Critical Analysis of "Things fall Apart’’! And Okonkwo

·       Critical Analysis of "Things fall Apart’’!  And Okonkwo

Introduction

 

Before Things Fall Apart was published, most novels about Africa had been written by Europeans, and they largely portrayed Africans as savages who needed to be enlightened by Europeans.

   

For example,

Joseph Conrad’s classic tale Heart of Darkness (1899), one of the most celebrated novels of the early twentieth century, presents Africa as a wild, “dark,” and uncivilized continent.

.

Chinua Achebe broke apart this dominant model with Things Fall Apart, a novel that portrays Igbo society with specificity and sympathy and examines the effects of European colonialism from an African perspective.

No one could have predicted that this novel, written by an unknown Nigerian, would one day sell nearly 11 million copies.

Today Things Fall Apart is one of the most widely read books in Africa; it is typically assigned in schools and universities, and most critics consider it to be black Africa’s most important novel to date. Further, the novel has on syllabi for literature, world history, and African studies courses across the globe. The first African novel to receive such powerful international critical acclaim, Things Fall Apart is considered by many to be the archetypal modern African novel.

To understand the impact that Things Fall Apart had on both the African and international literary worlds, it is useful to briefly examine the novel’s historical context.

England took control of Nigeria in the late nineteenth century and imposed upon the country a British-run government and educational system. Achebe, born in 1930 in the village of Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria, grew up under colonial rule. He lived in a Christian household, though his grandparents still followed traditional tribal ways, a tension that, as he once remarked in an interview with Conjunctions, “created sparks in my imagination”. He attended the prestigious University College, Ibadan, on scholarship, first as a medical student then as a literature major, during a time in which more and more Africans were questioning colonial rule and the European justification of it as a way to bring enlightenment to the “Dark Continent”.

The first reviews for Things Fall Apart appeared in Britain, then the United States. Though a few of these early Western reviewers took a condescending or Eurocentric tone, for the most part they were positive and emphasized the novel’s significance as an African’s insight into the lives of Africans at the time of colonization.

Three days after the novel’s publication, a Times Literary Supplement review praised own people. Positive reviews also appeared in The Observer and The Listener. The UK-based journal African Affairs attested: “This powerful first novel breaks new ground in Nigerian fiction”.

In the United States, The New York Times called Achebe a “Good Writer,” and claimed, “His real achievement is his ability to see the strengths and weaknesses of his characters with a true novelist’s compassion”.

Many of these early reviews emphasized Achebe’s Nigerian roots, and, while they often praised the subject matter and his description of the African society, they tended to pay less attention to the novel’s literary. Reviewers dwelled on Achebe’s vivid portrayal of the Igbo village and the “Insider” quality of the work. The New York Times called it one of the “sensitive books that describe primitive society from the inside”, and the Times Literary Supplement claimed that “the great interest of this novel is that it genuinely succeeds in presenting tribal life from the inside”. African Affairs chimed in: “In powerfully realistic prose the writer sets out to write a fictional but almost documentary account of the day to day happenings in a small Nigerian village without evasion, sophistry or apology”

During the same period that Things Fall Apart was published, African literary criticism was developing, and, though it was not until the 1960s that African critics wrote extensively about the novel, a few African scholars commented on it within a year of its publication.

Nigerian Ben Obumselu, one of the founders of African literary criticism, was one of the book’s first African reviewers. His review, which appeared in the journal Ibadan in 1959, provided a more nuanced reading than many of the early British reviews; while overall it is positive, Obumselu also pointed out what he considered to be problematic Obumselu was prescient in two ways: he was one of the first critics to focus on the novel’s language and one of the first to raise the question of whether Achebe’s novel imitates or subverts European models. Both concerns would become major points of debate for latter critics. Obumselu was also one of the first critics to analyze the novel from an African perspective.

In their review, the majority of Western critics had tended to celebrate the novel’s “otherness.” For instance, the early British and U.S. reviews tended to take anthropological or sociological viewpoints when discussing Achebe’s descriptions of African culture and the Igbo village.

As more scholars took interest in the novel, criticism grew deeper and more nuanced.

          For example, David Carroll’s Chinua Achebe, a significant addition to Achebe studies, provides a detailed introduction to European colonialism, Igbo history, and Igbo culture and dedicates a chapter to a close analysis of Things Fall Apart. Carroll, using both anthropological and literary approaches, examines Achebe’s writing in relation to Nigeria’s history of colonialism, independence, and political conflict and argues that Achebe resists European exoticism and stereotypes to raise questions about African identity and representation.

