Why Did “Things Fall Apart”? Remembering The Greatest Nigerian Story Ever Told

Growing up in Nigeria was one funny quiet business. Quiet because while in company of your elders, or seniors…or grownups, you really had to put a firmly shut zipper on your mouth. Or risk getting a beatdown. A regular beatdown. Oh your boundless energy, all the ceaseless bursts of rambunctious delight and your thirst for adventure gets to be stifled with a shout, or a mean stare. If you rebelled firmly against your distressing lack of freedom of expression you are labelled a stubborn child. And a difficult one. Being difficult attracted a penalty which ranged from the evil ‘pick pin’ command, to the more lenghty kneel down. But we kids, masters of natural improvisation, always found a way to let it out. Since home denied us fulfilment, we found solace in school. School playgrounds were our Mecca. A place of play, worship, and fights. We loved our break time and our break time loved us. But then all good things had to end. So off we’ll go to our classes, heartbroken and disastisfied (we were insatiable imps), when the bell called us back in. Shouting and reliving our playground episodes, a loud tap on a desk announces a teacher, our teacher, who’ll come in with a mean authoritative stare, a menacing cane, and a book called Things Fall Apart.

A man for all seasons…Late Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart

Crafted by a late legend of unqualifiable literary powers, Chinua Achebe, the book Things Fall Apart went on to be a world-renowned classic. Competing favourably with the works of stellar legends such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Sir Ryder Haggard, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Wole Soyinka, Leo Tolstoy and other great word-soldiers. Only the beautiful crafts of William Shakespeare was head and shoulders above Achebe’s goodness. Things Fall Apart has been translated into 50 languages, making Achebe the most translated African writer of all time. Things Fall Apart fed us fat with not just entertainment and hardwork, it was a portal to Nigeria’s precolonial soul. And you bet, 20 years has gone past since I last stared at those words, and felt poignant nostalgia rear its emotional head in my heart, but hey! The writer in me still lives and a great analysis of the book will do just fine.
Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice. Before we start, let’s get the Epigraph into our system.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
– W.B Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Initial Situation

Okonkwo’s a big fish in town.

Okonkwo is widely known and respected as a wealthy farmer, a man of titles with three wives, and a fearless warrior.

Conflict

Okonkwo’s terrified of being feminine and commits a couple crimes. Oops!

Okonkwo lives in fear of becoming like his father who Okonkwo sees as being effeminate and weak. Okonkwo even joins in the group murder of his adoptive son, Ikemefuna, out of fear of seeming weak and cowardly. His behavior causes him huge internal guilt and also alienates him from his son, Nwoye.
Even though Okonkwo doesn’t get into any kind of trouble for helping to murder Ikemefuna (since he wasn’t a member of the clan), he’s in hot water when he accidentally kills a boy during a funeral. Since killing a clansman means exile for seven years, Okonkwo has to leave town along with Mrs. Okonkwo, Mrs. Okonkwo, Mrs. Okonkwo, and the kids.

Okonkwo: Hero, Villain…and Hero

Complication

White men show up in town, pushing Christianity and the Queen of England on the Igbo.

As if Okonkwo doesn’t have enough on his plate, the white Christian missionaries show up, start converting villagers, and force the English system of government on the Igbo people. Essentially the white men are destroying the clan’s unity. Even Okonkwo’s oldest son joins the Christians. Now Okonkwo is faced with enemies of a different kind – not simply fear of himself or his sons becoming womanly, but the potential that his whole tribe will be impotent and not fight the white men.

Climax

Okonkwo gets fed up and kills one of the white government officials.

Okonkwo exercises his long-repressed desire to physically lash out at the missionaries. In an expression of his masculinity, he hacks off a court messenger’s head. When none of the other villagers back him up, Okonkwo realizes that his clansmen will never go to war against the white men.

Suspense

The white District Commissioner comes to make Okonkwo pay for his crime.

Okonkwo has clearly committed a serious crime. The District Commissioner heads to Okonkwo’s house to retaliate. It’s unclear what Okonkwo will do.

Denouement

Okonkwo commits suicide by hanging himself.

The District Commissioner shows up only to find that Okonkwo has killed himself. Obierika accuses the District Commissioner of forcing a great man to kill and dishonor himself, but he does get the District Commissioner to agree to bury Okonkwo

Conclusion

The white men win.

The District Commissioner walks away from Okonkwo’s body and thinks of the suicide as strange and intriguing material for the book he’s writing, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. In the end, the District Commissioner might write a paragraph on Okonkwo.
Why Did Things Fall Apart?
The white men won, but they had to win. For with their victory, came civilisation and improved standards of living. The general notion of the white colonial heroes are that of resource exploitation, but that was the price we had to pay for their gifts of modernization. Why did Okonkwo’s things fall apart? Because if they hadn’t, change would never had taken a root. That was why things fell apart, that was why Chinua Achebe’s centre could not hold