Things Fall Apart - Central Dauphin School District



Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

|Part:Chapter |Pages |Read by |

|One: One-Three |3-25 | |

|One: Four-Six |26-51 | |

|One:Seven-Eight |52-74 | |

|One: Nine-Eleven |75-109 | |

|One-Two: Twelve-Fourteen |110-135 | |

|Two: Fifteen-Eighteen |136-161 | |

|Two-Three: Nineteen-Twenty~one |162-183 | |

|Three: Twenty~two- Twenty~five |184-209 | |

Summary of the Novel

Things Fall Apart is a story told by a skillful storyteller. The novel attempts to recreate the social, cultural, and religious fabric of traditional Ibo life between 1850 and the early 1900s. However, the novel cannot be interpreted as an accurate social and political history of the Ibo people, because it is a work of fiction.

Nevertheless, the novel depicts conflicts and tensions within Ibo society as well as changes introduced by colonial rule and Christianity. The novel is structured in three parts. Part One depicts life in pre colonial Iboland. Part Two relates the arrival of the Europeans and the introduction of Christianity, and Part Three recounts the beginning of systematic colonial control in eastern Nigeria. Okonkwo, the protagonist, is a talented but inflexible Ibo who struggles to achieve success in the traditional world.

The setting of Part One is Umuofia, a union of nine villages. Okonkwo is introduced as a great wrestler, a renowned warrior, and a hardworking member of the community. He has amassed two barns filled with yams, three wives, many children, and two titles. His goal is to move through the traditional Ibo title taking system by balancing personal achievement and community service. However, although Okonkwo feels he is destined for greatness, his chi, or the god-force within him, does not seem destined for greatness.

Okonkwo seeks to overpower his mediocre chi by working hard. He is profoundly afraid of failure. As a result, he is unable to balance the feminine energy of love with the masculine energy of material success.

Okonkwo often suppresses his feminine side as he pursues his goals and angers the Earth goddess Ani. His rage, inflexibility, and fear of appearing weak like his lazy father, the musician Unoka, consistently overshadow his respect for his community.

During the funeral rite for the elder Ezeudu, Okonkwo’s

gun accidentally explodes, killing Ezeudu’s son. Okonkwo’s crimes enrage the Earth Goddess Ani. Therefore, Ani banishes Okonkwo to Mbanta, his mother’s village, for seven years.

Part Two of the novel takes place while Okonkwo is in exile in Mbanta. Okonkwo flees to his mother’s village and takes refuge with the feminine principal represented by the Earth goddess. He is given time to learn the supremacy of a mother’s nurturing love. However, Okonkwo’s goals never change. He works hard to amass wealth through the production of yams, and he dreams of returning to Umuofia to become a judicial leader in the clan. While Okonkwo single-mindedly labors in Mbanta, the Europeans arrive in Iboland. His friend Obierika visits him twice with news of the political and social upheaval. Abame, one of the villages in the union of Umuofia, is razed by the British. Christianity, a new religion, is attracting the marginal members of the Ibo community.

In Part Three, Okonkwo returns from exile in Mbanta to a tense and radically changed Umuofia. At this point, a colonial government is taking root, the palm-oil trade is transforming the economy, and Christianity is dividing the Ibo people. Tensions escalate at the annual worship of the Earth goddess when the zealous Christian convert Enoch unmasks an egwugwu, a masquerader representing an ancestral spirit. His apostasy kills the spirit, unmasks the traditional religion, and throws Umuofia into confusion. Other egwugwu, who are actually Ibo men masked as ancestors, are enraged and retaliate. They raze Enoch’s compound to the ground and burn the new Christian church. Okonkwo and other village leaders are subsequently jailed and whipped by order of the District Commissioner. After paying a fine, the humiliated Igbo are released from prison.

