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Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe
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Language/Country/Date Written/Published
English/Nigeria/1957/1958

Terms to know

colonialism    The establishment by more developed countries of formal political authority over areas of Asia, Africa, Australasia, and Latin America. It is distinct from spheres of influence, indirect forms of control, semi-colonialism , and neo-colonialism .

Colonialism was practised by Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands in the Americas from the fifteenth century onwards, and extended to virtually all of Asia and Africa during the 19th century. It was usually (but not necessarily) accompanied by the settling of White populations in these territories, the exploitation of local economic resources for metropolitan use, and sometimes both together. The term is often used as a synonym for imperialism although the latter covers other informal mechanisms of control.

In addition to debates about the causes, benefits, and impact of imperialism, discussion of colonialism has covered a wide range of issues including: the different mechanisms of colonial control and the contrast between the assimilationist policies of France and Portugal and the more segregated policies of Britain; the social and economic impact on colonized countries, resulting from the destruction of old social, economic, and political systems and the development of new ones; the 19th-century discourse of domination around the idea of the ‘civilizing mission' and the related rise of racism; the issue of why colonialism ended in the post-1945 period, involving a consideration of the relative weights of international pressure from both the United States and USSR, the rise of nationalist movements demanding independence in colonies, and the exhaustion of the European colonial powers after the Second World War.

"colonialism"   A Dictionary of Sociology. Ed. John Scott and Gordon Marshall. Oxford University Press 2009. Oxford Reference Online. Web.  6 December 2009.

Imperialism Domination of one people or state by another. Imperialism can be economic, cultural, political or religious. From the 16th century, trading empires were set up by major European powers such as the British, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch. They penetrated Africa, Asia and N America, their colonies serving as a source of raw materials and a market for manufactured goods. Imperialism often imposed alien cultures on native societies. See also colonialism

"imperialism"   World Encyclopedia. Philip's, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Web.  6 December 2009.

tragedy    A serious play (or, by extension, a novel) representing the disastrous downfall of a central character, the protagonist . In some ancient Greek tragedies such as the Eumenides of Aeschylus, a happy ending was possible, provided that the subject was mythological and the treatment dignified, but the more usual conclusion, involving the protagonist's death, has become the defining feature in later uses of the term. From the works of the Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, the philosopher Aristotle arrived at the most influential definition of tragedy in his Poetics (4th century BCE): the imitation of an action that is serious and complete, achieving a catharsis (‘purification’) through incidents arousing pity and terror. Aristotle also observed that the protagonist is led into a fatal calamity by a hamartia (‘error’) which often takes the form of hubris (excessive pride leading to divine retribution or nemesis ). The tragic effect usually depends on our awareness of admirable qualities—manifest or potential—in the protagonist, which are wasted terribly in the fated disaster. The most painfully tragic plays, like Shakespeare's King Lear, display a disproportion in scale between the protagonist's initial error and the overwhelming destruction with which it is punished. English tragedy of Shakespeare's time was not based directly on Greek examples, but drew instead upon the more rhetorical Roman precedent of Senecan tragedy (see also revenge tragedy ). Shakespearean tragedy thus shows an ‘irregular’ construction in the variety of its scenes and characters, whereas classical French tragedy of the 17th century is modelled more closely on Aristotle's observations, notably in its observance of the unities of time, place, and action.

Until the beginning of the 18th century, tragedies were written in verse, and usually dealt with the fortunes of royal families or other political leaders. Modern tragic drama, however, normally combines the socially inferior protagonist of domestic tragedy with the use of prose, as in the plays of Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller . Some novels, like Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano (1947), and some novellas like Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome (1911) can be described as tragedies, since they describe the downfall of a central character. For an introductory account, consult Adrian Poole , Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction (2005).

