Name: Trivedi Disha Hiteshbhai
Paper no: 14 (THE AFRICAN LITERATURE)
Topic: Things Fall
Apart As historical Fiction
Year: 2015-2017
M.A.Sem=4
Submitted to: Smt. S.b.gardi department of English (M.K.B.U)
Things Fall Apart As historical
Fiction
Tribal Society
Things Fall Apart was
published in 1958 just prior to Nigerian independence, but it depicts pre-colonial
Africa. Achebe felt it was important to portray Nigerians as they really
were—not just provide a shallow description of them as other authors had. The
story takes place in the typical tribal village of Umofia, where the
inhabitants (whom Achebe calls the Ibo, but who are also known as
the Igbo) practice rituals common to their native traditions.
The Ibo worshipped gods who
protect, advice, and chastise them and who are represented by priests and
priestesses within the clan. For example, the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves
grants knowledge and wisdom to those who are brave enough to consult him. No
one has ever seen the Oracle except his priestess, who is an Ibo woman who has
special powers of her own. Not only did the gods advise the Ibo on community
matters, but also they guided individuals. Each person had a personal god, or
chi, that directed his or her actions. A strong chi meant a strong person;
people with weak chi were pitied. Each man kept a separate hut, or shrine,
where he stored the symbols of his personal god and his ancestral spirits.
A hunting and gathering society,
the Ibo existed on vegetables, with yams as the primary crop. Yams were so
important to them that the Ibo celebrated each new year with the Feast of the
New Yam. This festival thanked Ani, the earth goddess and source of all
fertility. The Ibo prepared for days for the festival, and the celebration
itself lasted for two days. Yams also played a part in determining a man's
status in the tribe—the more yams a man has, the higher his status. Trade with
other villages was facilitated by small seashells called cowries which were
used as a form of currency.
Within the village, people were
grouped according to families, with the eldest man in the family having the
most power. On matters affecting the whole village, an assembly of adult men
debated courses of action, and men could influence these assemblies by
purchasing "titles" from the tribal elders. This system encouraged
hard work and the spread of wealth. People who transgressed against the laws
and customs of the village had to confront the egwugwu, an assembly of
tribesmen masked as spirits, who would settle disputes and hand out punishment.
Individual villages also attained various degrees of political status. In the
novel, other tribes respect and fear Umuofia. They believe that Umuofia's magic
is powerful and that the village's war-medicine, or agadi-nwayi, is
particularly potent. Neighboring clans always try to settle disputes peacefully
with Umuofia to avoid having to war with them.
Christianity and
Colonization
While Christianity spread across
North and South Africa as early as the late fifteenth century, Christianity
took its strongest hold when the majority of the missionaries arrived in the
late 1800s. After centuries of taking slaves out of Africa, Britain had
outlawed the slave trade and now saw the continent as ripe for colonization.
Missionaries sent to convert the local population were often the first
settlers. They believed they could atone for the horrors
of slavery by saving the souls of Africans.
At first, Africans were
mistrustful of European Christians, and took advantage of the education the
missionaries provided without converting. Individuals who had no power under
the current tribal order, however, soon converted; in the novel, the
missionaries who come to Umuofia convert only the weaker tribesmen, or efulefu.
Missionaries would convince these tribesmen that their tribe worshipped false
gods and that its false gods did not have the ability to punish them if they
chose to join the mission. When the mission and its converts accepted even the
outcasts of the clan, the missionaries' ranks grew. Eventually, some of the
more important tribesmen would convert. As the mission expanded, the clan
divided, discontent simmered, and conflicts arose.
English
Bureaucrats and Colonization
After the arrival of the British,
when conflicts came up between villages the white government would intervene
instead of allowing villagers to settle them themselves. In the novel, a white
District Commissioner brings with him court messengers whose duty it is to
bring in people who break the white man's law. The messengers, called
"Ashy-Buttocks" for the ash-colored shorts they wear, are hated for
their high-handed attitudes. These messengers and interpreters were often
African Christian converts who looked down on tribesmen who still followed traditional
customs. If violence involved any white missionaries or bureaucrats, British
soldiers would often slaughter whole villages instead of seeking and punishing
guilty individuals. The British passed an ordinance in 1912 that legalized this
practice, and during an uprising in 1915, British troops killed more than forty
natives in retaliation for one dead and one wounded British soldier.
One of the most important results
of Europe's colonization of Africa was the division of Africa into at least
fifty nation-states. Rather than being a part of a society determined by common
language and livelihood, Africans lived according to political boundaries.
