Hey friends,
“If you are not reading a novel a week, you cannot live a moral life.”
Stories organize us culturally and emotionally. They make life meaningful and manageable, but they do even more. Reading stories offers us the opportunity to develop wisdom. Stories stretch our minds and help to grow our moral capacity.
Let’s draw an outline for African Literature
African literature, the body of traditional oral and written literature in Afro-Asiatic and African languages together with works written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written literature, which is limited to a smaller geographic area than oral literature, is most characteristic of those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of the Mediterranean. In particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the scholars of what is now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a traditional written literature. Works written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward.
History of African Literature
African literature has origins dating back thousands of years to Ancient Egypt and hieroglyphs, or writing which uses pictures to represent words. These Ancient Egyptian beginnings led to Arabic poetry, which spread during the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century C.E. and through Western Africa in the ninth century C.E. These African and Arabic cultures continued to blend with the European culture and literature to form a unique literary form.
Africa experienced several hardships in its long history which left an impact on the themes of its literature. One hardship which led to many others is that of colonization. Colonization is when people leave their country and settle in another land, often one which is already inhabited. The problem with colonization is when the incoming people exploit the indigenous people and the resources of the inhabited land.
Colonization led to slavery. Millions of African people were enslaved and brought to Western countries around the world from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. This spreading of African people, largely against their will, is called the African Diaspora.
Achebe’s is an essentially melancholic novel and an extended metaphor for African despoliation, life and politics. Things Fall Apart is a sorrowful affair but not a despondent one.
Things Fall Apart
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
1. What is the historical context of Things Fall Apart?
Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s and portrays the clash between Nigeria’s white colonial government and the traditional culture of the indigenous Igbo people. Achebe’s novel shatters the stereotypical European portraits of native Africans. He is careful to portray the complex, advanced social institutions and artistic traditions of Igbo culture prior to its contact with Europeans. Yet he is just as careful not to stereotype the Europeans; he offers varying depictions of the white man, such as the mostly benevolent Mr. Brown, the zealous Reverend Smith, and the ruthlessly calculating District Commissioner.
Achebe’s education in English and exposure to European customs have allowed him to capture both the European and the African perspectives on colonial expansion, religion, race, and culture. His decision to write Things Fall Apart in English is an important one. Achebe wanted this novel to respond to earlier colonial accounts of Africa; his choice of language was thus political. Unlike some later African authors who chose to revitalize native languages as a form of resistance to colonial culture,
Achebe wanted to achieve cultural revitalization within and through English. Nevertheless, he manages to capture the rhythm of the Igbo language and he integrates Igbo vocabulary into the narrative.
2. What is the significance of the title?
From its very title, Things Fall Apart foreshadows the tragedy which the novel depicts. We don’t mean to be downers , but can a book about things falling apart really have a happy ending? The novel documents the falling apart of the Igbo tribe due to the coming of the Christian missionaries and the rule of the English government.
The only point in the book in which the title is referenced is Chapter Twenty, when the main character, Okonkwo, and his friend, Obierika, are discussing the invasion of white men into their community. Obierika says, “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 over 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 passage clearly ties the destruction of the Igbo people’s way of life to sneaky, divisive action on the part of European missionaries and imperialists.
The phrase “things fall apart” is from a poem by W.B Yeats, which Achebe quotes more extensively in the epigraph
3. Write a brief note on the concept of 'Chi' in Things Fall Apart?
The philosophic examination of chi symbolism in Igbo context is hinged on the fictional text of the great Igbo novelist and thinker, the Igbo biographer Chinua Achebe. Achebe is the basis of my emphasis due to the fact that he is a more universally accepted literary authority on Igbo people. The attempt in effect is to philosophically examine what chi symbolism is from Achebe’s fictionalized articulation of the Igbo life.
The core conflict of individual versus community in Things Fall Apart revolves around the Igbo conception of chi that Achebe rendered as personal god. The chi often comes up in this common saying – onye kwe chi ya ekwe – meaning he who consents, the god will also consent.
Raph Madu enuciates chi metonymically (35), in interpreting chi as both destiny and dispenser of destiny. In metonymic symbolization, effect can stand for its cause and vice versa because of the intimate relationship between the two: destiny (effect) and dispenser of destiny (cause). Besides the cause and effect relationship which sounds rather fatalistic, one could imagine other metonymic relationships.
