According to Mahbuba, S. (2019), Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was born in Eastern Nigeria as Albert Chinualumogu. Achebe’s childhood is notable because his father was a converted Christian but his other family members used to follow traditional African Igbo religion.
Chinua Achebe’s novel on colonialism Things Fall Apart (1958) Known as the magnum opus of African Literature, this novel revolves around the life of a brave, courageous, Igbo soldier called Okonkwo in pre-colonial Nigeria of 1850s. Because of his lazy father Unoka, he has not inherited any wealth and it is through sheer hard work that he has gained status in Umuofia. He acts extra brave as deep in his heart resides the fear that he will resemble his lazy father. Umuofian Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna, a boy given by the Mbaino villagers to him as a peace settlement for the killing of one woman of Umuofia. He commits this killing to prove his manliness. This causes his rift with his son Nwoye who is Ikemefuna’s best friend. Nwoye becomes upset with his father and the killing of twin children and thus he later converts to Christianity. Colonizers begin to convert Igbo people into Christians by giving those jobs and gifts. They wipe out the entire village of Abame when the latter kills one of their men. Crisis in Okonkwo’s life occurs as British administration and missionaries begins to tear apart the Igbo customs. To diminish the foothold of the proselytizing Christians who support the killing of sacred python, Okonkwo and five leaders of Umuofia burn a church. As a result, they are whipped, starved and arrested by the British force craftily. At the denouement, Okonkwo kills one of the messengers of the colonizers and when no Igbo members support his decision, he takes his own life. Although Igbo religion looks down upon suicide which contaminates the earth, Okonkwo prefers to die rather than being hanged by the trials of the colonizers. In a way the downfall of Okonkwo symbolizes the downfall of the Igbo society as there is no one now to protest against the colonizers. The novel ends when the District Commissioner decides to write a book on the Africans though he has no knowledge of the African society, culture, tradition, language, Literature and law. It explores the encounter between the British colonizer and the African colonized in 1850s. This book has been examined from postcolonial perspective by various critics.
Achebe’s primary purpose of writing the novel is because he wants to educate his readers about the value of his culture as an African. Things Fall Apart provides readers with an insight of Igbo society right before the white missionaries’ invasion on their land. The invasion of the colonising force threatens to change almost every aspect of Igbo society; from religion, traditional gender roles and relations, family structure to trade. (Lame, M.)
According to Mahbubul, A. (2014), in Things Fall Apart before the advent of the colonial power the people of Umuofia lived in communal agreement in an organic society of economic, cultural, political, familial and religious stability. But colonial rule turns the social stability into instability and disintegration. The title of the novel itself signifies this claim- things are no longer in order; colonialism has made them disordered. Okonkwo symbolizes the essence of Umuofia; the suicide of Okonkwo, which is also a colonial effect, signifies the suicide of Umuofia’s essence.
Colonialism makes ‘extraordinary possibilities’ of the indigenous people ‘wiped out’. Okonkwo stands for that extraordinary possibility which is wiped out through his suicide. Okonkwo symbolizes that ‘mighty voices’ which Cesaire claims is ‘stilled forever’ by the colonial power. According to Mahbuba, S. (2019), Achebe thinks that the colonized people are not primitive. When I turn to Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, I noticed a representation of the African democratic society. All Umuofia villagers are asked to gather during a village meeting when one of their village women is killed by one Mbaino man. The elders of the village talk about this problem in front of all the villagers. That means that law and order of this society is not partial as well as corrupted. What is more, Achebe focuses on the community feeling prevalent within the Igbo society. Prior to colonialism in Igbo land we see that people performed various cultural issues without anxiety. But colonialism comes and imposes restrictions on those performances. Colonialism makes the Igbo ‘drained of’ their ‘essence’. Igbo is a society that also appears to be sceptical about change. They refuse to send their children to school where they stand a chance to be able to read and write in the English language. Despite Mr Brown’s efforts to show the villagers that they need to learn English because they are now being ruled by the District Commissioner and other white missionaries who only communicate in English, the villagers still remain reluctant in educating their children. The Igbo depend on their language to differentiate them from other cultures. They also depend on language to define their social rank in their society. Furthermore, the judiciary is impartial here and all accept the code of law. We can find also here that Okonkwo accepts the decision of the clan. He begs his wife Ojiugo to return to him after he has beaten her as per the decision of the elders. Okonkwo also accepts the punishment for beating his wife during the sacred week. This manifests that law is not biased and it remains equal for all. Frantz, F. (2001), upholds the thesis that decolonization which means the replacing of a certain species of men by another species of men is always a violent phenomenon. Fanon wants colonized people to fight for their lands as violence is the only one way to decolonize themselves from the colonizers. When the Abame villagers attempt to kill one white man, it leads to the wiping out of their entire village by the Europeans. When Okonkwo senses that the British have brought abomination in their clan by fragmenting their religion and it has converted his own son Nwoye into Christianity, he is ready to go to war against them.
I find Okonkwo as the sole rebellious Igbo voice. Fear has been instilled inside other Umuofian members in such a way that they cannot gather courage to fight their oppressors. They become ‘‘Phobogenic object’’ or afraid of the British who overpowered their leaders in jail. Okonkwo kills himself as he does not want to die in the hands of the colonizers. He refuses to be a mimic man. Okonkwo’s tale is written like an epic as he succeeds by hard work with the help of his clan members from his poverty-stricken family. He is also the sole voice of protest against the colonizers. In a nutshell, Okonkwo is an epic hero.
In conclusion, Fanon refutes the colonial gaze and Achebe exhibits in Things Fall Apart the false Eurocentric beliefs of the District Commissioner, the missionaries and other British colonizers. It’s successfully shown that the colonized people are not primitive and savages as per the false notion of the Whites. It concludes that the colonial gaze does not give identity to Africans. Achebe also admires the pre-colonial African past. Okonkwo commits suicide as he does not want to imitate colonizers and be a subservient mimic man. All-inclusive, it correctly delineates the colonial mistreatment of the colonized and we find a fictional representation of Fanon’s ideas in Achebe’s novel. The aim of Things Fall Apart is to explore the imperfections of Igbo culture as well as its strengths. Although Achebe presents these imperfections to readers that also contribute to the destruction of their culture; the main reason for the fall of the Igbo was caused by their inability and reluctance to learn English because they believed that they will never have to apply its usage in their everyday lives.
REFERENCES
Fanon, Frantz. (2001). The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New Delhi: Penguin Books
Lame, M. (n.d.) Things Fall Apart: An Analysis of Pre and Post-Colonial Igbo Society. Retrieved from: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:648320/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Mahbuba, S. (2019). The Colonized Fall Apart: A Postcolonial Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in Light of Frantz Fanon. Retrieved from: https://green.edu.bd/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/The-Colonized-Fall-Apart_A-Postcolonial-Analysis-of-Chinua-Achebe%E2%80%99s-Things-Fall-Apart-in-Light-of-Frantz-Fanon.pdf
Mahbubul, A. (2014). Reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart from the Postcolonial Perspective. Retrieved from: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234673991.pdf
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