Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart follows the life of a man named Okonkwo, a prominent warrior and rising figure within his tribe of Umuofia, a part of the Igbo clan in what is now Nigeria. The son of a weak-willed and unsuccessful father, Okonkwo is the archetypal tribal strong-man keen to depart from his family’s failures. He is tough on his three wives and expects great things from his children, especially from his sons. The first part of the novel lulls the reader into the complexities and everyday going-on of tribal life; feasts, friendships, challenges, and celebrations come and go with the seasons, stitching together a rich tapestry of human life. Through the second part, Okonkwo is forced to leave his tribe due to a transgression of law and returns to the tribe of his late mother for refuge. As the story progresses, white colonialists make contact with surrounding tribes and stories of their actions spread. In the third and final part of the text, these colonialists clash with Umuofia and Okonkwo at the same time he returns. This shows the beginning of the end for the livelihood Okonkwo holds so dear as the very fabric of its society is changed through Christian missions and governmental structures, highlighting the inability for the two to coexist while one seeks to subjugate the other.

Things Fall Apart tackles numerous important historical themes relating to colo- nialism, modernism and Christian evangelism as well as deeply human themes of family, kinship, culture, identity, and gender roles. Notions of masculinity; its successes and its short comings, are explored in every way through Okonkwo and his treatment of women and how he raises his sons. His prominence in the tribe is closely linked to his control of his women, viewed as his possessions. Through his tendency for violence we see how he strains kinship ties, which are so essential in native Igbo culture, and Achebe explores how he undermines what makes his people strong in the face of danger. Achebe does not shy away from critiquing native culture and its sometimes cruel and unforgiving laws which leave many minority groups ostracised and marginalised. He also openly accepts the benefits Europeans had on these minority groups, by tackling the human desire for spiritual nourishment and how it feels to belong in a group of like-minded in- dividuals. Make no mistake however; Achebe’s criticism of colonialism comes through very clearly through the dichotomy of black versus white, and the de- meaning attitudes, violence, and subjugation of the latter towards the former.

Achebe makes excellent use of many literary techniques throughout the text such as intertextual allusion, foreshadowing, meta-narrative, and symbolism as he crafts a clean arc through Igbo history and story. It is crucial to pay close at- tention to how Achebe employs the traditional storytelling of Igbo culture with clever symbolic foreshadowing from the beginning of the text and identifying how it ‘pays-off’ at the story’s close.