Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart
Key Facts
full title  ·  Things Fall Apart
author  · Chinua Achebe
type of work  · Novel
genre  · Postcolonial critique; tragedy
language  · English
time and place written  ·  1959, Nigeria
date of first publication  ·  1959
publisher  · Heinemann Educational Books
narrator  · The narrator is anonymous but shows sympathy for the various residents of Umuofia.
pointof view  · The narration is in the third person, by an omniscient figure who focuses on Okonkwo but switches from character to character to detail the thoughts and motives of various individuals.
tone  · Ironic, tragic, satirical, fablelike
tense  · Past
setting (time)  ·  1890s
setting (place)  · Lower Nigerian villages, Iguedo and Mbanta in particular
protagonist  · Okonkwo
major conflict · On one level, the conflict is between the traditional society of Umuofia and the new customs brought by the whites, which are in turn adopted by many of the villagers. Okonkwo also struggles to be as different from his deceased father as possible. He believes his father to have been weak, effeminate, lazy, ignominious, and poor. Consequently, Okonkwo strives to be strong, masculine, industrious,respected, and wealthy.
rising action  · Enoch’s unmasking of an egwugwu, the egwugwu’s burning of the church, and the District Commissioner’s sneaky arrest of Umuofian leaders force the tension between Umuofia and the colonizers to a breaking point.
climax  · Okonkwo’s murder, or uchu, of a court messenger
falling action  · The villagers allow the white government’s messengers to escape, andOkonkwo, realizing the weakness of his clan, commits suicide.
themes  · The struggle between tradition and change; varying interpre-tations of masculinity; language as a sign of cultural difference
motifs  ·  Chi, animal imagery
symbols  · The novel is highly symbolic, and it asks to be read in symbolic terms. Two of the main symbols are the locusts and fire. The locusts symbolize the whitecolonists descending upon the Africans, seeming to augur good but actually portending troublesome encounters. Fire epitomizes Okonkwo’s nature—he is fierce and destructive. A third symbol, the drums, represents the physical connection of the community of clansmen in Umuofia, and acts as a metaphorical heartbeat that beats in unison, uniting all the village members.
foreshadowing  · The author’sinitial description of Ikemefuna as an “ill-fated boy,” which presages his eventual murder by Okonkwo; the arrival of the locusts, which symbolizes the eventual arrival of the colonizers; Obierika’s suggestion that Okonkwo kill himself, which foretells Okonkwo’s eventual suicide

Context
A lbert Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930, in Ogidi, a large village in Nigeria. Although he wasthe child of a Protestant missionary and received his early education in English, his upbringing was multicultural, as the inhabitants of Ogidi still lived according to many aspects of traditional Igbo (formerly written as Ibo) culture. Achebe attended the Government College in Umuahia from 1944 to 1947. He graduated from University College, Ibadan, in 1953. While he was in college, Achebe studiedhistory and theology. He also developed his interest in indigenous Nigerian cultures, and he rejected his Christian name, Albert, for his indigenous one, Chinua.
In the 1950s, Achebe was one of the founders of a Nigerian literary movement that drew upon the traditional oral culture of its indigenous peoples. In 1959, he published Things Fall Apart as a response to novels, such as Joseph Conrad’sHeart of Darkness, that treat Africa as a primordial and cultureless foil for Europe. Tired of reading white men’s accounts of how primitive, socially backward, and, most important, language-less native Africans were, Achebe sought to convey a fuller understanding of one African culture and, in so doing, give voice to an underrepresented and exploited colonial subject.
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