Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe

"I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them" (from Morning Yet on Creation Day, 1975)

Chinua Achebe is one of the great intellectual and ethical figures of our time, his first novel, Things Fall Apart, written in 1958 has sold over two million copies in the United States. It is published thought the world in eight million copies in print in fifty different languages.

He is a Prominent Igbo writer whose novels attack European critics who have failed to heighten African literature on its own expressions; he has shielded the use of the English language in the materialization of African fiction, insisting that the African novelist has a responsibility to educate.

Things Fall Apart is one a many novels that he writes that describe the effects of Western customs and values on traditional African society. Things Fall Apart is about a traditional African village “strong man” whose downfall is his own anger and fear of being his father influences in his part in the Igbo community. He is haunted by the actions of Unoka, his gutless and reckless father, who died in dishonor, leaving many village debts unsettled. In response, Okonkwo became a clansman, warrior, farmer, and family provider extraordinaire. The Igbo community is a lower Nigerian tribe that is part of a grouping of nine connected villages, Umuofia. He is a determined powerful leader, who uses physical strength and courage to influence his life. He is shown as the “big man” in the village who has a good life.  In Igbo, he is respected by his fellow villagers, a compound that is large, a prominent garden that grows yams and has several wives that cause him little to no trouble. In the novel is shows the uniquely and richly Africa through this village and how Okonkwo is interacts, behaves and is treated.

Conflict exists in the novel in several ways; one is the struggle between the traditional society of Umuofia and the new customs brought by the whites, which are in turn adopted by many of the villagers. Okonkwo also struggles to be as different from his deceased father as possible. He believes his father to have been weak, effeminate, lazy, humiliating, and poor. Consequently, Okonkwo strives to be strong, masculine, hard-working, appreciated, and wealthy.

The focus that you should take away from this novel is not just Okonkwo struggle with himself and his inner battle or that of conflict that arise between himself and his clan that leave him exiled for seven years but the struggle between tradition and change. This comes from the missionary church, which brings with it the new authority of the British District Commissioner. The tradition and change takes focus in the way that it impacts the people of Umuofia and the village of several different clans including that of the Igbo people.

This story is the first of many of Chinua Achebe novels that explain the relationship of African people when missionaries and colonial government came and made an intrusion to their lives. In Things Fall Apart is shows the intrusion of the missionaries and colonial government in the life of the Igbo tribe. The climax of this is when one of the villagers named Enoch who is a new Christian take an action that is against the clan’s beliefs.  The struggle between tradition and change is more noticeable when Enoch makes the choice to unmask an egwugwu(spirits of the ancestors) causes a revolt within the village.

What follows is a series of unfortunate events;  The egwugwu’s response is the burning of the church, and the District Commissioner’s underhanded involvement in the arrest of Umuofian leaders strengthen the pressure between Umuofia and the colonizers to a breaking point. The villagers tolerate the white government’s messengers to escape, and Okonkwo, realizing the weakness of his clan, commits suicide.

The purpose of this writing and many of his others is because Achebe has defined himself as a cultural nationalist with a revolutionary mission "to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement." (Liukkonen, kaupunginkirjasto and Pesonen 2008)