Let’s start this new year in the hopes that things will not fall apart. Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel is a classic of Nigerian literature that offers a unique, if problematized, examination of an Ibo village. The novel seems to focus, loosely, on Okonkwo, a man of significant esteem in the village who struggles with the changing times. Indeed, the opening epigraph and title of the novel are from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” in which “the centre cannot hold.”
The novel is thematically consistent unto itself with respect to considerations of masculinity, fatherhood, and so on. Okonkwo, for instance, is a patriarchal figure who enacts violence against women and children who do not fulfil their roles in relation to him.There are a number of moments where Okonkwo proclaims his commitment to a masculine role and eschews “effeminate” men, who might be effeminate for any number of things, including enjoying hearing stories and being Christian. In Ibo, they are referred to as “efulefu”--a worthless man like a sheath without a knife. To modern and North American sensibilities, seeing the central character align so directly with the patriarchy is uncomfortable—and yet I find my allegiances for characters in the book torn.
The reason for my difficulty is that about halfway through the book white colonizers come and begin to take over Nigerian villages through violence while converting the inhabitants to Christianity. I, of course, tend to side against colonizers (for obvious reasons). And yet here, it’s hard to reconcile because in this case the colonizers’ way of life seems more humane than some of the customs of the Ibo people. For instance, when twins are born in Ibo villages superstition prompts their parents to disposed of them—a practice the Church condemns. In turn, I’m placed in a no-win situation.
The destructive customs surrounding masculinity and myth-making run throughout the text. At first glance, the colonized and the colonizers are far apart, ideologically. However, upon closer inspection, more parallels seem to emerge. While Okwonko is obsessed with raising his children to follow their father’s customs, the Christians also encourage their figurative children to follow their Father’s customs. Okwonko himself has a God-like moment where his adoptive son (a son not born to him—sound familiar?) is sentenced to death to appease a higher power. Okwonko is advised by The Oracle not to have a hand in his murder, and yet he cannot show mercy. When his adoptive son has been stabbed, he runs to his father, and Okwonko delivers the killing blow for fear of being seen as unmasculine for having sympathy. Religious and earthly fatherhood run concurrently and the scene is quite tragic and one of the most moving sequences in the story.
The story itself is generally told in a more mythic register. There is a directness to the narration that outlines the experiences of the characters in a simply-stated style that evokes the “once-upon-a-time-s” of fairy tales. The motif is reinforced as characters tell one another the myths and aphorisms of the land that govern their customs. My particular favourite was the story one character recounts about a turtle who gets a bunch of birds to carry him to a feast. He invents a custom that everyone takes on new names and so he chooses the name “All of you” so that when the feast is presented to “All of you” he gets to help himself. In an act of revenge, the birds tell his wife that the turtle requested all the hard objects in the house placed outside (rather than the soft ones he actually requested) and then the birds drop him onto the hard materials below. Those types of little stories are a nice addition to the characters that read as types throughout the text.
Culturally, I’m not sure how accurate the novel aims to be. The narrator describes some of the customs. I think it would be ill-advised to accept all fiction as a kind of ethnographic study, but I did find the ideas Achebe brought up to be compelling and believable enough that it feels like these are the authentic Ibo people. One myth is that of the ogbanje; an obanje is a changeling child who continues a cycle of dying, returning to his mother to be born again, and then dying again. In our minds, it would be most logical to consider the causes of miscarriages or infant mortality, but for the Ibo people they have elaborate rituals of having medicine men forcing the obanje to lead them to an iyi-uwa, a special stone that forms the link between the obanje and the spirit world. The stone must be destroyed in order for future children to not die. I found those rituals compelling and strange, but imbued with that mythic quality that feels true. As one character says of a myth in the story, “There is no story that is not true” (141) and so these little vignettes ring with a sincerity which I quite appreciated.
It is one of these cultural norms that ultimately force Okwonko to leave his village. Following the death of an elderly man, Okwonko says something to the effect of, “If anyone caused his death I want them to be punished forever” and by accident the deceased man’s son is shot and killed. The “murder” falls on Okwonko and he is exiled to his mother’s village for seven years. That shift is a pretty interesting one.
In fact, it isn’t really until the second act, halfway through the novel, that the plot starts to feel cohesive. The opening feels like a series of vignettes that largely orbit around Okwonko, though he may not be driving the action of the story. In fact, the story generally does not follow a satisfactory narrative structure. The conflict does not escalate in increments; instead, a series of scenes take place. Perhaps that’s why the shift into the second act feels more satisfying: an event has a direct cause on another event of greater significance.
To offer a charitable reading of the novel, Okwonko’s general insignificance to the overall plot is perfectly aligned with his own anxieties of fading away into insignificance as Christianity takes over as the authority of the village. Okwonko’s own lack of centrality to the plot fits in exactly with the idea that “things fall apart” without a centre. The back half of the novel, where Okwonko is removed from his environment feels more focused and engaging, in part because this is where there is a more obvious problem: colonization. Seeing the effects of colonization is the troubling part of the plot that is also most thought provoking. For instance, Okwonko’s son decides to convert to Christianity. Political moments are best presented in novels alongside personal conflicts, and this is where Things Fall Apart shines. Okwonko disowns his son, threatens to haunt his other children if they follow Christianity, and so on. The blend of personal-political is well-achieved in that respect—but again, remember how problematic holding on to the ‘old ways’ of the Ibo villages may be. Is there an endorsement either way? It’s hard to know for sure.
The ending of the book is worth some comment, and I’ll spoil the final moments in this paragraph. In the final chapters, the conflict between the Christians and the more traditional Ibo people escalates. A Christian messenger arrives to, basically, assert their power and Okwonko murders the messenger. Knowing that consequences are coming, Okwonko commits suicide by hanging. It’s an interesting moment in several respects: 1) It’s clear that Okwonko is increasingly alone in his beliefs and 2) suicide is seen as ‘feminine’ and for a hypermasculine character who routinely derides womanly behaviour to clearly betray his own values brings him closer, ironically, to the Ibo people who have abandoned his way of seeing things. It recalls to me the essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, in which an oppressed group tries to communicate their discontent via suicide. I’m always interested in the question of how oppressed groups can communicate with dominant groups on their own terms while still being understood. Okwonko’s death is a product of a double-bind. He’s resisting the dominant culture through his suicide, but at the same time his suicide is coded differently for his class—in his mind it seems to be either a recoding of the feminine as masculine resistance OR a resignation to his society’s changing mores. Of course, with something like suicide the intent can never be defended, and so the double-bind of the ending feels all the more constricting (perhaps a double-bind that the audience experiences all the more intensely for seeing the flaws in both the colonizer and the colonized and feeling compelled / repelled simultaneously).
Ultimately Things Fall Apart is worth reading as a classic of Nigerian literature that can bring you into several important and timely conversations. As a novel, I feel like it’s reasonably accomplished, if a bit unfocused and problematic in its focalization on such a misogynistic central character. Nonetheless, it provokes thought and discourse and has had a longevity that extends beyond the immediate.
Here’s hoping for a new year of wonderful reads. Happy reading!
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