Things Fall Apart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Title** **Things Fall Apart**
Original cover art by Uche Okeke reproduced in a later edition.
Author	Chinua Achebe
Country	Nigeria
Language	English
Publisher
Released	1958
Media type	Print

For other uses, see Things Fall Apart (disambiguation).

Things Fall Apart is a 1958 English-language novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and widely read and studied in English speaking countries around the world. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first African novels written in English to receive global critical acclaim.

The novel concerns the life of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion throughout the nine villages of the Igbo ethnic group of Umuofia in Nigeria, Africa, his three wives, his children (mainly concerning his oldest son Nwoye and his favorite daughter Ezinma), and the influences of British colonialism and Christian missionaries on his traditional Igbo (archaically spelled "Ibo") community during an unspecified time in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

1 Literary analysis and history
2 Notes
3 External links

[edit] Literary analysis and history

[edit] Literary history

Things Fall Apart is a milestone in African literature. It has achieved the status of the archetypal modern African novel in English^[1], is read in Nigeria and the rest of Africa where it is a staple in schools^[1]; it is read and studied widely in Europe and North America where hundreds of articles and scores of major studies have been written about it^[1]; in India and Australia it is probably the most famous African novel^[1]. It annually sells more than a million copies^{[citation needed]} and is by far Achebe's most famous and award-winning work.

It was followed by two sequels, No Longer at Ease (1960, originally written as the second part of a larger work together with Things Fall Apart), and The Arrow of God (1964), both featuring the descendants of Okonkwo and the problems they face under colonialism. In addition, Achebe states that his two later novels, A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987), while not featuring Okonkwo's descendants and indeed set in completely fictional African countries, are spiritual successors to the previous novels in chronicling African history.

[edit] Title origins

The title of the book comes from a poem, "The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats, and is quoted in the frontpiece of the book:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" in the belief that Christianity was coming to an end after two thousand years of dominance. Yeats believed history turned in cycles, and whatever was to follow, whatever "..rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born" - the new cycle would be at odds with the old Christian ideas.^[1] For Yeats the cycle of history was coming to an end, the world was old. For Achebe, the age of his traditional tribal culture was old and coming to an end, but Christianity was the new world .^[1]

[edit] Perspective

Things Fall Apart is written in third-person omniscient; the reader experiences the novel through an outside narrator. This way, the reader is able to not only see all that is happening, but the thoughts and motives of different characters as well. This allows dramatic irony to occur. The perspective of the novel was appropriate because of the language barrier; Achebe has peppered pieces of the Igbo language throughout the book (with an appropriate glossary for the terms at the back of the novel) proving that it is too complex for a complete English translation. By having a third-person narrator, it allows the reader to understand what is going on at all times. Things Fall Apart has relatively limited dialogue, because the language is so different from English; in order to understand the whole plot the reader must know what the characters are thinking and their motives.

[edit] References to history

The events of the novel unfold around the turn of the 20th century.^[1]

The majority of the story takes place in the fictional village of Umuofia, located west of the actual Onitsha, on the east bank of the Niger River in Nigeria.^[1]. The culture depicted was similar to where Achebe was born in Ogidi, where Ibo-speaking people lived together in groups of independent villages ruled over by "senior men" who had "taken titles". The customs described in the novel mirror closely those of the actual Onitsha people who lived nearby Ogidi and with whom Achebe was familiar.

When the British arrived in the first decades of the 20th century to "pacify" the region, they often practiced many of the brutal techniques described in the novel. As with the massacre at Abame, entire communities would be attacked and slaughtered in reprisals for offenses. Sometimes village elders would be invited to a meeting and then taken hostage or killed, just as happened to the village senior men in the novel. The British would appoint Africans from other parts of the country to carry out orders, known as kotma (an Ibo corruption of the English "court messenger"), who would, as described in the novel, abuse their position for personal gain.

Within forty years of the British arrival, by the time Achebe was born in 1930, the missionaries were well established. Achebe's father was among the first to be converted in Ogidi, around the turn of the century. Achebe himself was an orphan, so it can safely be said the character of Nwoye, who joins the church because of a conflict with his father, is not meant to represent the author.^[1] Achebe was raised by his grandfather, who was one of the last to take all three Ibo titles. His grandfather, far from opposed to Achebe's conversion to Christianity, allowed Achebe's Christian marriage to be celebrated in his compound.^[1]