Things Fall Apart: A Novel (The African Trilogy)

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is an absolutely brilliant read. The size is perfect, not too long, but powerful enough to leave a lasting impact. The writing is clear, engaging, and rich with culture and meaning. The quality of the story is outstanding. Achebe captures tradition, identity, and change in a way that feels both personal and universal. This is actually my second time reading it, and it was just as gripping and thought-provoking as the first. A true classic that deserves a spot on every bookshelf. Highly recommended!

As a literary work this is often flawed - the narrative style is simple but rarely concise, and there are whole episodes where Achebe seems unsure if he's simply intending to say something important about tribal life, or just advancing the story. He rarely achieves both. Achebe also has a habit of glossing over major turning points - almost as though they were asides. It may be a deliberate approach, reflecting the matter of fact nature of the society at hand. Or it may just be bad writing. I suspect the latter. But the objectivity of the piece is to be applauded: not least as there is nothing romantic or even admirable about the wife-beating, step son-murdering Okonkwo. This gives the novel a profound force, and the piece raises all the tough questions about colonialism - and indeed modern vs primitive societies. There is no doubt this is a classic - and a classic that must be read. But let's take Achebe's lesson and not romanticise something that could suffer a great deal of improvement.

Chinua Achebe narrates the advent of colonialism through the story of Okonkwo, a respected and fearless village leader in Nigeria. His writing is ferociously honest as he oscillates between folklore and proverbs to illustrate village life and its community values along with brutal descriptions of the horrors of some village traditions like human sacrifices as well as the violent bullying from the colonisers.. The characters in the story are not stereotypical heroes or villains but complex, tender, savage and deeply human. The themes of tradition and progress are explored through a captivating tale which leaves the reader with no clear answers but lots of Emotions. In just over 200 pages we experience a slice of history. History is never binary and Achebe portrays its many facets through sublime writing. No sentence or anecdote is superfluous or sentimental and the prose is fluid and vivid throughout. This is what makes this novel a masterpiece.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart uniquely transcends its reader to a whole new world, and offers an invitation to an awakened imagination. Centered around Okonkwo - a wrestling champion and acclaimed warrior of Umuofia - the book sheds light on the value of Igbo culture, beliefs and traditions, and the historical dependence on deism and religion as a determinant of fate. Achebe delves into precolonial Igboland, using proverbs, folklore and the Igbo language to highlight indigenous social and cultural norms. The author subtly renders the conception of colonialism as an extension of enlightenment and revolution as a fallacy, and though imperfect, illustrates a demise in the system of self governance and the use of Igbo language, following the invasion of European missionaries and governments. Wherever possible, Okonkwo never failed to seize the opportunity to express his masculinity. Through the village fights, meetings with the elders and interactions with his family members, the preservation of his tough, manly, undefeated and fearless figure was of paramount importance. So much so that he coldly murdered Ikemefuna - who looked up to him as a father - just to protect this ‘masculine’ image. The irony in Okonkwo’s story is the fact that the display of masculinity and the desire to be feared and respected was an exhibition of a different form of fear in itself. That is, the fear of being anything close to the legacy of his late father - lazy, weak, and in turn, feminine. The need to dissociate himself from his father, Unoka, was the bane of Okonkwo’s existence and simultaneously, the shovel for which Okonkwo dug his grave. The desire to be alienated from the negative legacy of his father is however not synonymous to Okonkwo. It is an innate feature that unconsciously drives majority of people, especially young people. The fear of failing or mirroring the thing(s) loathed in familial relationships, unbeknownst to us, shapes our decisions, and who we strive to be. This, from conversations engaged in with young people, is increasingly apparent in the Nigerian society today. Particularly in broken homes, the residual bitterness that lingers often lays a foundation; for which many tend to build glass houses out of, in the bid to refute certain characteristics of their parent(s). Conversely, the fear of not living up to one’s parent’s legacy likewise shapes us, and influences the standards we set for ourselves. They redefine our idea of success, and remind us that failure - at any stage in life - is certainly not an option. Equivocally, the fear of failing to walk in - or perhaps, create bigger - footprints of one’s parent often subconsciously becomes one’s biggest conquest in life. Similar to Okonkwo, one is clothed with societal pressure, and the need for recognition and status; armed with the sword of parental burdens, expectations, inadequacies and responsibilities; perpetually fighting to break free from the shadow of the legacy of their parent(s). --- To be considered more of a man - because possessing male genital organs is simply insufficient in Nigeria - one’s assets as well as the number of wives, especially in the precolonial and traditionalist setting, spoke volumes. Mutually non-exclusive, the more wealth and power you possessed either by working hard, claiming titles or winning inter-village fights, the more you were respected as a man by your peers, elders and more importantly, women, in Igboland. This was indeed the case in Umuofia - the village from which Okonkwo’s father hailed, and Okonkwo’s place of residence. His ‘manliness’ as exhibited by the number of fights under his belt not only scored him his title as a clan leader and warrior in Umuofia, but also won him the heart of his second wife, Ekwefi, who had earlier married another man because Okonkwo, at that time, was poor. Without endorsing the idea of adultery and cautiously noting, the setting of the story portrays polygamy as the true and traditionalist nature of Nigerian men. In precolonial Igboland, as Achebe casts in Things Fall Apart, polygamy and status went hand in hand. In contrast to modern Nigeria where monogamy as enforced by the Christian missionaries is “respected” in most - mainly Christian - households, a man was not a man unless he had more than one wife. Similarly, the ‘real’ men - that is, non-effeminate - were known by the fruits they bore. That is, the number of children they had, and the gender of the offspring - as male children were better valued. The dominance of men in the household and society is a recurrent theme in Things Fall Apart. As simple as emotions, these were for women... Read Full Review Here: [...]

