A selection of interesting observations about the end of Things Fall Apart and short story week. For a complete list of blog posts, click here:
- CafeMilatte suggests that "The Hunger Artist" is perhaps nothing more than Franz Kafka's rather emo autobiographical story.
- After reading "The Guest", peacefreak77 wonders about the nature of existence, karma, and the epiphanies. I think the story worked.
- Tiaphaneee offers a parable that has shaped her view of reality
- Gramsci offers the argument that multiculturalism is an insufficient justification for abandoning ethical norms.
- Shay wonders about the nature of art after his reading of "The Hunger Artist."
- Ben wonders if identity isn't usually just becoming what other people want you to be.
- katieg explores the nature of free will and existentialism.
- Kelsey examines the episode at Liberty Paints, but finds the symbolism a little obvious.
- Crazydream explores the idea of the disposessed.
- delack writes about other forms of discrimination that are occuring in schools.
From Solomon Iyasere’s Understanding Things Fall Apart: Selected Essays and Criticism:
Okonkwo is in fact almost always literally beyond words; he can only articulate rage, aggression and contempt, which limits both his understanding and experience and makes him impervious to Unoka’s gentle loving wisdom. His inarticulacy causes Nwoye’s alienation from the tribe and prevents Okonkwo’s enjoyment of feasts, where the main pleasure lies in conversation: “He was always uncomfortable sitting around for days waiting for a feast or getting over it” (p. 27). His lack of gentleness towards his sons contains the seeds of his own destruction; his harshness to them contrasts painfully with Unoka’s gentle words to him about the yam harvest:
Sometimes Okonkwo gave them a few yams each to prepare. But he always found fault with their effort, and he said so with much threatening. . . . Inwardly Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to understand fully the difficult art of preparing seed-yams. But he thought that one could not begin too early. Yam stood for manliness. (p. 23)
The final painful irony of the comparison between Okonkwo and his father is that, though they are totally dissimilar and Okonkwo despises his father, their ultimate fate is the same. Unoka “died of the swelling which was an abomination to the earth goddess” (p. 13) and so he had no burial but was left to die in the Evil Forest, pathetically tootling on his flute. Though the manner of Okonkwo’s death is quite different, a villager tells the District Commissioner, “‘It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offence against the Earth”‘ (p. 147). Again the reader is left to speculate about the link: have both characters a bad chi or personal god, which means they are fated to meet a disastrous end, or are they morally responsible for what happens to them? Both are inflexible, Okonkwo in conforming too rigorously to tribal conceptions of manliness and Unoka in refusing to conform at all.
Initially, it’s worth noting that every time I read Things Fall Apart, I am reminded how much I enjoy it. It’s a deceptively simple book, and in between readings, I find myself forgetting how much Achebe accomplishes with his stylistic approach. Solomon Iyasere seems to feel the same way, noting:
The artistry of Things Fall Apart lies mainly in concealment of its art; it appears to be what Angus Wilson called it in his Observer review, “Mr. Achebe’s very simple but excellent novel.” Its deceptive simplicity emerges clearly when it is compared with Achebe’s other novel about village life, Arrow of God. The structure, plot, language and narrative technique of Things Fall Apart combine to entertain the reader and lead her towards an overwhelming question which then proliferates in her mind into a series of related questions: was Okonkwo right to kill the messenger as he tried to rouse the lost coherence of the tribe; were there the seeds of disintegration within the tribe or were the whites responsible; is the “civilized” tolerance of men like Obierika destructive; did Okonkwo seal his own fate when he killed Ikemefuna and if he had not done so could it have made a difference to the fate of the tribe? The book tantalizes the reader with implicit questions rather like the teasing question of whether the witches’ prophecy leads Macbeth to kill Duncan thus fulfilling the prophecy. Arrow of God tells a similar story but without similar effects, and without the beautiful simplicity of Things Fall Apart.
