Things fall apart.docx
Things Fall Apart Full Book Summary
Okonkwo is a wealthy and respected warrior of the Umuofia clan, a lower Nigerian tribe that is part of a consortium of nine connected villages. He is haunted by the actions of Unoka, his cowardly and spendthrift father, who died in disrepute, leaving many village debts unsettled. In response, Okonkwo became a clansman, warrior, farmer, and family provider extraordinaire. He has a twelve-year-old son named Nwoye whom he finds lazy; Okonkwo worries that Nwoye will end up a failure like Unoka.
In a settlement with a neighboring tribe, Umuofia wins a virgin and a fifteen-year-old boy. Okonkwo takes charge of the boy, Ikemefuna, and finds an ideal son in him. Nwoye likewise forms a strong attachment to the newcomer. Despite his fondness for Ikemefuna and despite the fact that the boy begins to call him “father,” Okonkwo does not let himself show any affection for him.
During the Week of Peace, Okonkwo accuses his youngest wife, Ojiugo, of negligence. He severely beats her, breaking the peace of the sacred week. He makes some sacrifices to show his repentance, but he has shocked his community irreparably.
Ikemefuna stays with Okonkwo’s family for three years. Nwoye looks up to him as an older brother and, much to Okonkwo’s pleasure, develops a more masculine attitude. One day, the locusts come to Umuofia—they will come every year for seven years before disappearing for another generation. The village excitedly collects them because they are good to eat when cooked.
Ogbuefi Ezeudu, a respected village elder, informs Okonkwo in private that the Oracle has said that Ikemefuna must be killed. He tells Okonkwo that because Ikemefuna calls him “father,” Okonkwo should not take part in the boy’s death. Okonkwo lies to Ikemefuna, telling him that they must return him to his home village. Nwoye bursts into tears.
As he walks with the men of Umuofia, Ikemefuna thinks about seeing his mother. After several hours of walking, some of Okonkwo’s clansmen attack the boy with machetes. Ikemefuna runs to Okonkwo for help. But Okonkwo, who doesn’t wish to look weak in front of his fellow tribesmen, cuts the boy down despite the Oracle’s admonishment. When Okonkwo returns home, Nwoye deduces that his friend is dead.
Okonkwo sinks into a depression, neither able to sleep nor eat. He visits his friend Obierika and begins to feel revived a bit. Okonkwo’s daughter Ezinma falls ill, but she recovers after Okonkwo gathers leaves for her medicine.
The death of Ogbuefi Ezeudu is announced to the surrounding villages by means of the ekwe, a musical instrument. Okonkwo feels guilty because the last time Ezeudu visited him was to warn him against taking part in Ikemefuna’s death. At Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s large and elaborate funeral, the men beat drums and fire their guns. Tragedy compounds upon itself when Okonkwo’s gun explodes and kills Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s sixteen-year-old son.
Because killing a clansman is a crime against the earth goddess, Okonkwo must take his family into exile for seven years in order to atone. He gathers his most valuable belongings and takes his family to his mother’s natal village, Mbanta. The men from Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s quarter burn Okonkwo’s buildings and kill his animals to cleanse the village of his sin.
Okonkwo’s kinsmen, especially his uncle, Uchendu, receive him warmly. They help him build a new compound of huts and lend him yam seeds to start a farm. Although he is bitterly disappointed at his misfortune, Okonkwo reconciles himself to life in his motherland.
During the second year of Okonkwo’s exile, Obierika brings several bags of cowries (shells used as currency) that he has made by selling Okonkwo’s yams. Obierika plans to continue to do so until Okonkwo returns to the village. Obierika also brings the bad news that Abame, another village, has been destroyed by the white man.
Soon afterward, six missionaries travel to Mbanta. Through an interpreter named Mr. Kiaga, the missionaries’ leader, Mr. Brown, speaks to the villagers. He tells them that their gods are false and that worshipping more than one God is idolatrous. But the villagers do not understand how the Holy Trinity can be accepted as one God. Although his aim is to convert the residents of Umuofia to Christianity, Mr. Brown does not allow his followers to antagonize the clan.
