Chinua Achebe published his first novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ in 1958. Achebe wrote his novel in response to European novels that depicted Africans as savages who needed to be enlightened by the Europeans. Achebe presents to the reader his people’s history with both strengths and imperfections by describing, for example, Igbo festivals, the worship of their gods and the practices in their ritual ceremonies, their rich culture and other social practices, the colonial era that was both stopping Igbo culture and also brought in some benefits to their culture. Cultural conflict is present throughout the novel. ‘Things Fall Apart’, therefore, directs the misleading European novels that depict Africans as savages into a whole new light with its portrayal of Igbo society, and examines the effects of European colonialism on Igbo society from an African perspective. Hence this essay is an attempt to show an insight into the cultural clash between European colonialism and the Africans Igbo society. It is argued that the interaction between the whites and the Igbo people had both negative and positive consequences. It is evident in Achebe’s novel that the Europeans greatly influenced the lifestyle of Igbo society.
‘Things Fall Apart’ is applauded as the finest novel written about life in Nigeria at the end of the nineteenth century, which is published in 1958. It is emphatically the world’s most widely read African novel, having business more than eight million copies in English and been translated into fifty languages. It offers far more than access to pre-colonial Nigeria and the destructive changes brought about by the British. It also can be a resembles opening into the story of the Aborigines in Australia, the Māori of New Zealand, and the First Nations of North, Central, and South America in the ‘falling apart’ of the indigenous cultures of these and other places whose centers could not hold.
Chinua Achebe is the ideal author of this story. He was born in Nigeria in 1930 and gradually maturation in the Igbo town of Ogidi. He spoke Igbo at home and studied English in school. He received into his mind the dual culture. In an autobiographical essay, he describes his childhood as being ‘at the crossroads of cultures’. During his exile, by distinguishing his academic and literary career, Achebe received many awards, beginning with the Margaret Wrong Memorial Prize in 1959 for ‘Things Fall Apart’ and including more than thirty honorary doctorates. Achebe is in great demand throughout the world as a speaker and visiting lecturer and is presently teaching at Bard College in New York.
To make his story accessible to Westerners, Achebe used most English literary forms and interlinked the narrative with Igbo proverbs and folktales. The novel challenges Western notions of historical truth, and urge readers into thinking and reasoning our older knowledge of pre-colonial and colonial Africa. More than half the novel is devoted to a delineation of Igbo culture, artfully drawn as we follow the rise to the preeminence of the protagonist. As a champion wrestler and a great warrior, Okonkwo is a natural leader. His flaw is that he never questions the received wisdom of his ancestors. For this reason, he is not drawn in a blandish light, but his culture is given a full and fair delineation.
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The researcher has identified his own culture’s equivalent to each Igbo folkway, discovering affinities as well as differences. There is no culture shock in discovering that Okonkwo’s father has low status because of his indolence and short-sightedness. He would rather play his flute than repay his debts. It follows, then, that land, a full barn, expensive titles, and many wives confer status. Our protagonist had performed the most challenging task without a mistake. Indeed, one of his flaws is his fear of failure, of becoming like his father.
Viewing society from the inside, the researcher has made inferences about why a high value is accorded to clan solidarity, relationship, and hospitality, as well as about the reasons for courtship and funeral customs. In a culture without written language, the arts of conversation and oratory are prized. Wisdom is hereditary through proverbs, stories, and myths. The agrarian cycle of seasons, with their work and festivals, the judicious use of snuff and palm wine, and the importance of music and dance, were noted and compared to similar Western mores. Law and justice keep the peace, uttering on a land dispute or the killing of a clansman. A priestess and masked tribesmen interpret the Oracle, speaking for ancestors and gods. They enforce taboos against twins and suicide and also offer an account for high infant mortality.
The second and third parts of the novel trace the grim advance of Europeans. For years, stories told about white slavers are given little acceptance in Okonkwo’s village. The first white man to arrive in a nearby village is killed because of an omen, and in payback, all are slaughtered by British guns. “You drove him to kill himself, and now he will be buried like a dog” (Achebe, 191). At the end of the novel, the District Commissioner writes a report titled ‘Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger’, and Okonkwo’s suicide only gets a paragraph in his study. Christian missionaries seem to be madmen, their message of wicked ways and false gods attractive only to outcasts. But along with Christianity come hospitals and schools, converting farmers to court clerks and teachers. Trading stores pay high prices for palm oil. Government is closely linked to religion and literacy. The District Commissioner superimposes Queen Victoria’s laws, and Africans from distant tribes serve as corrupt court messengers and prison guards.
Okonkwo, the upholder of the ways of his ancestors, is inevitably cast in the role of a tragic hero. His eldest son’s early conversion merely hardens his belief in a rigid code of manly behavior. In exile during the first years of colonization, he has less understanding of the power of the Europeans than his now-passive kinsmen. His doom is swift and sure. By the novel’s end, readers flinch when a British official reduces Okonkwo’s life and death to a passing reference in a book he plans to write to be titled ‘The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger’. Advocates of multiculturalism generally emphasize the appreciation of differences among cultures, offering representation and validation to groups and cultures that are underrepresented, that don’t typically have a voice. Our focus is to recognize and appreciate the difference among the cultures. Yet when it is presented as universal human rights against the multicultural respect for other cultures or cultural relativism against human rights, there remain too many questions that we cannot answer here.
References
- Achebe, Chinua. 'Chinua Achebe'. Interview by Bradford Morrow. Conjunctions17 (Fall 1991). Web. 10 Dec. 2012.
- McEwan, Cheryl. Postcolonialism and Development (Volume 3). London: Taylor and Francis, 2009. Print.
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