Things Fall Apart

“And so although Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest men of his time. Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings. Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders. And that was how he came to look after the doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by their neighbors to avoid war and bloodshed. The ill-fated lad was called Ikemefuna.”

Okonkwo’s desire to “wash his hands” of his father follows him throughout his life, highlighting the theme of The Bond Between Fathers and Sons. Each action is motivated by the desire to act honorably, living up to the highest standards of manhood. He also pays penalties and makes ritual sacrifices whenever he can to cleanse himself of offenses he commits. Ikemefuna’s case, though, shows that one can “cleanse” oneself in the eyes of a community but still be personally haunted by one’s own thoughts and memories.

“Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.”

Fear is a central motivator for every character in Things Fall Apart. But Okonkwo’s fear is based on human factors—his father—rather than on the supernatural or divine. That intimate fear centers on the self and the body, and its ultimate result resonates when Okonkwo meets a premature death. It is not the gods or the ancestors that consume him; rather, he consumes himself.

“Okonkwo remembered that tragic year with a shiver throughout the rest of his life. It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair. He knew that he was a fierce fighter, but that year had been enough to break the heart of a lion.”

Memory is a powerful motivator, both for Okonkwo and for the other villagers. The failure and trauma that Okonkwo feels after his first farming endeavor sharpen his will. When the white men arrive, though, there is no local memory of such a threat or even such a body; it becomes difficult to know how or when to fight without a legacy of wisdom, proverb, or disappointment from which to build. This highlights the use of Religion as Politics, as the Oracle and spiritual elders control the only set of morals and standards left in the community.

“Even Okonkwo himself became very fond of the boy—inwardly of course. Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength. He therefore treated Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else—with a heavy hand. But there was no doubt that he liked the boy. Sometimes when he went to big village meetings or communal ancestral feasts he allowed Ikemefuna to accompany him, like a son, carrying his stool and his goatskin bag. And, indeed, Ikemefuna called him father.”

Okonkwo’s love is undeniable, though he hides it. Ikemefuna brings out this more feminine side by making him happy; ironically, Okonkwo is most respected when his “feminine” affections emerge. Ezinma, at the end of the novel, also embodies coexisting gendered characteristics that reflect positively upon others.

“The drums were still beating, persistent and unchanging. Their sound was no longer a separate thing from the living village. It was like the pulsation of its heart. It throbbed in the air, in the sunshine, and even in the trees, and filled the village with excitement.”

The sound of drums carries consistently throughout the text, a summons that connects the people of Umuofia without words. As these drums summon the people for wrestling matches, they connect the village into one body, with one “heart,” an indication of the healthy wholeness that characterizes Umuofia before the arrival of the white man.

“At first, a fairly small swarm came. They were the harbingers sent to survey the land. And then appeared on the horizon a slowly-moving mass like a boundless sheet of black cloud drifting towards Umuofia. Soon it covered half the sky, and the solid mass was now broken by tiny eyes of light like shining star dust. It was a tremendous sight, full of power and beauty.”

The locusts operate as a metaphor once the white man arrives in Umuofia: others, from far away, warn that their sudden descent will quickly cover all parts of the village. The locusts themselves are a welcome sight, a curiosity, and they are useful as food and easily eradicated. The metaphor falls apart once the locals witness the white men shape and influence their society.

“A vague chill had descended on him and his head seemed to swell, like a solitary walker at night who passes an evil spirit on the way. Then something had given way inside him. It descended on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in, that night after killing Ikemefuna.”

Nwoye’s sadness after Ikemefuna’s murder creates space for Christianity. The “feeling” of frustration and sadness because of tribal ritual was implanted in him as a young child but receded with Ikemefuna’s presence. Without Ikemefuna, the feeling returns, and with it the longing to heal it.

“What is good in one place is bad in another place. In Umunso they do not bargain at all, not even with broomsticks. The suitor just goes on bringing backs of cowries until his in-laws tell him to stop. It is a bad custom because it always leads to a quarrel.”

In Umuofia and the surrounding villages, each local group has its own rituals and systems. The District Commissioner’s messengers, though they speak the Ibo language, do not understand the local customs and proverbs. As white men miss the diversity of the area, they generalize behavior and are unable to communicate effectively, even when they have translators. People and customs can be different from one village to another, but the District Commissioner’s book treats every experience as a general tale of Africa.

“The egwugwu house into which they emerged faced the forest, away from the crowd, who saw only its back with the many-colored patterns and drawings done by specially chosen women at regular intervals. These women never saw the inside of the hut. No woman ever did. They scrubbed and painted the outside walls under the supervision of men. If they imagined what was inside, they kept their imagination to themselves. No woman ever asked questions about the most powerful and the most secret cult in the clan.”

Mystery is critical in Umuofia, but it is also unequal. Chielo has singular access to Agbala; men have singular access to their ancestors. The “imagination” is critical for everyone, as they suspend disbelief and recognize not the men who serve as egwugwu s but the powerful spirits that animate them. This critical element of faith motivates both Christians and Ibo people, but it manifests itself in vastly different ways.

“It was a different woman—the priestess of Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and Caves. Ekwefi trudged along between two fears. The sound of her benumbed steps seemed to come from some other person walking behind her. Her arms were folded across her bare breasts. Dew fell heavily and the air was cold. She could no longer think, not even about the terrors of night.”

As Ekwefi follows Chielo through the forest, her devotion to her daughter seems to carry her further than her body can stand. Chielo, too, is something more than just the physical. Divine power is transformative, but pairing Ekwefi and Chielo also draws attention to the power of womanhood, especially motherly love, which extends beyond the body and stands in contrast to hard, male, warring power.

