ENG2082 THE POST COLONIAL NOVEL

Achebe's Treatment of African Traditions in “Things Fall Apart”

By

Miriam Ferrazzano

Visiting student I.D. 0800308

 1. Introduction

The beginning of the twentieth century was the period of the crossroads of cultures in Igboland. It

was also a period of sweeping and complex changes in the area later to be known as Nigeria. The

colonial power, after several expeditions, was entrenching its authority over the society; the

missionaries, too, were consolidating their spiritual influnce after the efforts of their pioneers; the

economy was being reorded to reflect new commercial interests; and Western education was seen

increasingly as providing opportunities fot the acquisition of power and prestige. Although these

changes were proceeding, there were still areas in wich a large number of people retained and

preservated their traditions. It was obvious, however, that these customs were disappearing

gradually in the wake of fundamental change in the economic, social, political and cultural life of

the community.

“Things fall apart” is a vision of what life was like in Igboland between 1850 and 1900 and the

experience of Ibo people under the impact of colonialism.

The setting of “Things fall apart” is Umuofia and Mbanta, the two principal villages in a union

called the “nine villages”.

2. Things fall apart

Okonkwo, the hero of the novel, a great wrestler in his youth, is a renowed warrior (celebrated in

prais songs at religious festivals) and one of the most wealthy, powerful and influential members in

Umuofia. Wrestling was popular, often attracting competitors who represented their clans, quarters

villages or towns.

The language of Okonkwo and the other villagers is expressed in the idiom of the Ibo villagers as

Achebe transmutes it into modern English. The conflict in the novel, vested in Okonkwo, derives

from the series of crushing blows which are levelled at traditional values by an alien and more

powerful culture causing, in the end, the traditional society to fall apart.

Achebe makes a serious attempt to capture the strains and tensions of the experiences of Ibo people

under the impact of the conolialism. The novel is written not only from the point of view of Ibo
people: Achebe is able to view objecti vely the forces which irresistibly and inevitably destroyed

traditional Ibo social ties and with them the quality of Ibo life. In showing Ibo society before and

after the coming of the white man he avoids the temptation to present the past as idealized and the

present as ugly and unsatisfactory. The atmosphere of the novel is realistic and not romantic,

although there are romantic elements in it.

Things fall Apart has three sections: the first is set in Umuofia before the coming of the white man –

before his existence is is even known; the second part dramatizes Okonkwo' banishment to Mbanta,

the village of his mother's people, for sins committed against the Earth Goddess, and describes,

mostly through reports, the coming of the white man to the nine villages and the estabilishment of

an alien church, government and trading system and the gradual encroachment of these on the

traditional patterns of tribal life; the third section brings the novel swiftly to a close, dramatizing the

death of the old ways and the deat of Okonkwo.

3. Okonkwo

At the centre of the community is Okonkwo, a character of intense individuality, yet one in whom

the values most admirded by Ibo peoples are consolidated. He is both ad individual and a type

Okonkwo was “one of the greatest men of his time”, the embodyment of Ibo values, the man who

better than most symbolized his race. Achebe suggests as well the flaw in his nature – his inordinate

ambition and his refusal to tollerate anything less than excellence, taken in conjunction with an

impulsive rage to wich he easily gives way and which produces irrational responses to situations. In

this connection the comment that Okonkwo had “no patience with his father” is important, for

Unoka, the father, represents everything wich Okonkwo personally despies and his life embodies

the anthesis of those values most cherished by the Ibo people. The character of Unoka is made to

stand in direct contrast to Okonkwo's and to enhance his central position in the book. Okonkwo is

what his society has made him, for his most cospicuous qualities are a response to the demands of

his society. If he is pluged by fear of faliure and of weakness it is because his society puts such a

premium on success; if he is always itching to demostrate his powess in war it is because his society
reveres bravery and courage, and measures success by the number of human heads a man has won.

Achebe links Okonkwo's present temperament not only with the values of his society, but also with

his revulsion against everything his father had stood for. Bitterly ashamed of the father who

committed the unpardonable sin of dying without taking any titles, Okonkwo comes to associate

faliure and weakness with him. His character is partly determined by the negative need to be

everything that his father was not.

After the coming of the missionaries, Umuofia has changed more than Okonkwo had been prepared

for.

“Now he 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.