Emmanuel Obiechina, too, largely takes an anthropological approach to the novel, though from an African perspective, in Culture, Tradition, and Society in the West African Novel. Examining the traditional beliefs and practices represented in Things Fall Apart and other West African novels, he seeks to show how African society and culture “gave rise to the novel there, and in far-reaching and crucial ways conditioned the West African novel’s content, themes, and texture”.

Another important work from this period is Robert M. Wren’s Achebe’s World, a valuable guide to Igbo history, politics, religion, and society

The best of the anthropological articles give a strong portrait of Igbo culture in relation to the novel and examine the historical context of the writing; however, a drawback to anthropological readings is their neglect of the literary qualities of the novel. Although a few critical works of the 1960s and 1970s examined the structural and narrative aspects of Things Falls Apart such as Eldred D. Jones’s “Language and Theme in Things Fall Apart”.

A ground breaking work for its time that focuses on craft while also examining how African writers represented their world in literature - formalist New approaches, which focused on the literary qualities of the work, were much more popular in the 1980s. Such approaches analyze the formal qualities of a text - such as narrative, characterization, and structure - while bracketing off any historical, biographical, or sociological factors that may have influenced it.

As this critical focus became more popular throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it undoubtedly brought more attention to Achebe’s literary achievement in Things Fall Apart. Among the many standout pieces of formalist criticism are B. Eugene McCarthy’s - “Rhythm and Narrative Method in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart”.

As more and more critics began analyzing the text itself, a strain of criticism developed around the relations between Things Fall Apart and Aristotelian or Greek tragedy. While investigating the novel’s structure, plot, and characters, critics began debating whether Okonkwo can be called a classical tragic hero?.

In Greek tragedy, the tragic hero is a noble character who tries to achieve some much desired goal but encounters difficulty. He often possesses some kind of tragic flaw, and his downfall is usually brought about through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods.

One of the earliest articles on this theme is Abiola Irele’s - “The Tragic Conflict in the Novels of Chinua Achebe”, in which Irele asserts, “Things Fall Apart turns out to present the whole tragic drama of a society vividly and concretely enacted in the tragic destiny of a representative individual”. This idea grew popular during the 1970s and 1980s and has endured as a typical way of defining Okonkwo’s character even the back cover of the 1994 Anchor edition of the novel claims that it “is often compared to the great Greek tragedies.” G. D. Killam also wrote about the tragic elements of the novel, asserting that Okonkwo’s story “is presented in terms which resemble those of Aristotelian tragedy” and that Okonkwo’s death is the result of “an insistent fatality . . . which transcends his ability to fully understand or resist a fore-ordained sequence of events”.

David Cook, in African Literature: A Critical View, which contains an important early formalist study of Things Fall Apart, provides a close reading of Okonkwo, claiming, “If Things Fall Apart is to be regarded as epic, then Okonkwo is essentially heroic. Both propositions are ten- able”. He closely examines Okonkwo’s actions, and, although Cook believes Okonkwo is similar, he concludes: “Okonkwo is unlike the prototype epic heroes of Homer and Virgil in one very important respect which has to do with circumstances rather than character. He is not a founding figure in the fabled history of his people, but the very reverse”.

Harold Bloom does not consider the novel a traditional Greek tragedy, but he does compare Okonkwo to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, concluding in his introduction to his Modern Critical Interpretations volume on Things Fall Apart, “If Coriolanus is a tragedy, and then so is Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo, like the Roman hero, is essentially a solitary, and at heart a perpetual child. His tragedy stands apart from the condition of his people, even though it is generated by their pragmatic refusal of heroic death

The language of the novel has not only intrigued critics but has also been a major factor in the emergence of the modern African novel. That Achebe wrote in English, portrayed Igbo life from the point of view of an African man, and used the language of his people in the text were innovations that greatly influenced the African writers who published soon after Achebe. Novelists such as Flora Nwapa, John Munonye, and Nkem Nwankwo, who broke into print in the late 1960s, all looked to Achebe as a guide, and even some more established or older Nigerian novelists were influenced by Achebe’s use of the Igbo language. For example.

Onuora Nzekwu, whose first novel was written in a stiff, formal English, wrote his third novel in an African vernacular style. Today Achebe’s fiction and criticism continue to inspire and influence African writers. African authors born in the late 1950s and in the 1960s and 1970s including Helon Habila, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have been particularly inspired or influenced by Achebe. Adichie, for instance, the author of the popular and critically acclaimed books Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, commented in a 2005 interview, “Chinua Achebe 46 Critical Insights will always be important to me because his work influenced not so much my style as my writing philosophy: reading him emboldened me, gave me permission to write about the things I knew well”. Over the years, Things Fall Apart has been examined by a wide variety of critical schools.