"tragedy."  The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Ed. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Web.  4 December 2010.

post‐colonial literature,   consists of a body of writing emanating from Europe's former colonies which addresses questions of history, identity, ethnicity, gender, and language. The term should be used loosely and hesitantly, for it is replete with contradictions and conundrums. What, for instance, is the difference, if any, between imperialism and colonialism? Were not the forms of colonial rule and the processes of decolonization too varied to admit of a single definition? Is the literature of the USA to be included in such a body? Why does the once favoured term ‘Commonwealth literature’ no longer seem appropriate? Is it that it contains too many implied assumptions of a multicultural community in which each country is working towards a sense of shared enterprise and common purpose? Did empire end with Indian independence in 1947, or in 1956 with Suez, or perhaps when the Bahamas were granted their independence, as late as 1973? Such questions notwithstanding, the term ‘post‐colonial literature’ is to date the most convenient way of embracing the powerful and diverse body of literary responses to the challenges presented by decolonization and the transitions to independence and post‐independence in a wide variety of political and cultural contexts.

Criticism of empire and imperial practices originated among the colonists themselves. Recusants such as Bartolomé de las Casas and the Dominican Antonio Montesinos were busy challenging the savage practices which were to depopulate vast swathes of the Caribbean of their indigenous inhabitants. When in 1511 Montesinos asked whether the Indians were not themselves men, his intervention was greeted by the almost unanimous demand from his fellow colonists that he be forced to recant and be repatriated to Spain. Out of this first colonial encounter was born an argument which has continued to be rehearsed right up to the present day. The dispute has been conducted around the contrast between natural and artificial societies: on one side, Montaigne argued that primitive peoples were more virtuous by reason of their uncorrupted existence in nature. On the other side, the social achievement of art and its superiority over nature was stressed.

Click for rest of essay

"post‐colonial literature."  The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford university Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Web.  4 December 2010.

Chi in Igbo cosmology

by Chinua Achebe

There are two clearly distinct meanings of the word chi in Igbo. The first is often translated as god, guardian angel, personal spirit, soul, spirit-double etc. the second meaning is day or daylight but it most commonly used for those transitional periods between day and night or night and day. Thus we speak of chi ofufo meaning daybreak and chi ojiji, nightfall. We also have the word mgbachi for that most potent hour of noon that splits the day in two, a time favoured in folklore by itinerant spirits and feared by children.

I am chiefly concerned here with the first meaning of chi, a concept so central in Igbo psychology and yet so elusive and enigmatic. The great variety of words and phrases which has been put forward at different times by different people as translations of this concept attests to its great complexity and lends additional force to the famous plea of Dr. J. B. Danquah that we pay one another’s gods the compliment of calling them by their proper name.

In a general way we may visualize a person’s chi as his other identity in spiritland – his spirit being complementing his terrestrial human being; for nothing can stand alone, there must always be another thing standing beside it.

Without an understanding of the nature of chi one could not begin to make sense of the Igbo world-view; and yet no study of it exists that could even be called preliminary. What I am attempting here is not to fill that gap but to draw attention to it in a manner appropriate to one whose primary love is literature and not religion, philosophy or linguistics. I will not even touch upon such tantalizing speculations as what happens to a person’s chi when the person dies, and its shrine is destroyed. Does it retreat completely back to it old home? And finally what happens at the man’s reincarnation?

But before we embark on a consideration of the nature and implication of this concept which is so powerful in Igbo religion and thought let us examine briefly what connection there may be between it and the other meaning of chi. For a long time I was convinced that there couldn’t possibly be any relationship between chi (spirit being) and chi (daylight) except as two words that just happened to sound alike. But one day I stumbled on the very important information that among the Igbo of Akwa a man who arrived at the point in his life when he needs to set up a shrine to his chi will invite a priest to perform a ritual of bringing down the spirit from the face of the sun at daybreak. Thereafter it is represented physically in the man’s compound until the day of his death when the shrine must be destroyed.

The implication of this is that a person’s chi normally resides with the sun, bringer of daylight, or at least passes through it to visit the world. Which itself may have an even profounder implication for it is well known in Igbo cosmology that the Supreme Deity, Chukwu Himself, is in close communion with the sun. But more on that later. Since Igbo people did not construct a rigid and closely argued system of thought to explain the universe and the place of man in it, preferring the metaphor of myth and poetry, anyone seeking an insight into their world must seek it along their own way. Some of these ways are folks-tales, proverbs, proper names, rituals and festivals. There is of course the ‘scientific’ way as well – the tape-recorded interview with old people. Unfortunately it is often more impressive than useful. The old people who have the information we seek will not often bare their hearts to any passer-by. They will give answers, and true answers too. But there is truth and there is truth. To get to the inner truth will often require more time than the recording interviewer can give – it may require a whole lifetime. In any case no one talks naturally into a strange box of tricks!

