Rebecca Martinez
Mrs. Bosch
Honors English 10
8 August 2007
Things Fall Apart
Most cultural people are proud of their family, heritage, memories, language, and lives. They respect it and stand up for it. They take joy in being who they are and try to stay close to their background as the rest of the world changes around them. A person similar to this would be Chinua Achebe. Through his book Things Fall Apart, you can see that he valued his heritage. Even though he wasn’t born in the 1800’s he still saw some of the effects of the evangelical missionaries compared to the traditional Igbo culture that he was taught by his parents who were teachers in a missionary school. His story tells of a wealthy titled man, in the Igbo society, who is living the good life until he accidentally kills a clansman and is banished for seven years. After the seven years are up everything has changed in his village and now it is becoming over run with the white man’s religion and laws. Okonkwo cannot conform to the changes and the stripping of his culture and hangs himself. This novel truly shows the authors pride in family, heritage, memory, language, and lives.
Chinua Achebe shows pride in family throughout the novel by showing the relationships between family members. In the book when ever there was an engagement, a wedding, a death, or banishment the family always came together or at least some of them. One family consisted of a father, children, and many wives depending on how wealthy one was. So one can just imagine how big their weddings, funeral, and engagements would be. “The daughters of the family were all there, some of them having come a long way from their homes in distant villages…The daughters of Uchendu’s brothers were also there. It was a full gathering of umuada, in the same way as they would meet if a death occurred in the family. There were twenty-two of them.” (131-132). For this occasion it was the final ceremony of a marriage. Some of those women traveled a long way just to be back for the ceremony so they could be there with their family. Twenty-two doesn’t sound like a lot but it depends on how many brothers Uchendu had, what age they were, how wealthy they were, and how many others there would have been if some of them had not died when they were young. Sometimes the village even seemed like a family. At the death of Ezeudu, the village band together and gave him a warrior’s funeral. “Ezeudu was a great man, and so all the clan was at his funeral. The ancient drums of death beat, guns and cannon were fired, and men dashed about in frenzy, cutting down every tree or animal they saw, jumping over walls and dancing on the roof. It was a warrior’s funeral, and from morning till night warriors came and went in their age groups.” (121). “The wailing of women would not be heard beyond the village, but the ekwe carried the news to all the nine villages and even beyond.” (120). It seems a little award and maybe a little savage but it was warrior like for them and they all joined in. And even when the white man came with his religion and lead others astray they became a little like a family. So you can see through out the book the family is always present and you can see that Achebe takes pride in family.
Chinua shows his pride in heritage by just simply writing this book. It tells of a changing community, going from the traditional Igbo ways to being integrated with Christians and the effects of the new religion. Okonkwo’s son Nwoye joins the Christians and turns his back on his family and his old beliefs and for that his family disowns him. “You have all seen the great abomination of your brother. Now he is no longer my son or your brother. I will only have a son who is a man, who will hold his head up among my people. If any one of you prefers to be a woman, let him follow Nwoye now while I am alive so that I can curse him. If you turn against me when I am dead I will visit you and break your neck.” (172). Partially why Okonkwo threatened his sons like this was to discourage them from joining and also he was thinking if all of his children were to join this new religion once he was died, there would be no one to burn incense for him or his ancestors. No body would care about him or the other family members who died before him. Forsaking one’s father’s religion for another was an abomination. “To abandon the gods of one’s father and go about with a lot of effeminate men…was the very depth of abomination.” (152-153). In this book he illustrates a lot about heritage and the severity to abandon and forsake ones heritage. Even though his parents were teachers in a missionary school he did not abandon his heritage.
Things Fall Apart shows that he takes pride in memory and wants other to remember their past, their ancestors, their heritage, and learn from the mistakes that their ancestors made so that they won’t be repeated. I think in honor of his heritage, his people, and his ancestors he wrote Things Fall Apart. He looked back and wanted to remind others about the past and the things that some of their relatives had to go through. It is evident by just reading the book. It’s about his people in the 1800’s and the things they had to go through and the mistakes they made. One mistake that was made in the book was taking light of a warning that was given. “Abame has been wiped out…It is a strange and terrible story…During the last planting season a white man had appeared in their clan…The elders consulted their Oracle and told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread destruction among them…It said that other white men were on their way…And so they killed him.” (138-139). Later on two more white men came, saw the “iron horse” the white man had been riding, and then left. Later on those two white men came back with other men and shot all the people that were in the market. “They had been warned that danger was ahead. They should have armed themselves with their guns and their machetes even when they went to market.” (140). That is just one example of a mistake that people could look back at and learn from it if they would just remember their ancestors and value memory.
Through writing Things Fall Apart, it shows that Chinua takes pride in his language. Throughout the book there are Igbo words and definitions for those words in the back. In having those words inserted in there it keeps the book and the culture more real. They wouldn’t be speaking English, they’d be speaking Igbo. Having those words in there illustrates and preserves history and it shows his desire for it to be remembered and carried on. The first time in the book that they use Igbo words is on the second page of the story and they are just talking about a masquerader who impersonates an ancestral spirit. “Sometimes another village would ask Unoka’s band and their dancing egwugwu to come and stay with them and teach them their tunes.” (4). Some of the words that are put in the book are just words that they might use in every day language. Putting those words into the book help the reader to picture how their life was a little better, even though a lot of the words and names are some what hard to pronounce. He shows his pride in language just by simply inserting those words and not making everything totally English and giving more to the story.
One can tell that lives are important to Achebe because of how he portrays them and their importance. In the book, it is an abomination against the earth to take one’s life which Okonkwo ends up doing in the end. “It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it.” (207). It is also wrong to take the life of a fellow clansman. “It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman, and a man who committed it must flee from the land.” (124). It made it difficult once the white man came in and started converting people and giving them power because the others could no longer try to drive them out with out killing their clansman which they could not do. Mutilation to an ogbanje baby was okay though because it was suppose to discourage it from reentering its mother’s womb and then dieing again at a young age. So it was for life that mutilation was done. It doesn’t sound very pleasant and rather savage but they believed it to help get rid of the evil spirit. So you can see that he did value lives and think they were important.
If everyone were a little like Chinua Achebe and took pride and knew the importance of family, heritage, memory, language, and lives the world would be better for everyone to live in. Chinua’s book is very informational about the ways of the Igbo people and their society but it also tells the story and life of man living in those times and the changes that he, his family, and the nine villages had to go through. Things Fall Apart is actually quite a simple book but the customs are so stark and different from those of us that live in America in these times than we are so used to. Chinua Achebe did a really good job on his book and although it has a lot of things that we might now consider savage like, it did have some worth will qualities and messages in it. Will Achebe be writing anymore stories that let us in this century take a peek back in time anymore, now that he is getting along in his years?





















Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor Books, 1959.
Petri Liukkonen. “Chinua Achebe (1930-) – in full Albert Chinualumogu Achebe.”
2002. 11 August 2007. < http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/achebe.htm>.