Although certain types of criticism have dominated discussions of the novel during different periods, they have also been interlaced with studies from a variety of other critical perspectives such as Marxist, reader-response, psychoanalytic, historical, feminist, and cultural-studies approaches. Still, throughout the 1990s the dominant trend was post colonialism, which at times also draws on Marxist and poststructuralist theories. Post colonialist criticism focuses its critiques on the literature of countries that were once colonies of other countries.

It arose during the 1980s, as many African countries were in political and economic crisis and theorists reexamined ideas about progress and development. As Simon Gikandi explains, “Instead of seeing colonialism as the imposition of cultural practices by the colonizer over the colonized, postcolonial theorists argued that the colonized had themselves been active agents in the making and remaking of the idea of culture itself”.

In Post-colonial Literatures in English: History, Language, Theory, Dennis Walder defines postcolonial literary criticism: “On the one hand, it carries with it the intention to promote, even celebrate the ‘new literatures’ which have emerged over this century from the former colonial territories; and on the other, it asserts the need to analyze and resist continuing colonial attitudes”. He explains that Things Fall Apart is a postcolonial text, as it rejects the assumption that the colonized can only be the subjects of someone else’s story; it seeks to “by telling the story of the colonized . . . retrieve their history. And more than that: by retrieving their history to regain an identity”. In Reading Chinua Achebe, Gikandi argues that, although Things Fall Apart cannot be regarded as representative of a “real Igbo culture,” it is an example of strategic resistance, as Achebe writes back or takes back his story and culture from colonial representations.

Feminist criticism of Things Fall Apart did not begin appearing until the 1990s, but, when it arrived, it made a strong impact and opened the novel up to new interpretations. One of the more groundbreaking arguments is that of Canadian feminist critic Florence Stratton, who argues in Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender (1994) that Achebe gives men cultural roles that were actually occupied by women in traditional Igbo culture. Biodun Jeyifo’s “Okonkwo and His Mother” is an analysis of the gender politics of Things Fall Apart, and Rhonda Cobham, in “Problems of Gender and History in the Teaching of Things Fall Apart” (1990), argues that Things Fall Apart reinforces dominant male Christian views of traditional Igbo society.

Over the extent of his long and productive career, Achebe helped create what is now known as the modern African novel and contributed to the development of African literary criticism. His influence on other African writers cannot be stressed enough. In addition to providing African writers with a new model, Achebe also helped promote African literature. In 1962 Achebe became the first series editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series, which has been one of the most important publishing venues for African literature. According to Achebe, the series’ launch “was like the umpires” signals for which African writers had been waiting on the starting line.

Just as Things Fall Apart made a large impact on Africans, it has also proven to be popular among international audiences. It is one of those rare novels that can be read and reread from many different perspectives and continues to generate many diverse interpretations. It continues to endure as an international classic.

The events of Things Fall Apart take place in the late 1800s and early 1900s, just before and during the early days of the British Empire's expansion in Nigeria. The novel depicts details about life in an African culture much different from Western culture. In this chapter, Achebe reveals the following aspects of Igbo culture:

·       Okonkwo:

          The beginning describes Okonkwo's principal accomplishments that establish his important position in Igbo society. These details alone provide insight into Okonkwo's character and motivation. Driving himself toward tribal success and recognition, he is trying to bury the unending shame that he feels regarding the faults and failures of his late father, Unoka. Essentially, Okonkwo exhibits qualities of manhood in Igbo society.

Familiar with Western literature and its traditional forms, Achebe structures Things Fall Apart in the tradition of a Greek tragedy, with the story centered on Okonkwo, the tragic hero. Aristotle defined the tragic hero as a character who is superior and noble, one who demonstrates great courage and perseverance but is undone because of a tragic personal flaw in his character.

Achebe sets up Okonkwo as a man much respected for his considerable achievements and noble virtues — key qualities of a tragic hero. Okonkwo's tragic flaw is his obsession with manliness; His fear of looking weak like his father drives him to commit irrational acts of violence that undermine his nobleness. In the chapters ahead, the reader should note the qualities and actions that begin to reveal the tragic flaw in Okonkwo's otherwise admirable actions, words, ideas, and relationships with others. At the Achebe foreshadows the presence of Ikemefuna in Okonkwo's household and also the teenage boy's ultimate fate by referring to him as a "doomed" and "ill fated lad."