Not only has the white man brought a “lunatic religion” but “he also built a trading store ans for the

first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia”

It is the religious principles embodied in Christianity wich Okonkwo sees as the force that changes

the nature of village life. He remains firm to the old ways, join an attack which is made against the

Christian Church and for this, with several others, is arrested by the District Cimmissioner and

placed in irons in the jail. His sense of humiliation precipitates his final actions which culminate in

his death.

4. The missionaries in Ogidi

In the midst of change, farming and trading remained the major occupations; there were also still

musicians, blacksmiths, builders and fishermen along the streams and rivers. The festivals

associated with various communities, often based on religious rites, were still held, although the

zeal of some converts to the Christian religion, and the resistance of adherents to the old traditions,

sometimes met in conflicts.

Recreational activities centred on the community continued to link individuals, their neighbours and

their kinsmen. Communal activity was closely associated with captivating music and dance.

Adherents to the Igbo traditions were still in the majority at the beginning of the twentieth century,

and these festivals often accorded due reverence to custodian of the gods and oracles like the priest
of Udo in Ikenga, one of the villages of Ogidi (Ogidi means pillar, is an Igbo town, the headquarters

of Indemili North).

The major festival in Ogidi was Nwafor, which survived the initial inroads made by the advent of

Christianity and the policies of the colonial administrators. Nwafor, which may be linkened to

Christmas, takes place in the midst of the raint season. In the past it was an event that every Ogidi

indigene respected and many people from other districts attended, especially those who had

relatives in Ogidi. These visitors came bearing kegs of palm wine end were given large portions of

meat on their departure. It was a time for relaxation when all the major farm work had been done

and people cast aside the depression induced by the rheumy weather. Young men, however, took

advantage of the Nwafor festival not only drink a lot of wine and make merry, but also to flog

people who had earned their displeasure. A major characteristic was its numerous masquerades; this

was the time at which young boys were initiated into these rites.

The prescence of missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), who arrived in Ogidi from

Onitsha in about 1892, could not negate this festival, although they did win converts in the town.

These early converts did not consitute a population large enough to threaten the major traditions of

the people.

The desire of the CMS to estabilish a station at Ogidi may have had someting to do with the

refinement of morals, but the primary aim was to extend its area of influence beyond its operational

headquarters in Onitsha.

When the first missionaries arrived in Ogidi they responded to the Igbo tradition that strangers must

pay their respects to prominent local personalities, among them Chinua Achebe's great-grandfather,

Udo Osinyi:

“For a short while my great-grandfather allowed them to operate from his compound. He probably thought it was some

kind of circus whose strange presence added lustre to his household. But after a few days he sent them packing again.

Not, as you might think, on account of the crazy theology they had begun to propound, but on the much more serious

ground of musical aesthetics. Said the old man: “ Your singing is too sad to come from a man's house. My neighbours

might think it was my funeral dirige.”

The missionaries departed from the compound of Udo Osinyi without bitterness. Among those who

watched them go was a young man who had been attracted by their ideas and theology. He was the

grandson of Udo Osinyi. He became one of the early converts of Rev. Smith and was given the

name Isaiah Okafor Achebe. In the year 1904 Isaiah Achebe was baptized, but as early as 1901 Rev.

Smith could report 40 pupils in the school, 70 people attending the Sunday services and 18

candidates registred for baptesim. In the following year, 15 young men were baptized at Ogidi, and

subdequentely the influence of the CMS became pronounced in the town, enjoying the support of

Walter Amobi, one of the first persons in the region to recive a Western education.

5. Proverbs

Achebe uses proverbs and this is a distinctive feature of his style. Achebe could not avoid using

proverbs since they are highly prized in the society he has set himself the task of portraying.

Achebe uses the proverbs as vivid illustrative analogies.

“An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb” In this proverb, for

istance, in imagining the uneasiness of the old woman we are thus made aware of Okonkwo's

discomfort at the mention of anythig relating to his father.

On the first page of the novel Okonkwo's fame had grown like a bush-fire in the haramattan. A few

pages farther along the following metaphor is offered: “Among the Ibo the art of conversation is

regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with wich words are eaten”. Both images are

drawn from nature – palm-oil and haramattan – indicating the connection between human life and

the soil. Achebe incorporates much proverbial material couched in traditional verbal formulae.

6. Conclusions

Okonkwo takes his own life at the end of “Things fall Apart” because he realizes that something

critical to his existence has disappeared from his society and he refuses to live an alien in his own

land. Things fall apart is the expression of the tensions, stresses and conflicts, presented in personal,

social and spiritual terms, of late nineteenth-century Ibo society.