Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Okonkwo is the best wrestler and fighter alive, and word of him has spread like a bushfire through West Africa. But everything starts to fall apart when he unintentionally kills a clansman. Then, upon his return from exile, Okonkwo discovers colonial governors and missionaries in the village. With his world completely out of balance, disaster is the inevitable outcome.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
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Nigerian author Chinua Achebe invites us to the imaginary village of Umuofia to show us the close-up dynamics of how a clan runs both before and after British colonialism in this work, which is set in the country of Nigeria on the continent of Africa during the 1890s. We encounter the Ibo/Igbo tribe, a real-world ethnic group.
The plot centres on the ascent and fall of Okonkwo, a champion wrestler who overcame his disgraced father’s sloth to become one of the most influential and feared men in his town. However, Okonkwo is a tragically flawed individual. His seven-year exile occurs just as British missionaries are entering the region to propagate Christianity. The three sections of the book are a pre-exile, exile, and the return.
This allows us the chance to observe the village’s prosperity prior to the arrival of the missionaries, how things change once they arrive, and how the culture gradually declines after they have established themselves. By embracing a culture’s weakest points—giving voice, respect, and humanity to the unwanted and outcast—colonialism may ingratiate itself into that culture. Obviously, these are not negative things. The missionaries’ humanitarian treatment of some of these folks made me pleased. Inevitably, this is about the British suppressing traditions, rituals, and powerful individuals so that their own culture and religion can flourish, not about assimilation or civilizations coexisting, knowing one another, or growing together. Okonkwo is a cultural traditionalist who struggles mightily to adjust to his evolving surroundings. He personifies the disintegration of the past.
Nigeria obtained independence from Great Britain in 1960, after it was published in 1958. It is therefore a highly timely book. Additionally, it is distinctive in that an African, as opposed to the traditional white colonizer who typically narrated similar stories, is the author. This was done in an effort to give voice to and humanize a group of people who had previously been seen as “savages” that needed to be either converted or exterminated.
