Things Fall Apart

♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣

Ibo tribe leader Okonkwo is known in his clan of Umuofia as a ruthless warrior. His fame is brought about by one of his historic fights as the local wrestling champion, etching his strength and skill into the psyche of his tribesmen. Coming from nothing due to a deadbeat father, Okonkwo strives tirelessly and manages to establish a reputable life of his own, with a yam farm, three wives, and several children to succeed him. When an unfortunate incident tarnishes his honor, he and his family are forced to flee back to his motherland as dictated by local customs. There, they remain in exile for seven years, everybody yearning for the life they had back in Umuofia. Once they are done serving their sentence, Okonkwo aims for a big comeback, but his fatherland is no longer the home he left now that it has been subjected to the colonial rule of white men.

I hate this book. The first half is focused on tribal society and all the primitive practices, most of them morally questionable, usually excused and tolerated as “culture”. The misogyny of the protagonist is simply off the charts, but then again he is just a product of the society that molded him. The second half shifts the focus on the advent of African colonization, the arrival of the “civilized” west to impart the undying love and admiration of our one and only savior Jesus Christ, as a guise to pillage whatever unfortunate “uncivilized” land they end up in. Like, seriously? I’d rather have a root canal than choose sides here.

And then I realized that I don't hate this book that much. Africa, for me, has always been an inaccessible continent I only hear about through indirect sources. Even traveling there is hard due to visa restrictions and restrictive airfare prices. In terms of history, most of the colonized parts of the world that end up in the curricula I’ve followed were Asian. I mean, we have no lack of colonial history here. As such, any literature coming out of Africa and could serve as a sort of introduction to the continent is welcome in my library. Things Fall Apart was required postcolonial reading in an English class in college. And so I decided to reread, and be enlightened. Enlightening it is indeed.

Since I have an aversion towards cultures that tolerate murder and harm using religion as an excuse, Part I of the novel was not enjoyable to read, albeit necessary to establish Okonkwo’s origins. The guy is your old school macho chauvinist who settles score through violence. Part II came as a relief because we get to witness the guy’s downfall. Time for some humility, hooray! Part III was my personal favorite because that’s when Things Fall Apart. What you witness is the slow creep of the colonizers by virtue of religion. What follows is an avalanche of defection and adapting to a new norm so strange, it feels like the end of the world.

Achebe’s prose is simple and direct to the point, peppered with local terms that color the narrative with its undeniably African roots. In the end, I still am not convinced and admit that I am no fan of the book, but there is no denying that this should be required reading to anyone interested to dabble in African colonial history. Most stories we're exposed to are from the point of view of the colonizer. They are the winners, they write their own version of history favorable to them. This is why writers like Achebe are important, because they show you the other side of the story, from the point of view of the colonized. Two sides of the same coin.

Apparently, Achebe wrote two more novels that form a trilogy, with this book serving as the first part. It suddenly got me curious. While I didn’t find a character I could relate to or root for, I’ve become invested in the bigger picture and would happily read a continuation, not to Okonkwo’s story, but that of the country. What happened when the colonizers were already in place? Will one of the two sequels tackle what liberation was like post-independence? Of course, any history book could tell you all this, but a humanist veneer from the perspective of a local navigating the new sociopolitical environment is a more appealing reading material.