One of the most significant social markers of Igbo society is introduced in this chapter — its unique system of honorific titles. Throughout the book, titles are reference points by which members of Igbo society frequently compare themselves with one another (especially Okonkwo). These titles are not conferred by higher authorities, but they are acquired by the individual who can afford to pay for them. As a man accumulates wealth, he may gain additional recognition and prestige by "taking a title." He may also purchase titles for male members of his family (this aspect is revealed later). In the process of taking a title, the man pays significant initiation fees to the men who already hold the title.

A Umuofian man can take as many as four titles, each apparently more expensive than its predecessor. A man with sufficient money to pay the fee begins with the first level — the most common title — but many men cannot go beyond the first title. Each title taken may be shown by physical signs, such as an anklet or marks on the feet or face, so others can determine who qualifies for certain titles.

The initiation fees are so large that some writers have referred to the system as a means for "redistributing wealth." Some Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest observe their own version of redistributing wealth through a potlatch ceremony at which the guests receive gifts from the person gaining the honor as a show of wealth for others to exceed.

The reader begins to see beliefs and practices of the Igbo tradition that are particularly significant in the story — for example, the wide division between masculine and feminine actions and responsibilities. Respect and success are based on only manly activities and accomplishments; Taking care of children and hens, on the other hand, are womanly activities.

In Okonkwo's determination to be a perfect example of manhood, he begins to reveal the consequences of his fear of weakness — his tragic flaw. Okonkwo hates not only idleness but also gentleness; he demands that his family works as long as he does (without regarding their lesser physical stamina), and he nags and beats his oldest son, Nwoye. Achebe continues weaving traditional elements of Igbo society into Chapter 2. The marketplace gathering illustrates the Igbo society's reverence for what is "manly" — for example, the male villagers' loyalty to each other when they refer to the woman murdered by another village as "a daughter of Umuofia."

This scene also illustrates the ceremonial nature of town meetings, as the Speaker shouts the customary greeting to the crowd while turning in four different directions. In addition, the reader learns that Umuofian religious traditions include the worship of wooden objects representing not only one's personal god but also the ancestral spirits to whom one prays and makes sacrifices.

To secure his manliness, Okonkwo believes that he should beat members of his family (Nwoye, Ikemefuna, Ojiugo, and his wives) and that he should ridicule men who remind him of his father — even for slight annoyances. Although he may inwardly experience emotions of affection and regret, he cannot show these emotions to others, so he isolates himself through extreme actions.

Examples of traditional wisdom are used when talking about

Okonkwo:

"Those whose palmkernels

Were cracked for them by a benevolent

Spirit should not forget to be humble."

 This proverb means that a man whose success is a result of luck must not forget that he has faults. Okonkwo, however, had "cracked them himself," because he overcame poverty not through luck, but through hard work and determination.

"When a man says yes, his chi says yes also."

This Igbo proverb implies that a man's actions affect his destiny as determined by his chi. Okonkwo's chi is considered "good," but he "[says] yes very strongly, so his chi [agrees]." In other words, Okonkwo's actions to overcome adversity seem justified, but because he is guided by his chi, his denial of kindness, gentleness, and affection for less successful men will prove self destructive. (The chi itself is somewhat ambiguous.

Okonkwo does not even enjoy the leisurely ceremonial feast as others do. His impatience with the festivities is so great that he erupts. He falsely accuses one of his wives, beats her, and then makes an apparent attempt to shoot her. Further evidence of his violent nature is revealed when he moves his feet in response to the drums of the wrestling dance and trembles "with the desire to conquer and subdue . . . like the desire for a woman." Okonkwo's need to express anger through violence is clearly a fatal flaw in his character. His stubborn and often irrational behavior is beginning to set him apart from the rest of the village.

In contrast, Okonkwo exhibits feelings of love and affection — his first encounter with Ekwefi and his fondness for Ezinma, his daughter. However, Okonkwo considers such emotions signs of weakness that betray his anilines, so he hides his feelings and acts harshly to conceal them.

The amount of detail included about the Feast of the New Yam, just before the annual harvest, underscores how closely the life of the community relates to the production of its food. The description of household preparations for the festival reveals two significant issues about Igbo culture: The roles of women and daughters to keep the household running smoothly and to prepare for special occasions even though they can hold positions of leadership in the village.

The insignificant impact a wife beating and a near shooting have on family life, as if violence is an acceptable part of day to day life in the household.

