Overall I found this to be a pretty interesting work. It is the first book that I have read that is set in Africa, so the cultural aspect helped maintain my interest over what was at some times a drawn out storyline. If you are the kind of reader who has to like the main character in order to like the book, then this book might not be for you. Other than that, it is a relatively short and enjoyable read. ( )

Like the bloom of Native American novels of the late seventies, this book does not come from another culture. It does not represent an original or alternate storytelling tradition. This is literature that has already been colonized. It has already moved from the oral to the written, even taking the form of the quentessential western novel.

It is a tragic form of the monomyth, taking its cues from the Greeks, and from Shakespeare. I don't mean to say that it fails to represent the African cultural experience, but by Achebe's time, it is a culture already colonized, already subjugated; the waters have been muddied.

It is a tale of personal disintegration representing the loss of a culture, and of a purpose. It is an existential mode seen in Arthur Miller, Joseph Heller, and J.D. Salinger.

Achebe shows his hand a bit with the title, taken from one of the most famous poems in the English canon. Achebe reminds us that he is the consummate western man of letters, and the story he tells should be familiar to us. Ever since Socrates drank the hemlock, the west has had a complex relationship with its remarkable minds. They are held up one moment, and destroyed the next.

Likewise, the experience of Achebe and Africa is not new, they suffer from the same religious and moral dominance that was placed over Ireland and America. The same dominant force of any power that sought to extend itself, and to absorb its new subjects.

Like James Joyce, Achebe writes of the struggles both of his culture and of himself as an artist. His existentialism is remarkable in its completeness. There is no character who is wholly sympathetic, nor wholly vile. There is no culture or point of view which is either elevated or vilified.

Achebe is extremely fair, presenting the flaws of all men, and all of the organizations under which they live, be they Western or African. Like Heller or Miller, his representation of mankind is almost unfailingly negative. Small moments of beauty, joy, or innocence are always mitigated. They exist only in the inflated egos of the characters, or the moralizing ideals of the culture.

Unlike Miller, he does not give us a moment to sympathize. There are not those quiet moments of introspection that make 'Death of a Salesman' so personally tragic. Unlike Heller, Achebe does not contrast the overwhelming weight of loss with sardonic and wry humor. This is not the irony of Candide, nor the mad passion of Hamlet.

Achebe's characters do not find their own meaning in hopelessness, nor do they struggle to find it and fail, they cannot even laugh at themselves. They persist only through naivete and escapism, and since the reader sees through them, we see that this world has only despondence and delusion.

The constant reminder of this disappointment makes the book difficult to connect with. Since all the hope we are given is almost immediately false, there is little to be lost. Everything is already lost, but the characters do not yet realize it.

It is difficult to court the reader's sympathy when there is nothing left to be lost. With no counterpoint to the hopelessness, it is hard to build a story, to reveal, or to surprise. Trying to write a climax through such a depression is like trying to build a mountain in a valley.

No matter how hard we try, there is no guarantee for our success. Nothing is certain, and the odds against us are often overwhelming. Achebe felt this doubly, as an author and a colonized citizen. He succeeds in presenting hopelessness, sometimes reaching Kierkegaard's Absurdism, but with little weighed against it, his tale presents only a part of the human experience.

Though we may know that others suffer, this is not the same as understanding their suffering. The mother who says 'eat your peas, kids are starving in Africa' succeeds more through confusion than from revealing the complexities of politics and the human state.

Achebe presents suffering to us, but it is not sympathetic, so we see it, but may have trouble feeling it. His world loses depth and dimension, becomes scattered, and while this does show us the way that things fall apart, particularly all things human, this work is more an exercise in nihilism than a representation of the human experience. ( )

I found this more of a labour to read than I expected to, perhaps because I found it hard to side with the threatened native culture. If it is one that is self-sustaining and at one with the land around it; it is also one that is brutal, warring and superstitious and self-obsessed. No more so, perhaps than the Christian fundamentalism that is ushering in the West but with no greater claim to the moral ground. Both ways of life have floundered with the onslaught of internationalism.
Achebe is not proselytizing and portrays Okwonko's faults along with his strengths. The power of this book lies in the even-handedness of it. But, because of that perhaps, I failed to engage fully with the plight of the tribe. ( )

I read this as a contrast to Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness, on the recommendation of a professor of mine, and I found it to be generally forgettable. I much preferred the richness of Conrad's work. ( )

A classic of modern fiction. A gripping tale of contact between Africans and the Europeans. ( )