Mr. Brown grows ill and is soon replaced by Reverend James Smith, an intolerant and strict man. The more zealous converts are relieved to be free of Mr. Brown’s policy of restraint. One such convert, Enoch, dares to unmask an egwugwu during the annual ceremony to honor the earth deity, an act equivalent to killing an ancestral spirit. The next day, the egwugwu burn Enoch’s compound and Reverend Smith’s church to the ground.
The District Commissioner is upset by the burning of the church and requests that the leaders of Umuofia meet with him. Once they are gathered, however, the leaders are handcuffed and thrown in jail, where they suffer insults and physical abuse.
After the prisoners are released, the clansmen hold a meeting, during which five court messengers approach and order the clansmen to desist. Expecting his fellow clan members to join him in uprising, Okonkwo kills their leader with his machete. When the crowd allows the other messengers to escape, Okonkwo realizes that his clan is not willing to go to war.
When the District Commissioner arrives at Okonkwo’s compound, he finds that Okonkwo has hanged himself. Obierika and his friends lead the commissioner to the body. Obierika explains that suicide is a grave sin; thus, according to custom, none of Okonkwo’s clansmen may touch his body. The commissioner, who is writing a book about Africa, believes that the story of Okonkwo’s rebellion and death will make for an interesting paragraph or two. He has already chosen the book’s title: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
Full Book Analysis
The narrative structure of Things Fall Apart follows a cyclical pattern that chronicles Okonkwo’s youth in Umuofia, his seven-year exile in Mbanta, and his eventual return home. Each of the novel’s three parts covers one of these periods of Okonkwo’s life. The novel’s three parts also map onto a gendered narrative structure that follows Okonkwo from fatherland to motherland back to fatherland. This gendered narrative structure functions in counterpoint with Okonkwo’s ongoing obsession with his own masculinity. Despite every attempt to gain status and become an exemplar of traditional Igbo masculinity, Okonkwo suffers from a feeling of relentless emasculation. Okonkwo’s struggle to achieve recognition repeatedly draws him into conflict with his community, eventually leading both to his own downfall and to that of Umuofia and the nine villages.
Part One of Things Fall Apart emphasizes Okonkwo’s coming-of-age and his attempts to distance himself from the disreputable legacy of his father, Unoka. Okonkwo’s tireless efforts and singular drive, along with his local fame as a wrestling champion, go a long way in securing him a place among the titled men of Umuofia. Yet Okonkwo’s zeal frequently leads him astray, as when he executes Ikemefuna, the young boy who became his surrogate son after being surrendered to Umuofia by another village to settle a violent dispute. When the clan elders decide it is time for Ikemefuna’s execution, an elder named Ogbuefi Ezeudu warns Okonkwo that he should “not bear a hand in [Ikemefuna’s] death.”
Despite this warning, a moment of panic ultimately drives Okonkwo to bring his machete down on his surrogate son: “He was afraid of being weak.” At other points in Part One, Okonkwo shows himself quick to anger with his wives and short in patience with his children. His obsession with upward mobility and traditional masculinity tends to alienate others, leaving him in a precarious social position.
In addition to narrating Okonkwo’s struggle to build a distinguished reputation, Part One also provides a broad view of the precolonial Igbo cultural world. Achebe showcases numerous Igbo cultural values, religious beliefs, and ritual practices to provide the reader with a sense of the Igbo world. By the end of Part One, however, both Okonkwo’s life and the life of his community teeter on the brink of disaster. The first blow comes with the death of Ogbuefi Ezeudu, the oldest man in the village, and the same man who warned Okonkwo against killing Ikemefuna. The second blow comes when, during Ezeudu’s nighttime burial, Okonkwo’s gun misfires and kills Ezeudu’s sixteen-year-old son. The ominous manslaughter of Ezeudu’s son forces the remaining village elders to burn Okonkwo’s huts, kill his livestock, and send him and his family into exile for seven years.
