Summary
Critical
Analysis
CHINUA ACHEBE'S NOVELS
Things
Fall Apart
By
G.D. Killam
Things Fall Apart is about Igboland,
in the eastern region of present-day Nigeria, in the period between 1850-1900;
that is, the period just prior to and after the arrival of white men in this
part of West Africa. The setting is Umuofia and Mbanta, the two head towns in
an association called the “nine villages. Okonkwo, the hero of the novel, a
great wrestler in his youth, is, when we meet him, a renowned warrior,
celebrated in song at religious festivals, and one of the most wealthy,
powerful, and influential people in Umuofia. The conflict.in the novel, vested
in Okonkwo, gets from the arrangement of pounding blows which are levelled at
traditional values by an alien and more powerful culture, causing, in the end,
the traditional society to fall apart.
Things Fall Apart is a vision of
what life being like in Igboland between 1850and 1900. Achebe makes a serious
attempt to capture realistically the strains and tensions of the experiences of
Ibo people under the impact of colonialism. Achebe is able to view objectively
the forces which irresistibly and inevitably destroyed traditional lbo social
ties and with them the quality of lbo life.
Things Fall Apart is written in
three parts: the first and most important is set in Umuofia before the coming
of the white man--before his existence is even known. The second part
dramatizes Okonkwo's 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, the establishment of an alien
church, government, and trading system, and the gradual encroachment of these
on the traditional patterns of tribal life. The third section and the shortest
brings the novel swiftly to a close, dramatizing the death of the old ways and
the death of Okonkwo.
Okonkwo was "clearly cut out
for great things", but he had earned his reputation: as a wrestler, he
brought fame to himself and his village; as a warrior, he had taken the
approved symbols of his prowess, the heads of five victims, by the time he was
twenty-one years old; as a man who had achieved personal wealth, he had three
wives, two barns full of yams, and two important titles, titles which could be
acquired only when wealth had been achieved and quality proven.