Pak: CH751 (d)
A Vague & Persistent Question
Reflections on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
CH751 – Paper 4, April 12, 2013
In Chinua Achebe's 1958 classic Things Fall Apart, the West got its first glimpse into their own colonial instincts through the eyes of an African perspective. Achebe's novel refuses to pit colonized against colonizer, but also refuses to sugarcoat the troubling encounter of the 19th century colonial powers and his native Africa. In this paper, I will address Achebe's reading of the encounter of Ibo tribal life with Western entry into Africa and display how he tries to preclude any easy notion of vindication for one side or the other. From there, I will offer an analysis of the complexities of this encounter and show how poor communication between the tribes and the missionaries ensured the slow dispersion of familial and social ties in the former. Finally, I hope to give some perspective on what some of the major players have at stake through their contact with new people, norms, and customs.
The encounter of Ibo tribal life with Western Christianity
Achebe's reading of the encounter between indigenous culture and colonizing religion is nuanced and careful. A baptized Christian himself, he seems to appreciate the subtleties between gain and loss in the process of conversion and the power of colonization. Cutting the colonial impulse off as early as he can, he makes it clear that, for the Igbo people, "From the very beginning religion and education went hand in hand."[1] By doing this, he makes clear to the reader that the indigenous and native is not the same as primitive and uncultured. The common tendency for missionaries was to equate native cultures as uncivilized and therefore in need comprehensive reform. Only the most meager of accommodations were made by "civilized"[2] missionaries to extant cultural norms when they would settle in lands not their own. The list of things that would remain unchanged were few; language, food, dress, etc. Ceremonies, standards of living, social stratification, and others were all frequently put to the chopping block. Biblical expectations around class, wealth, and liturgical life were a primary concern to Christianizers, so restructuring indigenous societies often took place, with varying degrees of "success."
Native hierarchies were thrown into question, evidenced by the missionaries seeking the village's king, "but the villagers told them that there was no king. 'We have men of high title and the chief priests and the elders.'"[3] Sociocultural values were also troubled by Gospel injunctions like that found in Matthew; "man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."[4] Achebe shows us that all indigenous cultures cannot be taken as being the same and having the same issues. While some might worship ancestors, the Igbo cared more for achievement than age. Though some cultures seek money and rare items, the Igbo "do not pray to have more money but to have more kinsmen."[5] Hence, the particulars of each culture directly affected the effectiveness of particular missions. However, there are some parallels that Achebe highlights in order to paint a more complicated terrain than bitter prejudice might imply on either side of the colonizer/colonized divide. Justice, for example, is a common value, even if exercised quite differently. In the West, sides argue their case publicly, a council decides the verdict, and the sentence is pronounced openly. For the Igbo, it is the egwugwu, the ancient souls of the tribe, who serve as the jury, and the Evil Forest as judge. In the end, the entry into Igbo tribal life of Western influence has both pitfalls and parallels. Achebe successfully navigates between extremes of condemning the colonizers and reifying the colonized.
Problems begin to arise over time as assimilation begins and finds purchase or is driven back by various forces. Part of this shift occurs while Okonkwo, the protagonist, is in exile at another village. There, missionaries are received only hesitantly, and are treated with (what is to them unrecognized) contempt. They are given cursed land to settle, which the Igbo clan in Mbanta feel is sure to drive them away. When it does not, and the Christians nurse the infant twins left to die of exposure in the area, conversion ensues. The miscommunication that allows the missionaries their land is the very leverage that gives ground to the eventual break down of traditional Igbo society as the Christians gain ground for surviving and thriving despite what the Igbo see as insurmountable odds.