The divisions often split ethnic groups, leading to tension and sometimes
violence. The cohesiveness of the traditional society was gone.
Nigerian
Independence
British colonial rule
in Nigeria lasted only fifty-seven years, from 1903 to 1960. Although
Nigerians had long called for self-rule, it was not until the end of World War
II that England began heeding these calls. The Richards Constitution of 1946
was the first attempt to grant some native rule by bringing the diverse peoples
of Nigeria under one representative government. The three regions
(northern, southern and western) were brought under the administration of one legislative
council composed of twenty-eight Nigerians and seventeen British officers.
Regional councils, however, guaranteed some independence from the national
council and forged a link between local authorities, such as tribal chiefs, and
the national government. There were three major tribes (the Hausa, the Yoruba
and the Igbo) and more than eight smaller ones living in Nigeria. This
diversity complicated the creation of a unified Nigeria. Between 1946 and 1960
the country went through several different constitutions, each one attempting
to balance power between the regional and the national bodies of government.
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria
attained full status as a sovereign state and a member of the British
Commonwealth. But under the Constitution of 1960 the Queen of England was still
the head of state. She remained the commander- in-chief of Nigeria's armed
forces, and the Nigerian navy operated as part of Britain's Royal Navy.
Nigerians felt frustrated by the implication that they were the subjects of a
monarch living over 4,000 miles away. In 1963, five years after the publication
of Achebe's novel, a new constitution would replace the British monarch with a
Nigerian president as head of state in Nigeria.
Literary
Traditions
Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart just
before Nigeria received its independence. He intended the book for audiences
outside Africa; he wanted to paint a true picture of precolonial Africa for
those people who had no direct knowledge of traditional African societies. As a
result of the Nigerians' acquisition of independence, the Nigerian educational
system sought to encourage a national pride through the study of Nigerian
heritage. The educational system required Achebe's book in high schools
throughout the English-speaking countries in Africa. The book was well
received. Chinua Achebe has been recognized as "the most original African
novelist writing in English," according to Charles Larson in The
Emergence of African Fiction. Critics throughout the world have praised Things
Fall Apart as the first African English-language classic.
Themes
THE STRUGGLE
BETWEEN CHANGE AND TRADITION
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. The tension about whether change
should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal
status. Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders
because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly
if he consents to join or even tolerate them. To some extent, Okonkwo’s
resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal
status. His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by
which society judges him. This system of evaluating the self inspires many of
the clan’s outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find
in the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place
them below everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a more
elevated status.
The villagers in general are
caught between resisting and embracing change and they face the dilemma of
trying to determine how best to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the
villagers are excited about the new opportunities and techniques that the
missionaries bring. This European influence, however, threatens to extinguish
the need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting,
building, and cooking. These traditional methods, once crucial for survival,
are now, to varying degrees, dispensable. Throughout the novel, Achebe shows
how dependent such traditions are upon storytelling and language and thus how
quickly the abandonment of the Igbo language for English could lead to the
eradication of these traditions.
VARYING
INTERPRETATIONS OF MASCULINITY
Okonkwo’s relationship with his
late father shapes much of his violent and ambitious demeanor. He wants to rise
above his father’s legacy of spendthrift, indolent behavior, which he views as
weak and therefore effeminate. This association is inherent in the clan’s
language—the narrator mentions that the word for a man who has not taken any of
the expensive, prestige-indicating titles is agbala, which also means
“woman.” But, for the most part, Okonkwo’s idea of manliness is not the clan’s.
He associates masculinity with aggression and feels that anger is the only
emotion that he should display. For this reason, he frequently beats his wives,
even threatening to kill them from time to time. We are told that he does not
think about things, and we see him act rashly and impetuously. Yet others who
are in no way effeminate do not behave in this way. Obierika, unlike Okonkwo,
“was a man who thought about things.” Whereas Obierika refuses to accompany the
men on the trip to kill Ikemefuna, Okonkwo not only volunteers to join the
party that will execute his surrogate son but also violently stabs him with his
machete simply because he is afraid of appearing weak.
Okonkwo’s seven-year exile from
his village only reinforces his notion that men are stronger than women. While
in exile, he lives among the kinsmen of his motherland but resents the period
in its entirety. The exile is his opportunity to get in touch with his feminine
side and to acknowledge his maternal ancestors, but he keeps reminding himself
that his maternal kinsmen are not as warlike and fierce as he remembers the
villagers of Umuofia to be. He faults them for their preference of negotiation,
compliance, and avoidance over anger and bloodshed. In Okonkwo’s understanding,
his uncle Uchendu exemplifies this pacifist (and therefore somewhat effeminate)
mode.