Exiled for committing a “feminine” (i.e., accidental) crime, Okonkwo retreats from his fatherland to the land of his mother’s kin, a retreat that Okonkwo finds deeply emasculating. This personal sense of emasculation parallels larger cultural and historical changes, as white Christian missionaries begin to infiltrate the lower Niger region, including both Umuofia and Okonkwo’s site of exile, Mbanta. The personal and historical senses of emasculation come to a head when an old friend from Umuofia visits Okonkwo in Mbanta to inform him that his eldest son, Nwoye, has abandoned traditional Igbo beliefs and joined the Christian faith. Realizing that this event constitutes a major rupture in his patrilineal line, Okonkwo disowns Nwoye.
By the time Okonkwo and his family leave Mbanta, the growing presence of foreigners in Umuofia has already created deep internal divisions. In addition to the missionaries who arrived in his absence, government officials also begin to filter in, installing a foreign rule of law. The changes in Umuofia compromise Okonkwo’s homecoming, which he hoped would represent a new start. Finding himself once again in a passive, emasculated position, Okonkwo grows increasingly furious with his fellow Umuofians, who refuse to take violent action against the missionaries and force them out. Whereas others praise the British for providing increased access to resources along with medicine and education, Okonkwo sees the British as a cancer whose presence will eventually kill Umuofia and the nine villages.
Following another emasculating incident where colonial officers throw Okonkwo and others in jail and set a steep bail, Okonkwo takes an uncompromising position in favor of tradition. His final acts of violence—murder and suicide—cement the novel’s tragedy. This tragedy is, once again, deeply gendered. In the law of Umuofia, an intentional killing constitutes a “masculine” crime. Although Igbo tradition does not explicitly code suicide as a “feminine” crime, killing himself is an unspeakable act that strips Okonkwo of all honor. Thus, his suicide brings a final instance of emasculation, as he will be denied the honor of a proper burial.
Themes
The Struggle Between Change and Tradition
As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters. The tension about whether change should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal status. Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them. To some extent, Okonkwo’s resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal status. His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which society judges him.
This system of evaluating the self inspires many of the clan’s outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a more elevated status. The villagers in general are caught between resisting and embracing change and they face the dilemma of trying to determine how best to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the villagers are excited about the new opportunities and techniques that the missionaries bring. This European influence, however, threatens to extinguish the need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking.
These traditional methods, once crucial for survival, are now, to varying degrees, dispensable. Throughout the novel, Achebe shows how dependent such traditions are upon storytelling and language and thus how quickly the abandonment of the Igbo language for English could lead to the eradication of these traditions.
Varying Interpretations of Masculinity
Okonkwo’s relationship with his late father shapes much of his violent and ambitious demeanor. He wants to rise above his father’s legacy of spendthrift, indolent behavior, which he views as weak and therefore effeminate. This association is inherent in the clan’s language—the narrator mentions that the word for a man who has not taken any of the expensive, prestige-indicating titles is agbala, which also means “woman.” But, for the most part, Okonkwo’s idea of manliness is not the clan’s. He associates masculinity with aggression and feels that anger is the only emotion that he should display. For this reason, he frequently beats his wives, even threatening to kill them from time to time.
We are told that he does not think about things, and we see him act rashly and impetuously. Yet others who are in no way effeminate do not behave in this way. Obierika, unlike Okonkwo, “was a man who thought about things.” Whereas Obierika refuses to accompany the men on the trip to kill Ikemefuna, Okonkwo not only volunteers to join the party that will execute his surrogate son but also violently stabs him with his machete simply because he is afraid of appearing weak.
