Things Fall Apart reads, in part, like a passionate letter from Achebe to his beloved Ibo culture.
However, it’s also the story of how this culture is changed by external forces, to the point of transforming its most essential members into outsiders in the face of the new system. This process is personified by the novel’s protagonist, Okonkwo, who undertakes a voluntary exile after committing a crime in his village, only to find the world he once knew turned upside down upon his return.
The title for this novel comes from a line in William Butler Yeats' poem "The Second Coming." Yeats implied in the poem that a new world order would originate in Africa; after reading Things Fall Apart, we understand how Achebe uses this reference to challenge Yeats' claim. Through Okonkwo, Achebe tells the story of a disappearing culture, and how the colonial intrusion forever changes its social, religious, and political characteristics.
1. Social Structure
The greater part of this novel takes place before the arrival of the white colonizers. This is important, because it allows Achebe to help readers delve deeply into this Ibo village’s complex customs and structure. Thus, once the new settlers arrive, the reader becomes keenly aware of what is at stake for the village's inhabitants.
Hard-working Okonkwo is one of the pillars of the community. When we meet him, he is a successful yam farmer driven on by the memory of his lazy, destitute father. Okonkwo has made sure that neither he nor his family will fall into poverty, and does not tolerate the slightest sign of sloth or weakness, having “no patience with unsuccessful men” (2937). Fortunately, he lives in a society where hard work is rewarded with high social status (“if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings” (2939)) and has cleared a path to the top for himself.
However, in doing so he has also distanced himself from the group mentality of the village. Okonkwo is impatient with those who do not work as hard as he does, and he can “kill a man’s spirit” with his harsh criticism (2947). It also makes it impossible for him to acknowledge mistakes, “he was not the man to go about telling his neighbors that he was in error” (2950).
2. Religion and Politics
The religion of the Ibo village described by Achebe is polytheistic, with an emphasis on the spirit world and shamanism. It involves a detailed series of taboos (twins, outcasts, a forest deemed evil) and powerful figures (the shaman women and fearsome egwugwu judges).
Religion also informs all political and social decisions. For example, the town “never went to war unless its case was clear,” which involved religious advice (2941). However, there are complex rules for dispensing justice. We see this in the case of Ikemefuna, the young hostage housed by Okonkwo as part of his family upon orders from the village elders, only to be executed many months later by new orders.
Politics and religion are thus deeply related, and this becomes very important during two key episodes in Okonkwo's life: his duty to help execute Ikemefuna, and the town's reaction to his accidental killing of another boy during a festival. We can read these episodes in keeping with the community's distinction between "necessary" and "unnecessary" violence (the execution of a hostage, even years after he's captured, vs. the refusal to wage an unclear war, for example).
Thus, Okonkwo must overcome his reticence to kill Ikemefuna; even though the boy's death no longer seems necessary or logical to him, he "was afraid of being thought weak" (2964) and knows he must follow the edict of the elders. His fondness for the boy cannot come in the way of justice. On the other hand, he and his community accept that the accidental killing during the festival must be punished through exile: "It was the justice of the earth goddess... They had no hatred in their hearts against Okonkwo... if the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender" (2944).
In both cases, the well-being of the community is placed above that of the individual, regardless of personal feelings. However, this creates conflict for Okonkwo, who is certainly devoted to his family and community but still has a great sense of self-identity and pride. He goes into exile with a heavy heart, and not knowing that the world he has worked so hard to fit into will not welcome him upon his return.
3. Change
If we consider all these traditions to be the core of Okonkwo's (and his village's) existence, we can understand how "things fall apart" once it is taken away by the European outsiders. The temporary departure of Okonkwo, one of the town's authorities, signals the start of this unraveling.
The invaders successfully challenge all of the village's institutions: its social norms, its religious convictions, and its political and legal tenets. Other villages are bribed or threatened into war with Okonkwo's; Christian missionaries successfully build a church in the "evil forest" and convert the village's outcasts to Christianity; and the council formed by the colonial overseers dispenses justice to Okonkwo and his fellow villagers.
These actions contribute in eroding the village's sense of unity and continuity. When Okonkwo learns of his son Nwoye's conversion, he despairs over not having descendants who will worship him. And, while the town still accepts the converts, "in spite of their worthlessness," they know that the taboo of the forest has disappeared forever, dispelled by the survival of those within the church (3007).
It is to this environment of disintegration that Okonkwo returns, and attempts to make a final stand. Ironically, though, in setting out to fight the town's oppressors, he is detaching himself and going against the wishes of his community by making an individual decision not sanctioned by the town.
Okonkwo's lonely end reinforces his community's disintegration: "Now [the white man] has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart" (3015). Achebe's novel ends on this note, reminding readers of what holds communities together, and why they fall apart.
Bibliography
The edition used for this article was: Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart. In Mack, Maynard, et al (eds.). The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.