It is important to stress what I said earlier: the central place in Igbo thought of the notion of duality. Wherever Something stands, Something Else will stand beside it. Nothing is absolute. I am the truth, the way and the life would be called blasphemous or simply absurd for is it not well known that a man may worship Ogwugwu to perfection and yet be killed by Udo? The world in which we live has its double and counterpart in the realm of spirits. A man lives here and his chi there. Indeed the human being is only one half (and the weaker half at that) of a person. There is a complementary spirit being, chi. (The word spirit though useful does create serious problems of its own, however, for it is used to describe many different orders to non-human being.) Thus the abode of chi may be confused with ani mmo where the dead who encounter no obstacles in their passage go to live. But ani mmo is thought to be not above like the realm of chi, but below, inside the earth. Considerable confusion and obscurity darken the picture at this point because there is a sense in which the two supernatural worlds are both seen as parallel to the land of the living. In an early anthropogical study of the Igbo Major A. G. Leonard at the opening of this century reported the following account from one of his Igbo informants:

We Ibo look forward to the next world as being much the same as this… We picture life there to be exactly as it is in this world. The ground there is just the same as it is here, the earth is similar. There are forests and hills and valleys with rivers flowing and roads leading from one town to another . . . People in spiritland have their ordinary occupations, the farmer his farm.

This ‘spiritland’ where dead ancestors recreate a life comparable to their earthly existence is not only parallel to the human world but is also similar and physically contiguous with it for there is constant coming and going between them in the endless traffic of life, death and reincarnation. The masked spirits who often grace human rituals and ceremonies with their presence are representative visitors from this underworld and are said to emerge from their subterranean home through ant-holes. At least that is the story as told to the uninitiated. To those who know, however, the masked ‘spirits’ are only symbolic ancestors. But this knowledge does not in any way diminish their validity or the awesomeness of their presence.

For more see https://youngafrikanpioneers.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/chi-in-igbo-cosmology/

Questions to mull over as you interpret the story

Title:  Things Fall Apart – how does this connect to the poem by Yeats.  Why use a poem by one of the whitest of dead white male writers for a novel about Africa?  Very important – clash of cultures – see 190-91 v. 194.  Igbo recognize there are many cultures – the whites only recognize one. – Very timely message.

"The Second Coming"
By William Butler Yeats (1919)

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,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
The darkness drops again; but now I know  
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I reprint the questions on post colonial literature here: Adapted from Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

1. How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression? Special attention is often given to those areas where political and cultural oppression overlap, as it does, for example, in the colonizers’ control of language, communication, and knowledge in colonized countries.
2. What does the text reveal about the problematics of postcolonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
3. What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?  For example, what does the text suggest about the ideological, political, social, economic, or psychological forces that promote or inhibit resistance?  How does the text suggest that resistance can be achieved and sustained by an individual or a group?
4. What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference – the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity – in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?  “Othering” might be one area of analysis here.
5. How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work? 
6. Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different postcolonial populations?  One might compare, for example, the literatures of native peoples from different countries whose land was invaded by colonizers, the literatures of white settler colonies in different countries, or the literatures of different populations in the African diaspora.  Or one might compare literary works from all three of these categories in order to investigate, for example, if the experience of colonization creates some common elements of cultural identity that outweigh differences in race and nationality.
7. How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology through its representation of colonization and/or its inappropriate silence about colonized peoples?  Does the text teach us anything about colonialist or anticolonialist ideology through its illustration of any of the post colonial concepts we’ve discussed?  (A text does not have to treat the subject of colonization in order to do this).

•              Why do "things fall apart"?  Is it only the arrival of the colonials?