Okonkwo’s seven-year exile from his village only reinforces his notion that men are stronger than women. While in exile, he lives among the kinsmen of his motherland but resents the period in its entirety. The exile is his opportunity to get in touch with his feminine side and to acknowledge his maternal ancestors, but he keeps reminding himself that his maternal kinsmen are not as warlike and fierce as he remembers the villagers of Umuofia to be. He faults them for their preference of negotiation, compliance, and avoidance over anger and bloodshed. In Okonkwo’s understanding, his uncle Uchendu exemplifies this pacifist (and therefore somewhat effeminate) mode.
Language as a Sign of Cultural Difference
Language is an important theme in Things Fall Apart on several levels. In demonstrating the imaginative, often formal language of the Igbo, Achebe emphasizes that Africa is not the silent or incomprehensible continent that books such as Heart of Darkness made it out to be. Rather, by peppering the novel with Igbo words, Achebe shows that the Igbo language is too complex for direct translation into English. Similarly, Igbo culture cannot be understood within the framework of European colonialist values. Achebe also points out that Africa has many different languages: the villagers of Umuofia, for example, make fun of Mr. Brown’s translator because his language is slightly different from their own.
On a macroscopic level, it is extremely significant that Achebe chose to write Things Fall Apart in English—he clearly intended it to be read by the West at least as much, if not more, than by his fellow Nigerians. His goal was to critique and emend the portrait of Africa that was painted by so many writers of the colonial period. Doing so required the use of English, the language of those colonial writers. Through his inclusion of proverbs, folktales, and songs translated from the Igbo language, Achebe managed to capture and convey the rhythms, structures, cadences, and beauty of the Igbo language.
Generational Divide
Things Fall Apart spotlights two significant generational divides. The first divide separates Okonkwo from his father, Unoka. Unlike his son, Unoka is not a warrior, nor has he distinguished himself as a man in any other way. Instead, Unoka prefers to drink and play music with friends. For a hypermasculine man like Okonkwo, Unoka’s lack of drive is shameful, and Okonkwo dismisses his father as a coward.
Just as Okonkwo is divided from his father, he is also divided from his eldest son, Nwoye. Nwoye has much in common with his grandfather Unoka, especially with regard to his lack of interest in war and his love of the arts. Nwoye resists his father’s expectation that he become an accomplished warrior. He also feels drawn to his mother’s stories, which Okonkwo sees as an effeminate waste of time. Eventually, Nwoye escapes his father’s expectations and his wrath by running away and converting to Christianity. Although Okonkwo feels ashamed of both his father and his son, the novel suggests that Okonkwo is perhaps more of an anomaly than either Unoka or Nwoye.
Pride
Okonkwo’s greatest weakness is his pride, which is constantly under threat both from within his community and from without. Okonkwo takes pride in his achievements. This pride is justifiable, since he has accomplished a lot. Not only has he proven himself among Umuofia’s fiercest warriors, but he has also climbed Umuofia’s social ladder faster than any of his peers. Yet Okonkwo’s pride also makes him quick to disdain others who don’t live up to his high standards. For instance, Nwoye’s apparent lack of masculine qualities leads Okonkwo to worry about his own legacy and be aggressive towards Nwoye.
Okonkwo’s exile in Mbanta also deals a serious blow to his pride. When he returns to Umuofia he wants to restore his pride by defending his home against European influence. Okonkwo explains his position with an analogy: “If a man comes into my hut and defecates on the floor, what do I do? Do I shut my eyes? No! I take a stick and break his head.” Okonkwo eventually resorts to violence to defend his pride, and this violence leads to his tragic downfall.
Repression
Throughout Things Fall Apart Okonkwo struggles with repressing his emotions. He represses his emotions because, more than anything else, he fears appearing weak and effeminate. Over and over in the novel Okonkwo’s inner struggle to quash all emotional responses leads him to express himself with excessive cruelty. The narrator comments on this internal tug-of-war frequently. In Chapter 4, for instance, the narrator explicitly addresses the theme of repression: “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.” Okonkwo’s belief that anger is the only appropriate emotion for a man to show causes significant problems for him, his family, and ultimately his community.