Equally, the ambiguities and paradoxes that characterize the application of chi (onye kwe chi ya ekwe and onye kwe ma chi ekweghi) can be approached from a largely cultural perspective, that also suggests some deep coherence. Hence, the conflicting views will be different responses or approaches to, maybe, the same or similar thought-provoking events at different moments and situations in life. Man’s singular encounter with the numerous hazards of life, notably death and failure, does not lend itself to simple enunciation, to a concise or precise formulation which will precede a purely formal deduction. Hence, though nature or life may not be contradictory per se it can and does become easily so in view of the particular human activities that interpret it. In this perspective, some of the ambiguities and paradoxes evident in the signification of the chi are conflicting yet complementary life experiences, each of which is true in its own right.
Chi is a good example of a symbol with accumulative intention, a traditional spiritual and religious symbol which has taken on so many contradictory values that tend to neutralize one another. The chi symbol also demonstrates the potentiality of some symbols to acquire oppositional values and function that make polysemy one of the prime problems of semantics.
4. What do you think about the incident of Ikemefuna? How does it help to understand the Ibo culture in more specific ways?
Ikemefuna comes to Umuofia early in the book, as settlement for a dispute with a nearby village. Not knowing what else to do with him, Okonkwo lets Ikemefuna live with his first wife. Ikemefuna quickly becomes a well-loved member of the family. He serves as a role model for Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nwoye, and over time he also earns Okonkwo’s respect. But more important than the role he plays in Okonkwo’s family is the effect his death has on the unfolding events of the novel.
When the village elders decide the time has come to kill Ikemefuna and finally settle the dispute with the neighboring village, Okonkwo insists on taking part in the execution, despite the fact that the boy calls him “father.” Okonkwo ends up killing Ikemefuna himself out of fear that his failure to take responsibility would make him look weak. Ikefuma’s death irreversibly harms the relationship between Okonkwo and Nwoye. His death is also a bad omen that has a symbolic connection to Okonkwo’s later exile from Umuofia. In this sense, the death of Ikemefuna signals the start of things falling apart.
5. Write a brief note on Ibo people's belief in the world of spirits.
It is necessary to state from the on-set that a discussion of the Igbo world view is undertaken here within the general considerations of African world view.
The Igbo constitute part of the African world, whose various peoples despite their specific differences, have elements shared commonly in their views of the world.
While highlighting the specifically Igbo in these elements, references would often be made to and from the generally African. Attention has often been drawn to the dangers of generalizations about African world view that seem to neglect the fact that most ethnic groups have basic differences readily manifest in their historical, linguistic, and socio-religious expressions.438 Awareness of the societal and individual dynamisms is also equally important. Central to the issue of dynamism is the appreciation of the lasting influence on African world views due to contacts with foreign cultures. Such contacts border mainly on the subjects of slave trade, colonialism and missionary drives. These influences pose difficulties in the bid to ascertain and decipher the originally traditional from the foreign-contact-influenced presentations.
However, despite these influences, some basic assumptions and fundamental views of the African societies with regard to their world, their experience of and relation to it are identifiably original. The central and most profound of these is the issue of religion, understood in the sense of the deep consciousness of transcendence (both in the sense of beings and/a Being).
8. Point out the important points of Things Fall Apart which can be compared with Kanthapura by Raja Rao.
Myth and archetype concerns itself with creation. Raja Rao and Chinua Achebe are not only masters of literature but also of myth making.
In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is exiled from his native village of Umofia but ultimately he finds his way back to his village after seven long years, only to end his life to escape from the consequence of killing a white man. Okonkwo functions as an archetype as well as a mythic hero for Achebe to bring out colonial experience. Okonkwo’s downfall is the symbol of the destruction of the indigenous tradition and culture by the onslaught of the colonial forces.
In Kanthapura, Raja Rao has depicted Moorthy as someone who is regarded as the young Gandhi by his fellow villagers. The innocent Moorthy’s martyrdom elevates him to that of the mythic hero. His sacrificing nature is testified by his conversation with the Mahatma:
Mahatma Said, ‘You wear foreign clothes my son.’ – ‘It will go to Mahatmaji.’
‘You perhaps go to foreign Universities’ – ‘It will go to Mahatmaji.’
‘You can help your country by going and working among the
dumb millions of the villages.’ – ‘So be it Mahatmaji.’
Moorthy’s alienation from his group when he is arrested is another example of why he is considered as a mythic hero. He becomes an archetype of the heroes of India’s struggle for independence from the foreign yoke.
Thus, in the two novels under discussion, Things Fall Apart and Kanthapura, Achebe and Raja Rao have fused myth with literature and the archetypes that they have drawn from their respective cultures and traditions. Both the authors have deployed different archetypes to evolve and work out fresh connections and interpretations.
By and large we can put here that, As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters. Things Fall Apart fits the definition of tragedy because it documents both the personal downfall of Okonkwo and the broader erosion of the Igbo cultural world that Okonkwo wishes to defend.
