwo kills his fellow villager, his action is declared a womanly action, and as a result, he is taken out of the village.
Furthermore, devaluing female power simply shows a male-dominated society and a society that is uncivilised because a civilised society always has the same place for both males and females. The novel depicts all of the oppressions that women face in ibgo society.
Second, the author describes how they are stuck in their forefathers’ traditional and customs and do not tolerate moulds in them.
This is shown through the character of Okonkwo, who does not tolerate change in their society and wants the legacy of their forefathers to continue.
In addition, it is a fact that any society changes with the passage of time, for the world is on the path of progress; if a society does not change, it remains backward and eventually will be called uncivilised. “Change” does not mean adopting another culture; it means change within the society.
Similarly, due to the stubborn beliefs of Okonkwo, his status decreases. At the beginning of the novel, he is the face of the village, but by the end, he is treated as a normal tribesman.
Third, the writer emphasises their religious conventions and traditional rules.They are shown to have separate gods for each matter.
Aside from these, the writer depicts the incursion of Britishers and the destructive effects that incursion had, which was the primary cause of the destruction of ibgo culture.
The coloniser (British) has always changed his face before entering a new territory. For instance, when he enters South Asia, he does so as a trader, just as when the British first came to Africa, they came as missionaries.
According to Chinua Achebe, when they come to Africa, they come silently and show themselves sympathetic. After some time, when they settle themselves, they start preaching their religion and bring in questions about the religion of indigenous people.
They use different tactics and methods to gain converts. In the beginning, they take in the outcasts and people who are buoyed by the villagers, eventually becoming successful in their mission.Moreover, after achieving a firm place, they install their own system of judiciary, education, and religion. They impose their own rules and laws on Africa, and if one goes against them, he is punished.
The local people try a lot to root them out but cannot do anything because of their own people in them. They eventually become completely colonised in this manner.
Most importantly, this novel is a kind of response to those representations of Africa in which they are portrayed as uncivilised.
The colonisers have mentioned in their writings about Africa that the people there are primitive and uncivilised. They do not have law, religion, history, etc. The author responds to them in this book.
The main indication of the response he gave is their language. He uses different idioms, proverbs, and other linguistic features of Nigerian. All of these are signs of a rich language and culture.
Secondly, from the elderly counsel, he shows that they have laws and courts. Thirdly, he shows that it is correct that they do not have a written history, but their history is preserved in the form of stories, poetry, and songs.
In addition, Chinua Achebe responds to the exclusionary discourse of the coloniser with an inclusionary discourse. This is what he does through the protagonist. The character of Okonkwo is presented as a self-made man.
His most of the actions resemble the heroes of western literature. In the west, a person is called a hero who is self-made.
Same as the case with Okonkwo, who does not own anything from his father, and whose complete personality and actions are motivated by the fear of failure. He does not want to become weak like his father. Also, the stories of father and son are very famous in western literature.
In conclusion, we can say that the representation of Africa by Chinua Achebe is more real and cultural than the representations of colonisers.
By: Sana ullah Dashti