For example, when Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna against the advice of Ogbuefi Ezeudu, he does so because “He was afraid of being thought weak.” But Okonkwo’s brutal killing of his adopted son breaks the heart of his blood son, Nwoye. This act deepens an already-existing wound between Okonkwo and Nwoye, one that never gets healed. Throughout the novel, emotional repression leads to damaging—and eventually, for Okonkwo, tragic—outbursts of anger and violence.
Drum Language
Drums play an important role in Umuofia. Throughout Things Fall Apart the narrator emphasizes drums’ ability to generate excitement and even communicate specific information. Drums often signal the initiation of a ceremony. For example, a persistent drum beat sets Umuofia’s annual wrestling match in motion, and the sound fills the village until “their sound was no longer a separate thing from the living village. It was like the pulsation of its heart.” The narrator explains that drums speak in their own “esoteric language,” a language that villagers learn early in life.
In one telling example, the narrator transcribes the drum language phonetically: “Go-di-di-go-go-di-go. Di-go-go-di-go. It was the ekwe talking to the clan.” The narrator waits several sentences before translating the drum’s message: “Somebody was dead.” But more important than the message is the medium. By transcribing the drum language, the narrator elevates it to a status similar to the other languages that appear in the novel: English and Igbo.
Ethnographic Distance
The term “ethnographic distance” refers to a method in anthropology where the anthropologists distance themselves from the culture they are studying in order to make sense of that culture. At several points in the novel, the narrator, who otherwise seems fully immersed in Igbo culture, takes a step back in order to explain certain aspects of the Igbo world to the reader. For example, when Okonkwo’s first wife calls out to Ekwefi in chapter five, Ekwefi calls back from inside her hut, “Is that me?” This response may seem strange to non-Igbo readers, so the narrator explains the cultural logic of Ekwefi’s response: “That was the way people answered calls from outside. They never answered yes for fear it might be an evil spirit calling.” The Igbo world is full of spirits that may have evil intentions, and answering “Yes” to a call from outside could inadvertently invite one such spirit inside. Throughout the book the narrator uses ethnographic distance to clarify elements of Igbo culture to a non-Igbo reader. The narrator borders two worlds: one African and one European.
Chi
The concept of chi is discussed at various points throughout the novel and is important to our understanding of Okonkwo as a tragic hero. The chi is an individual’s personal god, whose merit is determined by the individual’s good fortune or lack thereof. Along the lines of this interpretation, one can explain Okonkwo’s tragic fate as the result of a problematic chi—a thought that occurs to Okonkwo at several points in the novel. For the clan believes, as the narrator tells us in Chapter 14, a “man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi.”
But there is another understanding of chi that conflicts with this definition. In Chapter 4, the narrator relates, according to an Igbo proverb, that “when a man says yes his chi says yes also.” According to this understanding, individuals will their own destinies. Thus, depending upon our interpretation of chi, Okonkwo seems either more or less responsible for his own tragic death. Okonkwo himself shifts between these poles: when things are going well for him, he perceives himself as master and maker of his own destiny; when things go badly, however, he automatically disavows responsibility and asks why he should be so ill-fated.
Oral Storytelling
Acts of storytelling appear again and again throughout Things Fall Apart as a means of establishing the cultural values of the Igbo and the Europeans, as well as highlighting the power struggle between them. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this storytelling motif, however, is its oral nature. Traditions of oral storytelling have extensive histories in many cultures around the world and often involve origin stories or narratives about past generations. When expressed aloud, these tales take on a personal quality which works to establish a sense of shared identity and humanity among listeners. The fact that characters like Okonkwo and Obierika remember songs and stories of their childhood, such as the “silly” mosquito story in Chapter 9, speaks to effectiveness of oral storytelling in terms of establishing a collective cultural consciousness. In addition to the unique power that oral traditions can have over listeners, they also offer the storyteller more control over the narrative as they can adapt each iteration. Ikemefuna, for example, finds a source of agency among his new family members by recounting his own versions of stock folk tales to Nwoye. The degree of flexibility inherent in oral storytelling allows these tales to find a new life within each generation.
