Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart is the first novel by Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, published in 1958. The setting is Nigeria among the Igbo people. The date is indistinct but must be sometime in the mid-nineteenth century judging from the appearance of Anglican missionaries in the later part of the novel. The title comes from the Yeats poem, “The Second Coming”, which defines the general direction of the novel. “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

The story focuses on the village of Umuofia and the central character of Okonkwo. Okonkwo is a strong man, a hard worker and ambitious, but also cold and cruel. His father was lazy and a debtor. He embarrassed Okonkwo as a child. As an adult, Okonkwo is driven to banish any fear or weakness from his person, to prove himself a “man” again and again. Okonkwo has three wives, several children, a prosperous farm, and is respected in the village.

In the first half of the novel, part one of three, we get to know Okonkwo and life in the village but it doesn’t feel like a novel, no deepening conflict or progression toward a goal. Instead, we get what reads like a series of related short stories. There’s the story of Ikemefuna, a young man taken from a neighboring village and then raised in Okonkwo’s household as ransom for a woman who was murdered. There’s the story of the night that Ezinma, Okonkwo’s daughter by his second wife, is taken by the village oracle to speak with the village god in his shrine. The characters tell stories to each other also, as when Ezinma’s mother, Ekwefi, tells the story of tortoise attending the feast of the birds in the sky.

Life in the village is shocking in many ways. The culture is fiercely patriarchal. Sex roles are rigid. Women serve the men, eat second, do not participate in leadership. Okonkwo beats his wives and children. After Ikemefuna has lived with Okonkwo for three years, the village elders decide the time has come for him to be sacrificed. Okonkwo participates in the killing following his code of manhood. Superstition directs that when twins are born they are abandoned in the forest. We observe a marriage festival, and a funeral rite, with drumming, dancing, and ritual food and drink. It’s a curious peek into a foreign culture, but not always an attractive one.

At the end of part one, the village has gathered for the funeral of an aged man. Okonkwo’s gun goes off accidentally and a young man is killed. Okonkwo’s punishment, enacted immediately, is banishment for seven years. His household goes with him to a neighboring village of his mother’s people.

Part two follows the seven years of Okonkwo in the neighboring village, but the story shifts now to the arrival of Christian missionaries. Now the novel begins to feel like a novel: a single story, a forward arc. The pace and the intensity increase. First the missionaries appear in a neighboring village, then, in Okonkwo’s home village and then in the village where Okonkwo is exiled. Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nwoye, is converted and Okonkwo disowns him.

Part Three begins with Okonkwo’s return to Umuofia after the exile. He imagines how he will put his life back together but it is not to be. Umuofia is changed by the presence of the missionaries. Achebe writes, “Apart from the church, the white men had also brought a government” (p. 174) The colonists bring new culture and laws, a new morality, and also schools, literacy, and a new economy. Outcasts of the tribal culture find they are welcomed as equal persons within the Christian community. For many, the foreign culture is attractive and they adopt it eagerly. Others, such as Okonkwo, resist.

One of the converts, Enoch, insults the tribal religion by unmasking one of the men portraying an ancestor during a ritual. The village takes revenge by burning down the mission church, and think they have driven the white men away. Instead, several village leaders, including Okonkwo are arrested. They are humiliated and released. Back at the village they meet to discuss war. A messenger appears from the colonial government ordering the meeting to stop. Okonkwo, in a spasm of rage, kills the messenger.

In the final chapter, the District Commissioner appears at Okonkwo’s hut, demanding he appear, but the villagers say he is not there. They show the Commissioner where Okonkwo has hung himself, and ask the Commissioner’s men for help in cutting him down, an act which they cannot do themselves under their tradition. Achebe ends the novel brilliantly by suddenly switching to the point of view of the Commissioner and having him completely usurp the novel that had previously belonged to Okonkwo. The Commissioner walks away, thinking about the book that he will write and how the story of Okonkwo might make a good chapter, or, “perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.” (p. 209). The final words of the novel are the title of the book the Commissioner intends to write, “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.” (p.209). Okonkwo, the fierce, manly, warrior, has been “pacified.” Devastating.

Achebe followed this novel with a long and successful career, writing novels, short stories, plays and poetry. He lived in Africa until 1971 when he took a position at the University of Massachusetts. He returned to Africa for several years, then returned again to the United States, taking a position at Bard College, which he held until his death, in 2013. He was awarded the Man Booker International Prize, which recognizes a body of work rather than a single novel, in 2007.