Complexities of the encounter through a social lens
A miscarriage of communication allows for the very leverage that begins the complex unwinding of Igbo society. Achebe displays this by illustrating the slow dispersion of familial and social ties. The familial breakdown paradoxically evokes the Mathean passage in the figure of "Ogbuefi Ugonna, who had taken two titles, and who like a madman had cut the anklet of his titles and cast it away to join the Christians."[6] Titles are earned within the setting of the clan and are a marker of great pride for a man, not to mention the social capital it bestows upon him and his family. An elder warns Okonkwo, "You young people... do not know how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to speak in one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers."[7] Familial norms begin to break down as religious conversion begins to set in and tear old bonds apart at the seams. Okonkwo notices it upon his return from exile, that "Now [the white man] has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. [The colonizers have] put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."[8]
The breakdown of social ties is embodied by the killing of the egwugwu by Enoch. It was at this juncture in the story that "the Mother of the Spirits walked the length and breadth of the clan, weeping for her murdered son... It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming – its own death."[9] Indeed, the conclusion of the book comes sweeping and fast thereafter. The clans begin falling apart and are no longer able to speak in one voice or act as one. When the court messengers come to break up the village's assembly in the midst of a call to war by a gifted orator, Okonkwo strikes down the head messenger. Despite the warrior's passionate response, they "would not go to war. [Okonkwo] knew because they had let the other court messengers escape."[10] Ironically, the village that was so quick to change by being pacified to colonial rule maintains the rigid taboo of refusing to bury Okonkwo when he hangs himself for being the only Igbo who failed to adapt to the increasingly oppressive regime of Rev. Smith and the District Commissioner.[11]
The stakes for various characters in the novel
The number and diversity of players in the novel lends itself to a wide-ranging and lengthy reflection, so I'll focus on just a few that stood out for various reasons. Of course, Okonkwo has much at stake; he has built an entire life based upon what he has earned in response to the perceived short comings of his father. His father was effeminate and untrustworthy, never earning a single title in his life and dying with unpaid debts. Okonkwo, therefore stakes his whole life on the cultural traditions he was born into because the family he was given he deemed unreliable, including both his father and his son, Nwoye. Indeed, Okonkwo "shudders"[12] at the thought of the ancestral gods being totally renounced after Nwoye converts. On the other end of the social scale but espousing similar theo-political assumptions rest the likes of Rev. Smith and the district commissioner. Avatars of colonial religion and government, respectively, Smith and the nameless official white-knuckle their own traditions in a foreign land and refuse honest communication. The latter even resorts to deception in order to apprehend Okonkwo and the other village elders. At stake for them is probably the exact same fear of contingency that Okonkwo dreads; that if the Other is vindicated then all hope has been lost.
However, not all of the characters are so deterministic about their beliefs, many adapt fluidly to the ever-changing environment. Nwoye, Okonkwo's oldest son (and possibly the character Achebe sees as himself), finds in the new religion answers to long-seated questions he has had. Indeed "The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul... He felt relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul."[13] Others find similar stirrings within, but crystallize much more slowly and carefully. Okonkwo's best friend Obierika "remembered his wife's twin children, whom he had thrown away. What crime had they committed? The earth had decreed that they were an offense to the land and must be destroyed."[14] This sentiment is presented by Achebe as having found purchase in his soul long before the missionaries arrived and won the attention of their earliest converts. But Obierika does not convert as swiftly as Nwoye, as he perhaps has more at stake in the form of his family, titles, or other social capital. Achebe deftly weaves together characters with diverse interests and motivations to paint a complicated terrain over which the Western colonial and missionary encounter occurs in Nigeria, and in doing so maintains the difficult and complex concerns and difficulties such a history demands.
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So we can see that Chinua Achebe excels in narrating the complexities of contact with Western religious and political forms. Because of his own complex identity being a baptized Christian and native to a colonized land, he is able to navigate troubled waters with a skill few share. The story he tells is one that denies the sharp dualism that dominates identity politics, refusing to take sides but also acknowledging the deeply complicated terrain into which he was born. He helps his Western readers sympathize with a perspective they helped shape, and he gives his own native people a strong, singular voice that does not back down from the significance their story demands. Not one to give cheap, easy answers, Achebe leaves us with a vague and persistent question more profound than any direct answer might satisfy. When left with the visceral impression of what happens at these crossroads of culture and convictions, when things fall apart, such unanswerable queries can be deeply satisfying.
Footnotes
[1] Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor, 1994), 103.
[2] I use quotations because, while missionaries may well have used it, I have reservations as to the implicit suggestions it entails, both for the indigenous peoples Christianized and the missionaries.
[3] Achebe, 148
[4] Matthew 10:34, New International Version.
[5] Achebe, 95
[6] Ibid., 89
[7] Ibid., 174
[8] Ibid., 167
[9] Ibid., 176, emphasis added.
[10] Ibid., 187
[11] Ibid., 205
[12] Ibid., 153
[13] Ibid., 147
[14] Ibid., 125
