Things Fall Apart in

THINGS FALL APART IN AN ALIENATED
HISTORY: AN ASSESSMENT OF
ACHEBE’S FICTIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Dr. K. Damodar Rao &
K. Indrasena Reddy

While Achebe’s first four novels appeared in a fairly quick pace of less than a decade between 1958 and 1966, his latest novel, Ant hills of the Savannah¹ took more than two decades to see the light of the day finally in 1987. Things Fall Apart ² portrays authentically the fabric of African life as lived by the Ibos of the Eastern Nigeria at the fag end of 19th century before the advent of colonialism. Ant hills of the Savannah takes for its fictional locale, Kangan, a ward West African State and mirrors the political scenario of the present times (last leg of 20th Century). The other three novels -- Arrow of God ³ (1964), No Longer At Ease ⁴ (1960) and A man of the people ⁵ (1966) deal with the crucial and uneasy intermediate stages in African history. These novels unfold the events of colonial, pre-independent and early neo-colonial phases. Thus, Achebe surveys and examines the history ofAfrica of the past one hundred years critically and objectively through his fiction. In the process of delienation of such a vast historical ground, Achebe dons the roles of an anthropologist, historian, teacher, critic, “sociologist of literature,” humanist, visionary and above all the conscience-­keeper of his people.

The early colonial administration of Things Fall Apart attempted to bring about “The pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger” ⁶ through the spiritual police and brute force and by resorting to intimidation and liquidation of the hostile elements. The indigenous rule in the neo-colonial times by the native black bosses - either in civilian robes or military garbs -- seeks to silence and stifle every conceivable form of dissent and protest by means of “domestication,”⁷ and ruthless extermination so as to make the people docile and pliable. The modus operandi and the net result of both “pacification” and “domestication” are not very dissimilar. The situation, thus, has taken a full circle with a sort of cul­de-sac either way. Achebe is fully alive to this sordid scenario of Africa since the rise of colonialism. The issues with which he is concerned in his fiction are: Has the history of Africa an ill-chartered and disastrous course? How is it that it has an “embitterd and alienated history” ⁸ This paper addresses itself to these issues and seeks to evaluate and examine the diverse fictional perspectives and strategies of Achebe:

Things Fall Apart, according to Achebe himself, has two principal motifs to rectify the savage image of the African as propagated by the racist writers like Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and others, and to recreate the African history in terms of its myths, rituals, traditions, folk-lore, legends, etc., Yet another important motif of the novel is the use of “the written word brought by the colonizers in order to record and recreate the oral word obliterated or denied by them.”⁹ It is a society known for its communal harmony, work-ethic and egalitarian values. However, it is not free from certain superstitious beliefs; for instance, the abandoning of the twins in the Evil Forest, the ‘Osu’ system based on social inequalities and human sacrifice to appease the local deities.

Okonkwo, the archaic protagonist of the novel, is patriotic, hard-working, action-oriented, and strong-willed. But he is also obstinate, inflexible and fails to read the writings on the wall. He often wonders why his people “lost the power to fight.”¹⁰ Obierika, his friend, tries to explain to him how the white man has divided the rank and file of the natives. He says:

            The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. ¹¹

Okonkwo seems to have understood the sad logic of this. But he cannot bring himself to accept the unacceptable proposition. Instead, he chooses to fight “alone” for what he believes in. Very soon he realizes that his action in killing the white man’s messenger cannot be endorsed by his clansmen, let alone any follow-up action on their part. Rather than allow himself to be handed over to the alien administration for execution, he chooses the inevitable course of suicide. Thus, the old order and decadent values represented by him suffer a serious set and face disintegration.

It is not without significance that Achebe chooses “Things Fall Apart” for the title of his first novel. Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming.” from which the title is taken appeared in 1919, two years after the October Revolution in Soviet Russia marking the transition from the Christian era to the establishment of Communism as a form of government in Europe. On the same lines, the message of the novel is that “the centre fails to hold” and “the falcon cannot hear the falconer.” The result things drift and fall apart. Thus, the old order represented by Okonkwo disintegrates paving the way for colonialism in Africa.

Arrow of God Ezeulu of the later times (1920s) is the immediate fictional heir to Okonkwo. As the Chief Priest of the village deity, Ulu, he also acts as the friend, philosopher, guide and guardian of his community. He is in a position to read the meaning of the writings on the wall of the changed times. Unlike most of his clansmen, he knows that the white man has come, not as a visitor but with the intention to stay and select among them. Keeping this in view, he s ends one of his sons to the white man’s school wanting the latter to be his “third eye” to see beyond what others cannot hope to. He is also forthright and courageous enough to depose before the white man against the misplaced collective; decision of the community in respect of a land dispute. Little does he realize, unfortunately, that by such actions he might alienate himself from the community besides walking into the trap of his rival, Nwaka and his henchmen.