Ibo Culture

From Frederick Lugard's Report on the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria, 1912-19 "The Southern Provinces were [mostly] populated by tribes in the lowest stage of primitive savagery, without any central organisation. . . . A great part of the North, on the other hand, had come under the influence of Islam, and . . . had an elaborate administrative machinery" (qtd. in Izevbaye 46)

• What is the Ibo society like in part 1?  Point to some examples.  What is the society like in part 2?  Point to some examples and discuss why it changed and how.  What is the society like in part 3? Again, point to specific examples of the change and discuss why
• What is the emphasis on in pre-colonial Ibo society, the group or the individual?  Point to three examples to back up your point.  Now explain how this compares or contrasts with the society after colonization.
• What could the Ibo concept of chi resemble in Western culture?
• Now a larger question – how do we learn about this culture?  Does the narrator describe the events in a documentary fashion?  How would you describe the narrator’s voice? Why use does Achebe use this voice – knowing that his audience was primarily western?
• What differences b/t colonial and native culture does Achebe make? Consider, for example, what westerners call a "plauge of locusts" How do the Ibo feel about it, and what does this feeling represent? ****Umuofia means "childern or descendants of the bush/wilderness" (Izevbaye 48)
• Achebe "wanted to show that `Afridan people did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; that their societes were not mindless but frequent had a philsophy of great depth anf value and beaut, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity'" (qtd. in Gikandi 28)
• (10) hint of sex; 21,
• Point to some examples of Ibo's agressively masculine culture.  Is Achebe defending this?
• Does Achebe defend all aspects of Ibo culture?  What about the outcasts, or the practice of casting twins aside? or the treatment of women (42, 172)
• "Like the antagoinsm that Okonkwo feels toward his father, and that Nwoye feels even more storngly twoard Okonkwo, teh osu (outcasts) represent a weakness, a subtle flwa in the structure of the Igbo world -- a flaw that makes it possibel for things to fall apart." (Wren 44)

Language

• Is speech important for the Ibo?  How can you tell? Importance of speech for Ibo (7)  speak in parables: 20, 140 (to explain a point) In an oral culture, speech is how morals and traditions are passed down.
• Parables and fables in the novel: 96 -- the tortise story: what relation does it have to other incidents in the story? --
• Why does Achebe decide to leave words in the orginal Igbo?  What does this say about them?  What kinds of words occur?
  • Contrast with White man: "Does the White man understand our custom about land?" "How can he when he does not even speak our tounge?" (176) **** and note chilling last line of chapter (page 177)
• Who has the last word in this novel? Is it fitting?

Christianity:

• First portrayal of missionaries 144-45.  Presentation of christianity, 144-45 and 180
• Is the presentation of Christianity objective or subjective? Subjective.  146-47 – question from Okonkwo about Jesus and more than one God – and Nwoye described as having a “callow” mind (147).  Moved by song
• “nobody gave serious thought to the stories about the white man’s government or the consequences of killing the Christians” (155) – nothing on killing the indigenous people.
• 179-181 what does this extended discussion aobut religion reveal about Ibo and Christianity?  What does it reveal about Reverend Brown (any symbolism in his name)
• Why does Achebe bring in Reverend Smith -- and what is his special quality: "black was evil" (187)
• Looking at pages 190 and 191, what do the Ibo have that Mr. Smith lacks?  tolerance.  cf. "The World is large.  I have even heard that in some tribes a man's children belong to his wife and her family" (74)

White Men

• First mention of White men is connected to disease (74)  second mention is wiping out Abame (138)

Structure of Novel

• Why divided into three parts?  Why give Obierika the last word in part I 125?  An a different old man at the end of Part II and a white man at the end of Part III? Why not Okwonkwo – who opens each part?

Part I

Establishing Umuofia as a self-sustaining culture

Part II

Exile -- Okonkwo breaks down -- intimations of change

Part III

Church and government

The novel looks backward: many references to the young who no longer follow the traditions

Themes

• Hubris – the danger of too much pride – Page 124 – who does Okonkwo kill by mistake?  Son of Ezeudu. Why is it this person? Ezeudu had warned Okonkwo “That boy calls you father.  Do not bear a hand in his death . . . .  I want you to have nothing to do with it.  He calls you his father” (57). 
• What do connections to you see in the father and son relationships b/t Unoka and Okonkwo and Okonkwo and Nwoye?
• What are the contrasts b/t O. and his father, Unoka? (4) music and fun v. work and practicality -- poverty v. wealth.  O. had "fear of himself, lest he resemble his father" (13);  "ruled by one passion -- to hate everything Unoka had loved" (13)
• O. likes war (8, 10), Unoka likes peace (6) Many father and son Contrasts Ikemefuna/O.  Oberiaka and ____, Patricarchal society