This is not a book to like or dislike. It is the narrative of how, if not why, the way of life that has persisted for generations is torn apart.

Okonkwo is determined not to be like his drunken, feckless father. Through hard work, he gains an honoured place in his Ibo village as a yam grower with three wives and several children. As we follow what happens to him, we will learn about the ways and traditions of his people, and of how the coming of the white man changed them irrevocably. The thing is that Achebe’s depiction of those ways and traditions are so appalling that I found myself completely on the side of the colonisers, not a place I either expected or wanted to be! The perpetual beatings of wives and children paled into insignificance when compared to the frequent killings for no reason at the behest of the many seemingly cruel and unjust gods worshipped and feared by the people. Centuries of farming tradition and yet they hadn’t worked out any methods of crop irrigation or protection, leaving them entirely at the mercy of the elements and of those pesky gods. The customs of deciding that some people should be treated as outcasts for no discernible cause and, even worse, of throwing twins out at birth to be left to die in the open made me feel that anything had to have been better than this. Come the colonisers, and with them education, healthcare, and a religion that taught of a loving god, gave a place to the outcasts and saved the lives of the abandoned twins – sounds good to me! And that makes me feel bad, because of course I really ought to be up in arms about the iniquities of the colonisers, oughtn’t I? I really struggled for at least half of this quite short book. It’s quite repetitive and although it’s certainly revealing and, I assume, honest about the life and traditions of the village, there’s very little in the way of story. I must say Achebe surprised me, though. I knew nothing about him except that he called Conrad a “thoroughgoing racist” for his portrayal of colonisation, and I assumed therefore that he would show the Africans in a positive light. I admire him, therefore, for not taking that easy route and instead giving a very harsh and unromanticised portrayal of life before the colonisers arrived. I suspect his real argument with Conrad was probably that Conrad often leaves the “natives” at the periphery of the picture, as if they are merely props on a stage set for the star actors in his dramas, the white men, and I certainly would agree with that assessment though I wouldn’t agree that that makes him racist. Achebe reverses this, putting the Africans as the central stars, with the colonisers having merely walk-on roles, and this has apparently influenced generations of African writers ever since the book was first published in 1958, making them realise the possibility of telling their own stories. The story picks up in the second half, once the colonisers arrive. We see the mix of missionary and soldier, one trying to change the Africans through the influence of Christianity, the other controlling them at the point of the gun. We see any form of violent resistance met with a wholly disproportionate response, and the newly installed justice system being used as a thin veneer to camouflage total dominance. We see misunderstandings caused by a failure of each to attempt to understand the other’s culture, and those misunderstandings often escalating to murder or massacre. Again, Achebe doesn’t make this entirely one-sided. While obviously the military might of the colonisers is by far the greater, he shows that many of the Africans are attracted to the things they offer, whether that be a better life or simply the pleasure that comes from being on the side of the more powerful, especially to those who have been treated as outcasts by their own society. Through Okonkwo and the older villagers, we see their despair at the destruction of the old ways, and from a male perspective I could certainly sympathise with that. But from a female perspective, I couldn’t help but feel that the women would have had less to regret – on the basis of Achebe’s depiction, they lacked all political power and had little influence even in the domestic sphere, not to mention the accepted tradition that husbands ought to beat their wives regularly. (Not, of course, that that tradition was exclusive to Africans...) I can’t say I wholeheartedly enjoyed it, either for the very bleak portrayal of the life of the Africans, nor for any particular literary merit. It is well written but not exceptionally so and the structure makes it feel rather unbalanced, with what story there is all happening towards the end. What makes it stand out is the rare centrality of the Nigerian people in their own story, and the, to me, unexpected even-handedness with which Achebe treats both Africans and colonisers. For those reasons, and because it’s considered an African classic by the “father of African literature”, I’m glad to have read it.