“The people of Umuike wanted their market to grow and swallow up the markets of their neighbors. So they made a powerful medicine. Every market day, before the first cock-crow, this medicine stands on the market ground in the shape of an old woman with a fan. With this magic fan she beckons to the market all the neighboring clans. She beckons in front of her and behind her, to her right and to her left.”

This description of powerful magic cast to benefit a specific group again emphasizes the relationship between the supernatural world and the physical body. One old woman’s body can summon large crowds with just a single fan invested with magical spirit. Interestingly, this investment of divine power in an object is not dissimilar from Catholic tradition.

“A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.”

This sentence summarizes the centrality of family in Ibo tradition. An individual moves through a family structure, tied constantly to family that has died, until he or she arrives in the same place. This is why a departure from traditionally honoring one’s ancestors is such an affront to the village and is also why Nwoye’s departure is so devastating.

“It was as if a spell had been cast. All was silent. In the center of the crowd a boy lay in a pool of blood. It was the dead man’s sixteen-year-old son, who with his brothers and half-brothers had been dancing the traditional farewell to their father. Okonkwo’s gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierced the boy’s heart.”

This moment of accidental violence is a critical point in Okonkwo’s life, as it sends him into exile. But it also symbolizes a disrupted father-son relationship: it cuts short a life unnaturally and represents the death of the generation expected to bring further honor to a family.

“It’s true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother’s hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you.”

Okonkwo finds safe harbor in the love of his mother’s family, where he finally learns to appreciate the value of feminine comfort. The text offers other examples of motherly love, specifically Ekwefi’s, and its remarkable power; in Mbanta, Okonkwo grudgingly accepts the life that edifies, even if it disrupts his progress toward power and glory.

“For whom is it well, for whom is it well? / There is no one for whom it is well.”

Uchendu’s ominous singing is intended to encourage Okonkwo and refocus him on his good fortune. He is not the only one who goes through suffering, Uchendu tells him. Interestingly, Uchendu gives the example of a mother who, like Ekwefi, is cursed with an evil child. For the first time, Okonkwo is directly challenged to think of pain and perspectives other than his own.

“Never kill a man who says nothing.”

This wisdom—about the first white man killed in a nearby village—becomes ironic later in the story, when the white men kill men they cannot understand. Though passions stand in the way, this general principle often seems to be one that could save or help the village’s troubles.

“But there was a young lad who had been captivated. His name was Nwoye, Okonkwo’s first son. It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul—the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye’s callow mind was greatly puzzled.”

The “poetry” of Christianity is an “answer” that satisfies Nwoye down to his “marrow,” even as it angers others. An important element of his conversion is that he does not consider “the mad logic” presented to him as much as his feelings; criticized by his father for being too womanly and spirit-driven, Nwoye is a less logical man, and he makes decisions based on feelings that other men cannot understand. That Achebe still describes Nwoye’s conversion as healing, despite his overall exposition of the pain caused by Christian missions in Nigeria, displays his persistent ability to see the spiritual value in many traditions.

“The next morning the crazy men actually began to clear a part of the forest and to build their house. The inhabitants of Mbanta expected them all to be dead within four days. The first day passed and the second and third and fourth, and none of them died. Everyone was puzzled. And then it became known that the white man’s fetish had unbelievable power.”

The familiar frames of fetishes and medicines offer the villagers a vocabulary by which they can understand Christianity. When Christianity upsets their beliefs, its power becomes an oppositional force that can battle theirs. The church’s success, in this way, becomes a threat to their tradition.

“Okoli was not there to answer. He had fallen ill on the previous night. Before the day was over he was dead. His death showed that the gods were still able to fight their own battles. The clan saw no reason then for molesting the Christians.”

The arrival of white men leads to a crisis for the villagers: can, and will, the gods “fight their own battles,” or do men need to step in and act for them? The dispersal of appeals to gods, toward the end of the novel, is part of the chaos that leads Okonkwo to give in and accept the change as irrevocable.

“But I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and ancestors, like a hunter’s dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on its master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan.”

The greatest fear for the eldest generations is the loss of their sons. Okonkwo’s obsession with his son is a cultural inheritance. He believes that, after life, they will still interact, and he will be able to see his family achieve honor and respect. When Nwoye’s desertion fractures this bond, which is stronger than death, both individual father (Okonkwo) and clan must fear for their most sacred connections.

“‘Does the white man understand our custom about land?’ ‘How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. 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.’”

This quotation borrows language from “The Second Coming,” the William Butler Yeats poem that is the novel’s epigraph. After white men slowly pull at the unity of the clan, because they are “amused at [the white men’s] foolishness,” their infiltration reaches its crux, making a final cut in the group’s social fabric so that it finally “[falls] apart.”

“Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women.”

Okonkwo perpetually fixates on manhood. The ultimate loss for his village is the loss of its manly honor. For him, it is not lineage as much as personal manliness that brings honor. This “softness” is the ultimate affront, the characteristic that leads to the clan’s chaos.

“You can stay with us if you like our ways. You can worship your own god. It is good that a man should worship the gods and spirits of his fathers. Go back to your house so that you may not be hurt. Our anger is great but we have held it down so that we can talk to you.”

This opportunity, which the egwugwus give to Reverend Smith, embodies the connection between family and worship that separates Ibo faith from Smith’s Christianity. Rather than independent choice to believe what one wants, the villagers consider worshiping the gods “of [their] fathers” to be of ultimate importance. They offer Smith the opportunity to respect their space, but he is not compelled by this appeal to tradition in the same way that an Ibo man might be.