The traditional Ibo gather to mourn the abominations suffered by the ancient gods, the ancestors, and the entire Igbo community. They decry the new religion, which has pitted Ibo against Ibo. When colonial officials arrive to disperse the crowd, Okonkwo blocks them. He draws his machete and decapitates the court messenger. Okonkwo marshals no support; however, for the divided Igbo community fails to rise in defense of traditional life. Events quickly dissolve tragically ending in Okonkwo’s death.

Although the novel represents Iboland in the 1890s, it is crucial for the reader to remember that Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in 1958, at the dawn of Nigerian independence. Achebe writes from a realistic third person point of view and questions assumptions about civilization, culture, and literature. Proverbs, folk tales, myths, and portraits of rituals and festivals support the basic plot line and paint a picture of Ibo life. In Morning Yet on Creation Day, Achebe explains his desire to show that precolonial Africa was “not one long nightmare of savagery.” (p. 45) Overall, Achebe succeeds in presenting Ibo society as an organic whole and providing a window into the heart of Africa.

Points to consider while reading (and answer when finished)

1. Achebe's title Things Fall Apart comes from a poem by W. B. Yeats called "The Second Coming." (The first four lines of the poem are: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.) It's pretty obvious how the words Achebe chose are relevant, but how does the rest of the poem apply to his novel? What is the novelist's attitude to change, seen through the lens of this poem? Do you see any irony in the relationship between the poem's Christian language and the missionary presence in Umuofia? At what point does the disintegration of Umuofia society seem ineluctable?

William Butler Yeats: “The Second Coming” 1921

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

2. Achebe's language in this novel is a mixture of English, Ibo proverbs and untranslated words, and of course a title taken from the poem "The Second Coming" by Yeats. What is the effect of this mixture? What might this suggest about Achebe's relationship to European literature? What do you make of the switch in point of view from Okonkwo and his family to the British Commissioner that occurs on the last page of the book? What are the implications of the relationship between the book that the Commissioner projects writing on the last page, and the novel Achebe has written?

3. In many ways Okonkwo resembles the hero of a Greek epic. What is his tragic flaw? Is Okonkwo representative of his society-how much of his story could be read as symbolic? Is Okonkwo a sympathetic or unsympathetic character? Okonkwo often fails to reconcile the male and female virtues as they are understood in Umuofia society, and that plays into the fact that all the disasters which happen to him result from his offenses against the mother goddess, the earth. How does this relate to the larger plot in the novel, and to Okonkwo's final end?

4. According to Chinua Achebe, the African writer must be involved in the task of decolonializing the minds of his or her fellow Africans in the struggle against (neo)colonialism. In his essay Hopes and Impediments, he writes: "The writer cannot be excused from the task of re-education and regeneration that must be done. I for one would not wish to be excused. I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did more than just teach my readers [Africans] that their past-with all its imperfections-was not one long night of savagery from which the Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them." In your view, how well does Achebe succeed in this goal?

5. What are the roles of women in this novel? Ibo thought conspicuously uses a metaphor of masculinity and femininity in its principle of balance-male and female categorize farming crops, types of crimes in the society, kinship structures, story-telling, religious rites, and of course social roles. Women are treated like property in this society, and yet the most important goddess of the society, Ani the earth goddess, is female. Ekwefi, Okonkwo's second wife, is able to desert her first husband and marry Okonkwo for love. What do you make of these contradictions? Is Okonkwo's fall in some way an indicator of the perils of an African machismo-a lack of a moderating female principle-at play in the society?

Key Concepts

1. Tragedy

2. Colonialism

3. Eurocentrism

4. Oral story telling tradition

5. Myth

6. Fable

7. Legend

Journaling:

Keep in mind the points to consider and key concepts listed above. Also, think about the basic techniques that you have learned throughout this year in order to understand and interpret the an author’s meaning.

Think:

1. What message is Achebe trying to convey to his reader? (author’s purpose)

2. What method does he use in order to convey that meaning? (structure, tone, style, point of view)

3. What techniques does he use in order to illustrate or develop his meaning? (methods of characterization, plot development, figurative language, symbolism)

4. How effective is Achebe in his attempt to convey his message?

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