I decided to read this after the great Black Theologian Prof Anthony Reddie mentioned it in talks a few times as a book his English teacher reccomended he read (in a show of stunning racism, he recommended it exclusively to Prof Reddie, the only black student in his class!). I'm very aware that my reading lacks diversity when it comes to reading African voices (rather than African-American, British African or British Afro-Carribean voices). I've only read one African novel before this one- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, so I had a very limited set of preconceived expectations. I was delighted to discover this is actually the first novel of a trilogy, and I'm looking forward to reading the next two! I really enjoyed this novel. The narrative style is very different to what I've come across in British or American literature, the characters are more clearly signposted - there's a seeming lack of subtext to Okonkwe, and his society. Its not until the British colonisers arrive in the last third of the novel that you start feeling the swirling tension of subtext, and as an autistic reader I appreciated how direct the characterisation was. I didn't have to guess about people's motivations or emotional states. I don't know if that's because I am lacking the culteral experience that would let me spot subtext obvious to Nigerian readers, or if African literature generally trends do more direct narrative - I look forward to broadening my reading and finding out! Okonkwe is an interesting character to me because he's a bully, a misogynist and he is cruel to his children. Yet, despite those flaws, I also feel immense empathy for him. His way of life is being violently removed from him, his life is disrupted by tragedy in multiple ways throughout the novel and I don't have to like him, to feel sorrow for him and his family. I wish this book (heck, an entire modules worth of wider African authored literature) had been included in my English Literature syllabus at school. It's very clear to me now that racism and specifically anti-African British coloniser racism, has left me unaware of literature that falls outside of a British/American dominated field - I shall correct this going forwards, and ensure that my home educated daughter is given the opportunity to explore international literature more widely.

This story is truly interesting and provides great insights to other cultures. Well written and enjoyable though not always comfortable. The thing I would say is the intro is difficult to read. It’s as though the intro author has swallowed a thesaurus; lots of unnecessary words and sentences that need reading multiple times to actually make sense of them. Please don’t let the intro put you off the book, it’s not at all necessary for the story, just a bit of info about the area and the author.