Characters

• How does Okonkwo symbolize Igbo culture?  How is he different?
• Why did he fall? (4)
• Is he a tragic hero?
• What does the opening of the novel stress about Okonkwo?
• Why does a novel "that opens with the celebration of a cultural hero end with such an umprecendented act of transgression?"
• How is Okonkwo's portrait multideminsional?  For instance, does the narrator seem to approve of all of his actions? (consider Ikemefuna's death, the beating of his wife, displays of his temper, etc.)
• O.'s "prosperity was visible in his household" (14)
• Does Okonkwo change in the novel?  Why or why not?  What does his fate suggest?
• Do you identify with OkonkwoDid you sympathize with him?
• describe the conflict b/t Okonkwo and his own people
• Analyze Okonkwo from Nwoye's, Obiericka, etc. p.o.v.
• What about Forshadowing of O’s death? 135, 142,

Other Characters:

• Who are the sympathetic characters in the village?
• Does Unoka deserve the censure from his son? (note that all of his family, Unoka, Okonkwo and Nowye, each break the traditions of the Igbo)
• Anything special about the names chosen by the christian converts?  Consider, for example, Nwoye=Isaac (Son of Abraham, almost sacrificed cf. 151)
• Obierika as voice of reason: he was "a man who thought about things" (125) page 176 -- he will fit in with the new culture -- he is adaptable.
• What's Ikeumofia's purpose in the novel?  28, 34, 56, 61.
• Emphasis on practicality -- what the Ibo "revere" (8)
• 11-12 demi-gods and oracles -- hints of greek tragedy
• Unoka was "carried away to the Evil Forest" to die -- because of a "swelling in the stomach and limbs," he was considered unclean and unworthy of burial -- the swelling was a sign that he had offended the gods (18)
• Change b/t Young and Old: Nwakibie: "our youth have gone soft" (22) -- except for Ok.: 166
• ****ideas on page 73-5  -- contrast with 7 are important -- discuss in class
• Contrasts: the novel sets up Okonkwo as a contrast to several other characters: Oberika, Nyowe, his father, Enchendu??
• What seems to start O's decline?
• What are the causes of Okonkwo's downfall?  Is it only the arrival of the white man?
  I s Okonkwo a typical Umuofian?  Who is? Is his emphasis on the communal or the individual?  What is the emphasis of Umuofia -- and more importantly, point to specific quotes to back up your claims.

  "the narrator deliberate seeks to restore to the African character three elements that are missingin colonial narratives, namely subjectivity, history, and voice" (Gikandi 30)

Art/technique of novel -- narrator

• irony on narrator's part? should Okonkwo be ashamed of his father? (8)
• Why is the narrative told in such a convulted style?  It shifts back and forth in time.
• Central conflicts in the novel: "the contrast between Okonkwo's masculine heroic tradition and the weakness of his times and teh contrast between Umuofia before and after the arriveal of the whithes -- both derive from the impossibility of completely imagining one individual or culture in terms of another" (Nichols 55)  And this goes for both the white and blacks

Umoufia

“Umuofia was feared by all its neighbors.  It was powerful in war and in magic” (11)

Begins being tainted by capitalism 178, 182

Ibo Culture

On the drum beating for wrestling “It was like the pulsation of its heart” (44) 50 as well

The locusts (54) “Soon it covered half the sky, and the solid mass was now broken by tiny eyes of light like shining star dust.  It was a tremendous sight, full of power and beauty” (56)

Or is this Okonkwo “No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man” (53)

Okonkwo “told them [Nwoye and Ikemenfuea] stories of the land – masculine stories of violence and bloodshed” (53)

Old man at party before O returns to Umufumio: “You do not know what it is to speak with one voice” (167).

Religion

“The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors.  There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors.  A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors” (122)

After Enoch unmasks the egwugwu “It seemed as if they very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming – its own death” (187)

Nwoye

“preferred the stories that his mother used to tell . . . stories of the tortise and his wily ways . . .”