Of course, Achebe’s use of this motif not only works to establish the rich history of Igbo culture for readers but to redefine the power dynamic between the Igbo and the missionaries. Just as Achebe challenged the West’s literary representations of colonial Africa by writing Things Fall Apart, the prominence of oral storytelling among both groups in the novel’s world pushes back against misconceptions regarding the legitimacy of one tradition over another. The image of Mr. Brown and Akunna “talking through an interpreter about religion” and “[learning] more about their different beliefs” emphasizes that, as they stand individually, Igbo folk tales and Christian verses or hymns serve similar functions in their respective cultures. While the European perspective ultimately overpowers Igbo narratives through the Commissioner’s written word, the presence of oral storytelling throughout highlights a historically underestimated source of agency.
Animal Imagery
In their descriptions, categorizations, and explanations of human behavior and wisdom, the Igbo often use animal anecdotes to naturalize their rituals and beliefs. The presence of animals in their folklore reflects the environment in which they live—not yet “modernized” by European influence. Though the colonizers, for the most part, view the Igbo’s understanding of the world as rudimentary, the Igbo perceive these animal stories, such as the account of how the tortoise’s shell came to be bumpy, as logical explanations of natural phenomena. Another important animal image is the figure of the sacred python. Enoch’s alleged killing and eating of the python symbolizes the transition to a new form of spirituality and a new religious order. Enoch’s disrespect of the python clashes with the Igbo’s reverence for it, epitomizing the incompatibility of colonialist and indigenous values.
Locusts
Achebe depicts the locusts that descend upon the village in highly allegorical terms that prefigure the arrival of the white settlers, who will feast on and exploit the resources of the Igbo. The fact that the Igbo eat these locusts highlights how innocuous they take them to be. Similarly, those who convert to Christianity fail to realize the damage that the culture of the colonizer does to the culture of the colonized. The language that Achebe uses to describe the locusts indicates their symbolic status. The repetition of words like “settled” and “every” emphasizes the suddenly ubiquitous presence of these insects and hints at the way in which the arrival of the white settlers takes the Igbo off guard. Furthermore, the locusts are so heavy they break the tree branches, which symbolizes the fracturing of Igbo traditions and culture under the onslaught of colonialism and white settlement. Perhaps the most explicit clue that the locusts symbolize the colonists is Obierika’s comment in Chapter 15: “the Oracle . . . said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts. . . .”
Fire
Okonkwo is associated with burning, fire, and flame throughout the novel, alluding to his intense and dangerous anger—the only emotion that he allows himself to display. Yet the problem with fire, as Okonkwo acknowledges in Chapters 17 and 24, is that it destroys everything it consumes. Okonkwo is both physically destructive—he kills Ikemefuna and Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s son—and emotionally destructive—he suppresses his fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma in favor of a colder, more masculine aura. Just as fire feeds on itself until all that is left is a pile of ash, Okonkwo eventually succumbs to his intense rage, allowing it to rule his actions until it destroys him.
Yams
Yams serve as an important symbol in both Igbo culture and in the novel’s fictional narrative, representing status, success, and masculinity. Given that yams are native to Africa, their centrality to daily life in Igboland is unsurprising. The New Yam Festival, the planting of seed-yams, and the yam harvest are all key measurements of passing time, and the starchy vegetable plays a role in worship and other clan ceremonies. For Okonkwo, the number of yams he can grow indicates his status in the village and his strength as a provider for his family. Yams act both as a currency, allowing men to exchange goods and pay for their brides, and as a visual symbol of prosperity. Especially for Okonkwo, these outward appearances of strength are key as he refuses to show any signs of weakness or struggle. His protectiveness over his crop speaks to his desire to maintain a reputation of success, contrary to the reputation of his father who left his family hungry. Yams also emphasize the centrality of men and the male perspective in the day-to-day operations of the village. Referred to as “the king of crops,” the cultural significance of yams, whose growth and harvest occur under the village men’s direction, invites the men themselves to be at the center of Umuofia’s world. This male social dominance offers yet another reason for Okonkwo’s aggressive behavior and preoccupation with his yams, for he sees both as a pathway to becoming and staying the village’s central figure.
