Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1959, 209 pages, 268 KB)

 Before today I have posted on two short works by Chinua Achebe.   One was on one of his short stories, "Marriage is a Private Affair"   and once on an essay he wrote about Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness in which I compared his view that The Heart of Darkness is a deeply racist work to the very contrasting opinion of Edward Said.   


Chinua Achebe is the "dean" of contemporary African literature.   Born in Nigeria into a Christian Ibo family in 1930, his book Things Fall Apart (1958) is the most read ever book by an author born in Africa and is a classic of post colonial literature.   I am very glad I can now move this book out of the TBR category.


Things Fall Apart is Achebe's first novel.   It is set in Nigeria and opens just before the colonial take over of the area begins.   It is a very interesting and unsentimental look at life among the people of the region.   It does not glorify life in pre-colonial Nigeria but portrays it as a place just like any other place on earth at the time, full of the weakness of humans and the suffering brought on my natural and man made tragedies.  


The central character, a man we meet in his late teens or so, Okonkwo is a self made man, his father does not really help him as all as he should have.   Through a foolish mistake, he ends up losing everything he has and is driven, along with his wives, into exile.   In lots of ways Okonkwo is a very cruel man and there are real cruelties among the customs of the people of the time, such as the leaving of new born twins to die as it is felt they are somehow evil.    He is very abusive toward his wives as appears to be the normal mode of behavior.   


Achebe does not introduce European colonists into the work until it is nearly 75 percent completed.    We first learn of them through the reaction of residents to others who have been converted to Christianity.   




Things Fall Apart is an interesting well written  book.  I think perhaps it is read as much for its cultural importance as for any intrinsic merit it might have.   I am glad I read it. 


Mel u

"Marriage is a Private Affair" by Chinua Achebe

"Marriage is a Private Affair" by Chinua Achebe (1956, 8 pages)

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 22.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or and e mail and I will include it in the master post at the end of the challenge

When I saw that Amy of Amy Reads was hosting a reading event on October 1 in honor of Nigerian Independence Day I wanted to participate.   I have posted on a number of short stories by Nigerian writers in conjunction with reviews I have done on stories short listed for the Caine Prize.

Chinua Achebe is the "dean" of contemporary African literature.   Born in Nigeria into a Christian Ibo family in 1930, his book Things Fall Apart (1958) is the most read ever book by an author born in Africa and is a classic of post colonial literature.   I have posted on him before when I did a second post on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in which I compared his and Edward Said's attitude toward whether or not Heart of Darkness was, as Achebe claimed and Said denies, a deeply racist work.

"Marriage is a Private Affair" opens when a woman living in Lagos asks her fiance if he has written his father to tell him of their impending marriage.   The woman thinks his father will be very happy over the news.  The man knows his father will not want him to marry a woman who is not an Ibo and it is also the custom for the parents to arrange marriages for their children.   He has not told his wife yet but he has gotten a letter from his father saying he has found a perfect wife for him.

The woman feels that surely the father will not be so prejudiced as to reject her just because she is not from his tribe.   The man goes to visit his father to ask him for forgiveness for marrying the woman he loves.   The father repudiates the son and the marriage saying he is making a horrible mistake.  The man marries anyway and the woman is a wonderful wife.   The son asks the father to accept her over and over and the father totally rebukes him and at one point tells the son he is dead as far as he is concerned.   Eight years go by.   Everyone sees the woman is a great wife.    She keeps a perfect house and is the wonderful mother to two sons.

One day the father receives a letter from his daughter in law.   At first he wants to tear it up but something compels him to read it.   In it the daughter in law pleads with him to allow his grandsons to meet him and asks him to play a part in their lives.   The old man fights with all his will to reject this idea.   Then the man's heart is filled with shame and remorse for what he has done.    He goes to sleep that night dreaming of the soon to come day when he will regain not just his son but a wonderful daughter and two grandsons who will idolize him.

"Marriage is a Private Affair"  is an emotional story.   The prose is simple and hauntingly beautiful.   I felt in sympathy with all three of the main characters, even the stubborn father.  

Mel u

Two Vision of Heart of Darkness-Is it deeply racist or a powerful exploration of the roots of racism?