One of the questions that I always confront in my reading is whether or not the novel is a tragedy. Certainly, Okonkwo is an elevated character–renowned in his village for his work ethic and prowess as a warrior. At the same, though, he seems almost comical in his absurd (more than his cultural values) sexism, his hyperbolic anger, and his inability to bend. When the novel culminates with his death, I always feel a sense of shock and sorrow, despite his often terrible nature.
C.L. Innes argues that the novel is not a tragedy, suggesting that Okonkwo does not have the stature of characters like Nwoye or Obierka:
For tragedy implies the working out in men’s lives of a rigorous fatality that transcends the individual’s ability to comprehend or to arrest its pre-ordained course of events. . . . His accidental killing of a villager and his subsequent exile from Umuofia are the workings of a blind fate crossing his path to his own conception of self-realisation. . . . For Okonkwo’s inflexibility, his tragic flaw, is a reflection of his society.
I’m not sure I can agree. While Okonkwo’s downfall is certainly a reflection of his culture, it seems that it is more than blind fate that leads to his downfall. His pride, his anger, and his inflexibility, which to some extent are all necessary, are his tragic flaws, and at the same time, things that I cannot help but admire.
Perhaps Iyasere, again, says it best:
As a careful reading of Things Fall Apart reveals, one of Achebe’s great achievements is his ability to keep alive our sympathy for Okonkwo despite our moral revulsion from some of his violent, inhuman acts. With Obierika, we condemn him for participating in the killing of the innocent boy, Ikemefuna. We despise him for denying his son, Nwoye, love, understanding, and compassion. And we join the village elders in disapproving Okonkwo’s uncompromisingly rigid attitude toward unsuccessful, effeminate men such as his father, Unoka, or Usugo. Yet we share with the narrator a sustained sympathy for him. We do not simply identify with him, nor defend his actions, nor admire him as an heroic individual. We do give him our innermost sympathies because we know from his reactions to his own violence that deep within him he is not a cruel man. It is this contrasting, dualistic view of Okonkwo that the narrator consistently presents. On the one hand, we see Okonkwo participating in the brutal killing of Ikemefuna, his “son,” but on the other, we see him brooding over this violent deed for three full days. In another instance, we see him dispassionately castigating his fragile, loving daughter, Ezinma, and deeply regretting that she is not a boy, while on another occasion we see him struggling all night to save her from iba or returning again and again to the cave to protect her from harm at the hands of Chielo, priestess of Agbala.
Damian Opata sees Okonkwo as a victim:
Okonkwo’s killing of Ikemefuna is instinctive. No time was left for him to consider his actions. In other words, his killing of Ikemefuna was not premeditated. The immediate circumstances under which he had to kill Ikernefuna seem to have been forced on him by capricious fate, he was not in control of the situation. Rather, the situation was controlling him and we should not apply the principles of morality to a situation in which he was inexorably led by uncanny fate.
David Carroll argues that Okonkwo is just heartless:
This incident is not only a comment on Okonkwo’s heartlessness. It criticizes implicitly the laws he is too literally implementing. . . . As we watch him [ Ikemefuna] being taken unsuspectingly on his apparently innocent journey, the whole tribe and its values is [sic] being judged and found wanting. For the first time in the novel, we occupy the point of view of an outsider, a victim, and from this position the community appears cruel.
Yikes, trikes. A difficult question.
Some additional thoughts about Things Fall Apart to discuss, comment on, or at least consider:
- Despite widespread hostility in the class towards Okonkwo, Tiphani finds someone to love.
- Granolagod questions the way that societies construct reality through their rituals and beliefs.
- Peacefreak77 examines the loss of culture present in colonial thinking, as well as the sexism of Okonkwo.
- Gonephishin wonders why Okonkwo is so mean.
- Quixotic is reminded why he enjoys the novel and wonders about Okonkwo, offers a passage comparing Okonkwo to his father, and looks at Ikemefuna's death.