Tragedy
Things Fall Apart fits the definition of tragedy because it documents both the personal downfall of Okonkwo and the broader erosion of the Igbo cultural world that Okonkwo wishes to defend. From the very beginning of the novel, Achebe clarifies the extent to which Okonkwo’s status and sense of self-worth depend on normative Igbo ideas of masculinity. Okonkwo struggles to free himself from his father’s disreputable legacy and earn a place among the elders of Umuofia. His zealous pursuit of fame and recognition frequently brings him into conflict with others.
Life is tough enough for Okonkwo before the incursion of Christian missionaries and British colonial forces, but the foreigners’ arrival in the nine villages marks the end of Igbo autonomy, as well as the end of any possibility for Okonkwo to earn honor as a clan elder. With this double deprivation leaving Okonkwo with no way out, he succumbs to despair and commits suicide, the most abominable act an Igbo man can perform.
Things Fall Apart even has a tragic-sounding title. The title is a quote from W. B. Yeats’s ominous poem “The Second Coming.” The reference to Yeats provides the novel with a sense of tragic inevitability. Achebe subtly underscores this sense of inevitability by echoing the language of Yeats’s poem throughout the story. Achebe echoes one line in particular: “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” The refrain loosed upon the world appears at two significant moments in Things Fall Apart. The first comes when Ekwefi disobeys a priestess’s command not to follow her to the oracle’s cave. In the terrifying dark of the night, Ekwefi recalls “those evil essences loosed upon the world by the potent ‘medicines’ which the tribe . . . had now forgotten how to control.”
The second moment comes just before Okonkwo is cast out of Umuofia for the crime of manslaughter: “[If] the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, [the Earth goddess’s] wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender.” In both cases, refrains of Yeats’s loosed upon the world indicate the threat of ultimate tragedy.
Historical fiction
Historical fiction encompasses any narrative that takes place at a particular time in the past. Achebe’s novel fits into this broad genre since it tells a story set in the precolonial period, leading up to first contact with the British. Achebe does not make the precise timeframe of Things Fall Apart clear, which makes sense since precolonial Igbo people did not use the European system of months and years. Nevertheless, we can date the story to sometime in the mid to late nineteenth century, when British colonial forces slowly gained influence in the lower Niger delta region where Achebe locates the fictional village of Umuofia.
Achebe offers a detailed portrait of precolonial Igbo customs, and he carefully avoids presenting an idealized picture of what village life was like before contact with Europeans. Written in the years just before Nigerian independence, Achebe’s historical vision carried political weight. Despite being fiction, Things Fall Apart insists on the rich reality of Igbo history, which European historical accounts tend to erase.
Foreshadowing in Things Fall Apart begins with the novel’s title, which indicates that the story to come does not end well. Achebe amplifies this sense of impending doom by prefacing Part One with an epigraph containing the quote from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” from which the novel gets its name. Yeats’s poem presents a deeply ominous vision of some mysterious future event, which its speaker envisions arising from the chaos and anarchy that characterizes the present moment. It is not at all clear, however, whether this future event bodes well or ill: “[W]hat rough beast,” the speaker asks, “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Achebe’s use of Yeats is significant. Yeats wrote his poem at the start of the Irish War of Independence, when Ireland sought its freedom from British colonialism. While Yeats envisions an obscure future beyond the horror of colonialism, Achebe uses Yeats to signal not the end but the beginning of colonialism in Nigeria.