While Okonkwo is emotional and a “man of action,”¹² Ezeulu is cool, composed and contemplative. He is a man of thought and often plays his cards very close to his chest. He keeps his friends and foes guessing about his moves. He remains a mystery even to his most intimate friend, Akuebe. His sense of concern and commitment to his people coupled with his open defiance against the colonial administration land him in trouble. Like his predecessor, Okonkwo, he also gets imprisoned, and humiliated. Probably, he expected his clansmen to rise in rebellion against colonial administration for his incarceration. When this does not happen, he nurses a grievance against his community and chooses to strike at it at a time of his choice as the “arrow of god”. In the fashion of Okonkwo again, he fails to take the community with him. What he does not realize, despite his vision and foresight, is that “no man however great can win judgment against a clan” ¹³. Achebe seems to emphasise that against the African ground, it is the community which takes precedence over the individual unlike in Europe.

Ezeulu misses two new moons due to his incarceration at Okperi, the Government headquarters. home following his release from prison, he is greeted with a scornful smile by more than one yam meant for his ritual consumption. Neither can he eat all the yams at once nor can he declare the New Yam Festival enabling the clansmen to undertake the operations of harvest. Consequently, people find themselves locked up in the old year itself, and begin to face untold sufferings. The alien religion steps in at this stage, and “offers absolution from the wrath of Ulu to those who hring thank offerings to Christ,...”¹⁴ The expendable deity Ulu           is overthrown and abandoned. But, mercifully, the Chief Priest is spared “the knowledge of the final outcome” ¹⁵ in his “demented” state. As an “arrow of his god,” he chooses to strike at his own community for its lapses, indifference and complacency in the context of the fast spreading colonial virus. The community takes the whippings of its custodian deity, but chooses to seek shelter at the shrine of the alien God for its own reasons.

Thus, the fates of the emotional, archaic and obstinate Okonkwo and the shrewd, composed and thoughtful Ezeulu are not dissimilar. This precisely is the cursed course of the history of Africa.

No Longer At Ease While Things Fall Apart is an insider’s account of Africa before the advent of colonialism, Arrow of God examines the issues arising out of cultural confrontation in the context of colonialism. No Longer At Ease explains the uneasy phenomenon experienced by the Magi in the Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi” from which the title of the novel is extracted. The novel depicts the Nigerian scenario of the 50s,”...a world which is the result of the intermingling of Europe and Africa......” ¹⁶

Obi Okonkwo, the protagonist, is the fictional grandson of Okonkwo. He is a product of biculturalism. He is “no longer at ease” either with the indigenous decadent system of ‘Osu’, the arranged marriages and the like nor is he any comfortable in his position as the top civil bureaucrat being unable to maintain the high standards of living expected of him. His zeal to reform his society of “Augean stable,” his intention to marry Clara, an Osu girl, in the teeth of opposition from his community and home, his mother in particular, the growing financial burdens and pressures begin to tell upon his sensibility. The sensitive and oscillating Obi is puzzled and dazed under the cumulative pressure of all this. Life, under these circumstances, Obi imagines, is like a “bowl of worn wood which one sips a little at a time world without end.” ¹⁷ and likens it to a “ tragedy” and observes:

... “Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly for ever, conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot.” ¹⁸ Obi does not know, how he can go about to translate his ideas into actions, particularly in respect of his proposed marriage. He is very indecisive and vascillating. Clara feels humiliated after the termination of her pregnancy at his instance and severs her connections with him for good. It is followed by the rather unexpected death of his mother to whom he is sentimentally and emotionally attached. He is unnerved and shattered by these two incidents. He becomes insensible to what he does later on. He accepts a small bribe and faces a trial for the same. The colonial judge “cannot comprehend how a young man of his education, brilliance and promise could have done this.” ¹⁹ However, Mr. Green, the colonial administrator attributes this to the very nature of the African and comments: “The African is corrupt through and through.” ²⁰ The sad tale of Obi is due to his cultural alienation.

A Man of the people is a satire on the deplorable political scene immediately after the Nigerian independence in 1960. Within no time, the country becomes “a cesspool of corruption.” Chief Nanga; the protagonist of the novel, is “a corrupt, uncultured minister of culture in a corrupt regime.” ²¹

The characters taken to task and held to ridicule in this novel are not Smiths, Clerks, Winterbottoms or Greens of the earlier novels, but the native black bosses themselves. The Minister’s residence is a “princely seven bathroom mansion with its seven gleaming, silent action water closets in a country where the majority of the peasants and workers live in shacks and can afford only pails of excrement...” ²² Thus, Achebe’s fictional cavalcade has traversed a long way - from “goat-skin bags,” “drinking horns,” make-shift hut ­dwellings of Things Fall Apart to princely mansions, water closets and luxury buses.

