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Loading... Things Fall Apart (original 1958; edition 1994)by Chinua Achebe
Work InformationThings Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)
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Although the main theme of this novel is the colonialization of Africa by Great Britain in the late 19th century, it also exposes the folly of hubris, particularly of its protagonist, Okonkwo. The first part of the story centers on Okonkwo's life in his agriculture-centric society, Umuofia, and its kinship ties, superstitions, and rituals. Okonkwo has some reason to be proud: he pulled himself up by the bootstraps, so to speak, not having the same advantages as his Igbo clansmen because his father was considered lazy and contemptible, and he suffered an outcast's death. Okonkwo fear of failure haunts him throughout, and he becomes hard man with an inflexible will and a fiery temper that he blames on his personal god because of the shame his father brought to the family. Although he achieves great success in his fatherland, Okonkwo is ultimately banished for seven years and seeks shelter in his motherland, Mbanta, where he again prospers but still longs to return to his fatherland. Upon his return to Umuofia, he finds much has changed, largely as the result of the British missionaries and administrators who are trying to "civilize" the non-Christians. Achebe explores the impact of colonialism on different aspects of village life and the different categories of villagers. It was refreshing to see colonialism portrayed through the eyes of the colonized, not of the colonizers, as in Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. To be, the real reason things fell apart was a failure of communication between the Western interlopers and the natives. ( ) An engaging story about an African man, his family and tribe. Achebe depicts the brutality of the animistic, pagan patriarchal, honour-shame culture before colonisation. When the colonisers arrive they bring their own form of brutalitiy coloaked beneath British law and order: It is a story of contrasts: strong vs weak, masculine vs feminine, fortune vs failure, pagan animism vs Christianity, African tribal culture vs Western colonisation. Achebe depicts the first missionary to the tribe in contradistiction to the colonisers. The Christianity that arrives is bold yet gentle, confident yet wiling to suffer. In contrast to the darkness of pagan animism, the missionaries bring freedom from the fear of evils spirits, curses and capricious gods. They welcome outcasts and adopt twin babies who have been left to die in the jungle. They speak of a Father God full of love in a culture where fathers were harsh and unyielding. The missionaries weren’t perfect (especially the second who arrives later in Achebe’s story), but Achebe makes the point that the Christianity the missionaries brought enriched the lives of the Africans. The final sentance in the novel reveals what Achebe thinks his work is about: "The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of Africa he had learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner should never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from a tree. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger." I found this review helpful: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/830031498 Things Fall Apart is fascinating as it depicts what it felt like living in a clan in the SE part of Nigeria on the cusp of British colonization during the late 19th century. Written from the point of view of of someone living then and there, it personalizes that part of the world in a way I hadn't before experienced in literature. The plot follows the story of Okonkwo, a man who worked to rescue his family name from his father’s disgraceful failure, becomes successful in his Igbo Chinua Achebe details the clan’s parameters of rules, etiquette, beliefs and hierarchies and shows via internal monologues the difficulty of questioning the rules and going against the flow. Okonkwo holds fast to his deeply held machismo ideal and derides any man who acts womanish, a trait he sees in his own son. He prides himself on his successes, and plans to become a great leader but he himself breaks a rule that changes the course of his life. Eventually the clan – who had never seen or dealt with white people – are confronted with the influx of Christian missionaries and British political envoys. The intercultural clash brought in by the colonists is psychologically and physically brutal. The ending paragraph is absolutely incredible and sort of reflects on how the book treats colonialism. Like, treating this as fiction you have a normal story for 70% of it and then suddenly English people arrive and the story completely changes. Okonkwo stops being an active subject and becomes an acted-upon object. It's someone else's story now, one he is not allowed to understand. The final paragraph says this very explicitly, becoming a (small) part of the district commissioner's book. It's a clever metafictional device that provides a different way of looking at the impact of colonialism on the human psyche, by sort of changing the rules for the reader. There's a running theme of stories and using them to understand our lives - there are quite a lot of folktale type stories mentioned. Before that point the story is of Okonkwo - he's hardly a sympathetic character, being abusive to his wives and children and seeing violence and physical strength as the answer to everything, but it's also clearly shown how it comes from struggling to place himself in a society where he understands the rules but striving to be the best at them means suppressing parts of himself. He can only understand life in terms of becoming the most recognised in his village/clan without ever softening. The depiction of life in the village is strong and evocative. "Don't you see the pot is full of yams?" Ekwefi asked. "And you know how leaves become smaller after cooking."
Set in the late 19th century, at the height of the "Scramble" for African territories by the great European powers, Things Fall Apart tells the story of Okonkwo, a proud and highly respected Igbo from Umuofia, somewhere near the Lower Niger. Okonkwo's clan are farmers, their complex society a patriarchal, democratic one. Achebe suggests that village life has not changed substantially in generations. The first part of a trilogy, Things Fall Apart was one of the first African novels to gain worldwide recognition: half a century on, it remains one of the great novels about the colonial era. [Achebe] describes the many idyllic features of pre-Christian native life with poetry and humor. But his real achievement is his ability to see the strengths and weaknesses of his characters with a true novelist's compassion. Is contained inIs a reply toHas as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyHas as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guideHas as a teacher's guideNotable Lists
First published in 1958, this novel tells the story of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community who is banished for accidentally killing a clansman. The novel covers the seven years of his exile to his return, providing an inside view of the intrusion of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society in the 1890s. No library descriptions found.
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Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. Penguin Australia2 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia. Editions: 0141023384, 0141186887 |