Okonkwo

“His whole life was dominated by fear; the fear of failure and weakness . . . . It was the fear of himslef, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (13)

“Okonkwo was ruled by one passion – to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved.  One of those things was gentleness and another was idlenss” (13)

“Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger.  To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worh demonstrating was strength” (28)

“He heard Ikemefuna cry, ‘My father, they have killed me!’ as he ran towards him.  Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down.  He was afraid of being thought weak” (61)

Death of Ezedu’s son

“Okonkwo had committed the female [crime], because it had been inadvertent” (124)

Unoka to Okonkwo after the failure of his first yam crop “A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a filure does not prick its pride.  It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone” (24-25)

Important because it foreshadows what finally brings Okonkwo down.

“Okonkwo could never become as enthusiastic over feasts as most people . . . . he wa always uncomfortable sitting around for days waiting for a feast or getting over it.  He would be very much happier working on his farm” ( 37)

When he hears the drums calling for wrestling matches “He trembled with the desire to conquer and subdue.  It was like the desire for woman” (42). – this, right after he shot at one of his wives for dissing him.

On Nwoye “He [Okonkwo] would stamp out the disquieting signs of laziness which he thought he already saw in him. . . . ‘I would sooner strangle him with my own hands’” (33)

Ikemefuna

“Ikemefuna had begun to feel like a member of Okonkwo’s family” (34)

“Unoka was never happy when it came to wars.  He was in fact a coward and could not bear the sight of blood” (6)

“Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten” (7)

Wise Men

Obierika

“Obierika was a man who thought about things”(125)

Uchendu – Okonkwo’s Uncle – though afflicted with many griefs “I did not hang myself” (135)

After hearing that the people of Abame had killed the white man “Never kill a man who says nothing.  Those men of Abame were fools” (140) – note Okonkwo’s response in contrast – he thinks they should have fought back in the marketplace

Uchendu “There is no story that is not true . . . The world is without end, and what is good among one people is an abominatin with others” (141)

Forshadowing of O’s death

135, 142,

White Men

First mention of White men is connected to disease (74)  second mention is wiping out Abame (138)

Group Questions

Day 1

1. Describing the area populated by the Igbo people, Frederick Lugard's Report on the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria, 1912-19 states that "The Southern Provinces were [mostly] populated by tribes in the lowest stage of primitive savagery, without any central organization" (qtd. in Izevbaye 46). 

Does the novel refute this? Trace the outlines of Igbo culture as it is presented in the novel:  What is their family structure (roles of/attitudes towards women, men, and children); political structure (within town, with other tribes/towns); social structure/relations (rituals, social hierarchy, religion, etc.); economic structure (monetary system/relation, etc.).  Find quotes to support each.

2. A backward glance: in "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'," Achebe accuses Conrad of racism. His main argument is two-fold: he feels that Conrad positions Africa as the Other and that the story exhibits a condescending liberalism towards Africans which he believed "sidestepp[ed] the ultimate question of equality between white people and black people" (175).

   He adds that the "book [. . .] parades in the most vulgar fashion prejudices and insults from which a section of mankind has suffered untold agonies and atrocities in the past and continues to do so in many ways and many places today. I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called into question" (178)

Day 2

1. How is Christianity depicted in the novel? Find quotes to support your label.
2. What causes things to fall apart in the novel? Brainstorm a list, then decide on one from the list and find quotations to support it.
3. Does Achebe depict Igbo culture as an outgrowth of Rousseau’s idea of the “Noble Savage?”  In other words, is the society, as it exists, idyllic?  Find quotes from the text to argue for or against this point. (it might help to think of particular characters for this question).
4. After first deciding on its definition, determine if Okonkwo a tragic hero? Quotes to support your view please.
5. In this novel, whites are “the Other.”  How are they depicted? Pay close attention to language, and, of course, find quotes to support your views.

Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'." Rprt. In Heart of

Darkness. edited by Robert Kimbrough. W. W. Norton & Company, 2009, pp. 169-181..

What the author/critics say

Pictures

For an American perspective on many of the same issues?  Let's have a listen to one of my favorite writers: James Baldwin. From his debate at Cambridge: James Baldwin - Pin Drop Speech.

© 2010 David Bordelon