Things Fall Apart

 I read Chinua Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart, when I was 15 or 16.   I believe it was assigned in my 10th grade English class, though it might have been 11th grade.   I was attending an international school in Switzerland, run on mostly British lines with reference to O and A Levels, though an International Baccalaureate degree was also available.

I don't remember much of the plot detail of the book, just my ongoing feeling of "NO!  NO! Just... don't!" as the protagonist made mistake after mistake that even a 15 or 16 year old could see wasn't going to turn out well for anyone.    I have never had the heart to pick up the book again, though now I think perhaps I should.. perhaps for Lent?

The reason that the book has stuck with me, besides that its title refers to an endlessly evocative Yeats poem which I only heard of later, is that I was living in parallel with its storyline, and I realized it dimly at the time, and it horrified me.  It still horrifies me sometimes.

Last night, when I was thinking about this post, I went and read about the plotline of the book, to refresh my memory.    First of all, a side note -- you can't find much online about this book that isn't basically a lit study guide for students or teachers.   I find that a bit sad for a book that is thought to be one of the greatest ever written.  But Wikipedia is a help if you want to find just a regular informational summary of the book.  

Briefly Okonkwo, the protagonist, sounds to me now 40 years later as a kind of anti-Abraham.   He rejects his father's way of life, his gentleness and weakness,  and defines himself as the opposite -- strong and active.  Through the course of the novel his defiant negation, expressed in terms of solidarity with tradition,  works itself out in losing both his sons -- his foster son, whom he sacrifices because of the demand of the village oracle, and later, his biological son, who rejects his way of life and his abuse, and becomes a Christian.

The backdrop is the changing of the village from traditional religion and culture to the white man's religion and culture.    So Okonkwo, though a person in his own right and not a paradigm of African culture, can be seen as being possibly the worst, full of passionate intensity, and the best, lacking all conviction, in that he is unable to bear fruit in the changing context, and in fact commits suicide at the end of the book.     There is possibly just a hint of redemption in the way the story plays out, in that his daughter, who is most like him and supports his efforts, lives on and so does his son, as a Christian.   It's left ambiguous, as probably is realistic to Nigeria's history, what side of him can or will live on.  

When I was 15 or 16, I missed most of the ways this story reflects classic Western themes as King Lear style tragedy, Biblical patriarchal narratives, Ecclesiastes, and perhaps even antique tragedies like Agamemnon.  

What I saw was the unraveling of a life; I didn't just see it, I participated in it, partly because of the power of the depiction and also, I realize now, because I knew dimly that my own life was similarly unravelling, or could unravel in the long run.   So beyond all the differences -- Okonkwo a virile and dominating middle aged man from early-colonial Nigeria, myself a shy bookish teenage girl from Alaska transplanted to a diplomatic school near Geneva -- I felt the commonalities enormously.

We were both being demolished in a series of events and situations by what we had thought of as our best traits and principles, as they played out in a context where "things fall apart".    

So yeah, the book deeply frightened me and in a way provided me with a cautionary and finally, a way out.   And if you come across this and disagree (or agree) with my interpretation of the book, let me know.