In such a situation, people very soon realize that the practising politicians have taken a greater share of the “national cake” than they need and deserve and that they have started reaping where they have not sown. But they remain silent spectators to the nauseating political drama. Sensing the mood of the people, elections are sought to be rigged by thugs and hirelings of the vested interests to suit the multi­nationals and European commercial interests. Unprecedented and large ­scale violence unleashed on the country before and immediately after the election, results in the abrupt termination of the civilian rule in an armed coup d’ etat. Most critics and reviewers of A Man of the People hailed the novel as a “prophetic” work since it appeared just “nine days after the first military coup in Nigeria.” ²³ Bernth Lindfors’ interpretation of this coup in terms of “an African parable” rather than as a “Nigerian Prophecy” has a greater relevance and validity in the larger context of the neo-colonial African scenario.

While the first three novels of Achebe deal with the rise and fall of the patriotic, the towering, and the idealist protagonists, A Man of the people is an indictment of the degenerate political leadership, complicity of the masses and a debased value system eating into the vitals of the body politic.

While A Man of the people is an indictment of the nauseating civilian rule, Anthills of the Savannah is a sad commentary on the grotesque and the gory power game of the military juntas. Obviously, there is not much to choose between the two. The novel marks a radical departure from his earlier ones in terms of historical ground, cultural context, thematic framework, stylistic devices, innovative narratology and multiple-protagonism. The story of Kangan, a ward West-African State, the fictional locale of the novel, is the story of three, intimate but “conceited” friends -- Sam (His Excellency), Christopher Oriko (the Minister for Information) and Ikem Osidi (the editor of the National Gazette). They are intellectual and highly educated. Beatrice, a spinster, is a highly-placed Bureaucrat and holds an Honours Degree in English Literature from the London University. She is dynamic, full of vigour and vitality. She is shrewd, sensitive and sentimental and influences the lives of Sam, Chris and Ikem immensely. Even His Excellency looks upon her as “the last hope of the country.” ²⁴

As the novel progresses and concludes, all the three friends fall like “three green bottles.” Sam, His Excellency is kidnapped, killed and the dead body abandoned in the bush without the state or even a private funeral. Ikem’s murder is engineered and executed by the State. Chris gets killed under totally unanticipated circumstances while rescuing a young girl from being raped by a cop in uniform. This, then is the sad tale of the disastrous, cursed, “embittered and alienated history” of Africa.

All the novels of Achebe, thus delineate authentically the sordid predicament of Africa since the early colonial times to the post-independence era. But, in the first three novels, both the black and white dramatis personae act sometimes independently, and at times interact with each other producing interesting and varying effects in terms of race relations, cultural diversities and class prejudices. These novels, in a way, project perspective which seeks to blame the missionaries, the colonial and power apparatus for all the problems and miseries heaped on Africa. In this process, the local characters emerge as innocent, and helpless creatures winning our sympathy.

The post-colonial novels -- A Man of the people and Anthills of the Savannah present a totally different perspective as the dramatis personae here are mostly black bosses. In these novels, Achebe directs his ire and fire against both the civilian regimes and army juntas. There is hardly anything to choose between the two as both represent evil in varying degrees. The callous and anti-people attitude of the rulers reinforce the idea that Africa has a cursed, “alienated and embittered” history. These rulers are like protruding pimples on a beautiful face comparable to ugly anthills on the marvellous stretches of savannah.

NOTES

¹ Achebe, Chinua. Ant Hills of the Savannah (Landon: Wonian Heinemann 1987)
² Things Fall apart. (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1958 rpt,. New Dehi: Allied publishers, 1988) All further page references are to the latter edition.
³ Arrow of God. (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1964; revised and reprinted in African Writers Series, 1980).
⁴ No Longer At Ease (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1960; African Writers Series edition., 1978).
⁵ A Man of the people. (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1966; rpt. African Writers Series edition, 1981).
⁶ Things Fall Apart, P. 197.
⁷ Anthills of the Savannah, P. 40.
⁸ Ibid., P.220
⁹ Innes, C. L. “Language, Poetry and Doctrine in Things Fall Apart”, Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (eds.) C. L. Innes & Bernth Lindfors, (Washington D. C.: Three Continents Press, 1978) P. 124.
¹⁰ Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart, P.159.
¹¹ Ibid., P. 160.
¹² Ibid., P. 62
¹³ Achebe, Chinua. Arrow of God, P. 181
¹⁴ Robert M. Wren, “Mister Johnson and the complexity of Arrow of God”, Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe (eds.) C. L. Inriers & Bernth Lindfers, op.cit., P .213
¹⁵ Achebe, Chinua, Arrow of God, P. 229.
¹⁶ Carroll, David. Chinua Achebe. (London: The Macmillan press Ltd., 1980), P.62.
¹⁷ Achebe, Chinua, No Longer At Ease, P. 36.
¹⁸ Ibid., P. 36.
¹⁹ Ibid., P.2.
²⁰ Ibid., P. 3.
²¹ Ngugi Wa Thiong to “Chinua Achebe: A Man of the people” Critical perspectives on Chinua Achebe, Op.cit., P:2280.
²² Ibid.
²³ Lindfors, Bernth. “Achebe’s African Parable”, Critical Perspectives on Chinua Achebe, op.
Cit., P. 248.
²⁴ Achebe, Chinua. Anthills of the Savannah, P.73.