A Follow Up Post 

"An Image of Africa:   Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness"  by Chinua Achebe (1977, Massachusetts Review, 1977, 10 pages)


 Culture and Imperialism -Two Visions in the Heart of Darkness by Edward Said   (1993, 9 pages)

Edward Said versus Chinua Achebe

My Prior Post on Heart of Darkness-

"Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist."   Chinua Achebe

And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. (from Achebe's essay)


"Heart of Darkness cannot be just been treated as a straightforward recital of Marlow's Adventures, it is a dramatization of  Marlow himself, the former adventurer in colonial regions, telling his story to a group of British listeners in a particular time in a specific space..,.what Conrad does is to show us what Marlow does is contingent, acted out for a set of like-minded British hearers, and limited to that situation"-Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism -Two Visions in the Heart of Darkness

This post is kind of a follow up to the really great very insightful comments that were made on my brief post on Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness.    In my post I said, which I now concede was not accurate, that Heart of Darkness is often now simply dismissed as a racist work.   In fact it turns out, as I learned from research stimulated by the comments of Amateur Reader, it is the debate over this issue that has in fact increased the readership for Conrad.   If he were alive today, Conrad would owe his critics a share of his royalties!   This issue has, I think, a larger culture import as seeing Conrad as racist opens the door to an attack on the whole notion of a literary canon if we concede this very high status work is racist to the core.   

I think Edward Said is right and Chinua Achebe is wrong.   (I will assume here that readers of this post-assuming there are any, of course!- are familiar with the racial slurs and terms used in Heart of Darkness.)   I think where Achebe misses the point of the work (I know it sounds very arrogant to say that but if I said it is Said who is wrong it would also sound arrogant) is when he says that Conrad in The Heart of Darkness provides us with no way to step back or outside of the account of Marlow of Africa.   I think Amateur Reader hit it on the head, as usual, when he said "Marlow is a world-class ironist. Is he indulging in received ideas, or parodying them?".


As Said remarks (almost wrote as Said said) this is a narrative for an audience of English business men, people that Marlow needs to please.   I found the further Marlow went into the Congo the more ironical he became.    This is in part because he has no frame of reference to deal with his experience directly so he must distance himself from it with irony.    Marlow wants his story to be exciting and to be what his audience, his bosses, want to hear.   


One of the interesting aspects of Heart of Darkness which I think does show orientalising elements in the book is in the treatment of the Africa woman who was the mistress of Kurtz, per Achebe.   (It is also interesting that Achebe uses a loaded term like "mistress" to describe the woman, why cannot she simply be as a English woman would, be a girl friend or even a wife?)   


In Orientalism (see my post on this book for some background on the concepts) Said says the European saw-and still see-non-European women as sexually exotic, almost like temple prostitutes.   This is how the woman in Heart of Darkness comes across.   Marlow wonders what amazing things she has done to captivate Kurtz.


There are a lot of good points in Achebe essay.   To me one best point is kind of an attack on "liberals" readers of Heart of Darkness who with the best of intentions say Africa is just a backdrop for Marlow to display his attitudes and have his vision of the horror of the darkness.   He says the fact that Conrad could use a whole contitnent and especially the Belgian Congo as  backdrop show his deep seated sense of European superiority.   


I think the failure of insight of Achebe and others who see this book as racist is their inability to step back from the narrator.   I think by the fact that Conrad frames the narrative as he does he is explicitly setting up a "step back" frame for his readers.    




Fred in his very insightful comments said he did not see the justication for this remark I made in my first post


"The narrator of the story does make use of degrading racial terms for the people of the areas, describes them in a fashion that show he things less of their cognitive capacities than he does of Europeans, and sees their very darkness as indicative of an evil quality within them."


Achebe's essay has lots of examples of this including suggestions that the narrator sees the speech of the natives as babbling not a full language.   


I know this may seem a harsh remark, but I think part of the reason Heart of Darkness is often called a racist work is the need of teachers to have something to say about the book that a broad range of students can relate to.   




As always I greatly thank those who take the time to comment on my posts.    If you think I am wrong on something, just tell me otherwise I will presist on in my error.




Please feel free to share your thoughts with us 






Mel u