For the first time in the story, Achebe mentions guns. Because of an outgrowth of Igbo trade with the rest of the world, Western technology actually arrived in the village before the Westerners did. Umuofia was not a completely isolated community. With the killing of Ikemefuna, Achebe creates a devastating scene that evokes compassion for the young man and foreshadows the fall of Okonkwo, again in the tradition of the tragic hero. Along the way, the author sets up several scenes that juxtapose with the death scene: The opening scene of the chapter shows the increasing affection and admiration Okonkwo feels for Ikemefuna, as well as for Nwoye.

  

On the journey with Ikemefuna and the other men of Umuofia, they hear the "peaceful dance from a distant clan."

In Chapter 2, the author comments that the fate of Ikemefuna is a "sad story" that is "still told in Umuofia unto this day." This observation suggests that the decision to kill Ikemefuna was not a customary one. Before dying, Ikemefuna thinks of Okonkwo as his "real father" and of what he wants to tell his mother, especially about Okonkwo. These elements combined suggest that the murder of Ikemefuna is senseless, even if the killing is in accordance with the Oracle and village decisions.

The murder scene is a turning point in the novel. Okonkwo participates in the ceremony for sacrificing the boy after being strongly discouraged, and he delivers the death blow because he is "afraid of being thought weak." At a deep, emotional level, Okonkwo kills a boy who "could hardly imagine that Okonkwo was not his real father" — someone whom Okonkwo truly loves as a son. Okonkwo has not only outwardly disregarded his people and their traditions, but he has also disregarded his inner feelings of love and protectiveness. This deep abyss between Okonkwo's divided self’s accounts for the beginning of his decline.

For the first time in the novel, Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, emerges as a major character who, in contrast to his father, questions the longstanding customs of the clan. Achebe begins to show the boy's conflicting emotions; he is torn between being a fiercely masculine and physically strong person to please his father and allowing himself to cherish values and feelings that Okonkwo considers feminine and weak.

In the scenes, the reader can begin to see Okonkwo's growing separation from his family members as well as from his from peers in the village. Okonkwo asks Nwoye to sit with him in his hut, seeking affirmation that he has done nothing wrong by killing Ikemefuna. But his son pulls away from him.

Even Okonkwo's friend, Obierika, disapproves of his role in the killing of Ikemefuna. Obierika is presented as a moderate, balanced man and thus serves as a contrast to Okonkwo. Obierika periodically questions tribal law and believes that some changes can improve their society. Okonkwo tends to cling to tradition regardless of the cost, as the killing of Ikemefuna illustrates. Essentially, Obierika is a man of thought and questioning, while Okonkwo is a man of action without questioning.

Okonkwo's final days in Mbanta are characterized by his usual striving to impress, never doing anything by halves. He expresses his thanks to his motherland's relatives with an extravagant celebration. Okonkwo's rigid, impulsive behavior hasn't changed during his seven years in Mbanta, and he is eager to return to Umuofia to make up for lost time. He reveres Umuofia because of its strong and masculine community, unlike Mbanta, which he labels a womanly clan.

In light of his near obsession with status and titles, Okonkwo must find it particularly hard to understand how some of the leaders of the community can give up their titles when they became Christians.

When Okonkwo tells Obierika that his fellow Umuofians should rise up against the British, Obierika wisely understands that it is too late. Many Umuofians have already "joined the ranks of the stranger." Obierika says that the white man "has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart" - the first specific acknowledgment of the book's title, Things Fall Apart. a third institution is established by the British in Umuofia — trade with the outside world. The Europeans buy palm oil and palm kernels from the Igbo at a high price, and many Umuofians profit from the trade. These Umuofians welcome the new trading opportunities, though these activities are effectively undermining the clan and its self sufficiency.

Throughout the book Achebe gives his characters names with hidden meanings; for example, Okonkwo's name implies male pride and stubbornness. When Achebe adds British characters, he gives two of them common and unremarkable British names, Brown and Smith. His third British character, the District Commissioner, is known only by his title. The choice of names and lack thereof, is in itself a commentary by Achebe on the incoming faceless strangers.

After Okonkwo is freed from prison, he remembers better times, when Umuofia was more warriors like and fierce - "when men were men." As in his younger days, he is eager to prepare for war (not unlike Enoch the convert in the preceding chapter). He is worried that the peacemakers among them may have a voice, but he assures himself that he will continue the resistance, even if he has to do it alone. He will be manly in his actions even to the end.

When Okonkwo kills the court messenger, his fellow clansmen almost back away from him in fear; in fact, his violent action is questioned. When he realizes that no one supports him, Okonkwo finally knows that he can't save his village and its traditions no matter how fiercely he tries. His beloved and honored Umuofia is on the verge of surrender, and Okonkwo himself feels utterly defeated. Everything has fallen apart for him. His action in the final chapter will not be a surprise.