The Arrival of the British
In addition to the title and the epigraph from Yeats, Achebe uses other strategies to foreshadow the arrival of the British. Take, for instance, the coming of the locusts. The narrator explains how the first swarm of locusts that came was small: “They were the harbingers sent to survey the land” before the rest descended. The locusts prefigure the missionaries, who in turn prefigure the eventual coming of colonial governance. The narrator makes this connection explicit later in the novel, when Obierika informs Okonkwo of the oracle’s prophecy following the first appearance of a white man in the nine villages: “It said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts, it said, and that first man was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain.”
The narrator also uses proverbs to accomplish a similar effect. For instance, after the accident that results in Okonkwo’s exile, the narrator makes an ominous nod to proverbial wisdom: “As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled the others.” This sentence appears at the very end of Part One and suggests the challenges that will arise throughout Parts Two and Three.
Nwoye’s Conversion
Although Nwoye’s conversion to Christianity comes as a surprise to Okonkwo, the narrator foreshadows this event by frequently underlining Nwoye’s frustration both with his father’s harsh expectations and with certain Igbo cultural practices he finds morally questionable. One clear instance of foreshadowing comes in Nwoye’s love for the tales his mother tells. Okonkwo dismisses these as “women’s” stories and forces Nwoye to listen to “masculine stories of violence and bloodshed” instead. When Nwoye later hears “the poetry of the new religion,” it captivates him like his mother’s stories and lays the groundwork for his conversion.
In addition to its poetry, the Christian tradition also illuminates aspects of Igbo culture that trouble Nwoye. For example, “The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question . . . of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed.” These questions first haunted Nwoye many years earlier, which was the first time “something [gave] away inside of him,” foreshadowing his eventual decision to abandon Igbo customs.
Okonkwo’s Suicide
Just as clues predict Nwoye’s conversion, clues also predict Okonkwo’s suicide. The first clue comes early in the novel, when a farmer succumbs to despair following a particularly devastating yam harvest: “One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself,” just like Okonkwo will do at the novel’s conclusion. A second clue comes much later, when Okonkwo is exiled in Mbanta and Obierika comes to deliver the profits from his friend’s yam harvest. In a morbid, joking exchange, Okonkwo expresses that he does not know how to thank Obierika. When Okonkwo indicates that it would not even be enough to kill one of his sons in gratitude, Obierika suggests an alternative: “Then kill yourself.”
Although meant as a joke, the reader recalls this grim suggestion ten pages later when Obierika returns to Mbanta to inform Okonkwo of Nwoye’s conversion to Christianity. Okonkwo has a premonition of doom: “[He] felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation.” The sense of doom Okonkwo feels here speaks at once to the annihilation of the Igbo world and to his own future suicide.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. Think about the role of weather in the novel. How does it work, symbolically or otherwise, in relation to important elements of the novel such as religion? Are rain and draught significant? Explore the ways in which weather affects the emotional and spiritual realms of the novel as well as the physical world.
2. Women suffer great losses in this novel but also, in certain circumstances, hold tremendous power. What role do women play in Okonkwo’s life? Is there any difference between his interaction with specific women and his understanding of women and femininity in general?
3. Animal imagery abounds in the folktales and proverbs circulated among the clan members. What is the significance of some of the animals they discuss? What does the prominence of animal figures suggest about Igbo culture and about Achebe’s larger goals?
4. In what ways does the idea of progress shape the novel? If Unoka, Okonkwo, and Nwoye are symbolic of three successive generations, how does society in Umuofia change over the course of their lifetimes? Where does Ikemefuna fit into this picture?
5. Throughout the novel, drums, music, and the town crier’s voice punctuate the narrative at key moments. When does silence occur and what does it mean? Is there more than one type of silence? Can silence be characterized as a positive or negative occurrence? What are the implications of the fact that Unoka takes his flute with him to the Evil Forest when he dies?