LANGUAGE AS A SIGN
OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE
Language is an important theme
in Things Fall Apart on several levels. In demonstrating the
imaginative, often formal language of the Igbo, Achebe emphasizes that Africa
is not the silent or incomprehensible continent that books such as Heart
of Darknessmade it out to be. Rather, by peppering the novel with Igbo
words, Achebe shows that the Igbo language is too complex for direct
translation into English. Similarly, Igbo culture cannot be understood within
the framework of European colonialist values. Achebe also points out that
Africa has many different languages: the villagers of Umuofia, for
example, make fun of Mr. Brown’s translator because his language is
slightly different from their own.
On a macroscopic level, it is
extremely significant that Achebe chose to write Things Fall Apart in
English—he clearly intended it to be read by the West at least as much, if not
more, than by his fellow Nigerians. His goal was to critique and emend the
portrait of Africa that was painted by so many writers of the colonial period.
Doing so required the use of English, the language of those colonial writers.
Through his inclusion of proverbs, folktales, and songs translated from the
Igbo language, Achebe managed to capture and convey the rhythms, structures,
cadences, and beauty of the Igbo language.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
CHI
The concept of chi is
discussed at various points throughout the novel and is important to our
understanding of Okonkwo as a tragic hero. The chi is an individual’s
personal god, whose merit is determined by the individual’s good fortune or
lack thereof. Along the lines of this interpretation, one can explain Okonkwo’s
tragic fate as the result of a problematic chi—a thought that occurs to
Okonkwo at several points in the novel. For the clan believes, as the narrator
tells us in Chapter 14, a “man could not rise beyond the destiny of
his chi.” But there is another understanding of chi that
conflicts with this definition. In Chapter 4, the narrator relates, according
to an Igbo proverb, that “when a man says yes his chi says yes also.”
According to this understanding, individuals will their own destinies. Thus,
depending upon our interpretation of chi, Okonkwo seems either more
or less responsible for his own tragic death. Okonkwo himself shifts between
these poles: when things are going well for him, he perceives himself as master
and maker of his own destiny; when things go badly, however, he automatically
disavows responsibility and asks why he should be so ill-fated.
ANIMAL IMAGERY
In their descriptions,
categorizations, and explanations of human behavior and wisdom, the Igbo often
use animal anecdotes to naturalize their rituals and beliefs. The presence of
animals in their folklore reflects the environment in which they live—not yet
“modernized” by European influence. Though the colonizers, for the most part,
view the Igbo’s understanding of the world as rudimentary, the Igbo perceive
these animal stories, such as the account of how the tortoise’s shell came to
be bumpy, as logical explanations of natural phenomena. Another important
animal image is the figure of the sacred python. Enoch’s alleged killing and
eating of the python symbolizes the transition to a new form of spirituality
and a new religious order. Enoch’s disrespect of the python clashes with the
Igbo’s reverence for it, epitomizing the incompatibility of colonialist and
indigenous values.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters,
figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
LOCUSTS
Achebe depicts the locusts that
descend upon the village in highly allegorical terms that prefigure the arrival
of the white settlers, who will feast on and exploit the resources of the Igbo.
The fact that the Igbo eat these locusts highlights how innocuous they take
them to be. Similarly, those who convert to Christianity fail to realize the
damage that the culture of the colonizer does to the culture of the colonized.
The language that Achebe uses to
describe the locusts indicates their symbolic status. The repetition of words
like “settled” and “every” emphasizes the suddenly ubiquitous presence of these
insects and hints at the way in which the arrival of the white settlers takes
the Igbo off guard. Furthermore, the locusts are so heavy they break the tree
branches, which symbolizes the fracturing of Igbo traditions and culture under
the onslaught of colonialism and white settlement. Perhaps the most explicit
clue that the locusts symbolize the colonists is Obierika’s comment in Chapter
15: “the Oracle . . . said that other white men were on their way. They were
locusts. . . .”
FIRE
Okonkwo is associated with
burning, fire, and flame throughout the novel, alluding to his intense and
dangerous anger the only emotion that he allows himself to display. Yet the
problem with fire, as Okonkwo acknowledges in Chapters 17 and 24, is that it
destroys everything it consumes. Okonkwo is both physically destructive he
kills Ikemefuna and Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s son emotionally destructive he
suppresses his fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma in favor of a
colder, more masculine aura. Just as fire feeds on itself until all that is
left is a pile of ash, Okonkwo eventually succumbs to his intense rage, allowing
it to rule his actions until it destroys him.
THANK
YOU...
No comments:
Post a Comment