Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart depicts the late 19th century clash between traditional Igbo culture in Nigeria and European colonialism. Achebe founded a Nigerian literary movement that drew from oral traditions to counter European narratives portraying Africa as primitive. The novel details Igbo customs and institutions before colonization, showing a sophisticated society. It follows Okonkwo, a respected warrior, as Christian missionaries undermine traditions and Igbo culture begins to dissolve. Achebe combines Igbo and Western references to demonstrate the conflict between tradition and imposed change, highlighting colonialism's negative impacts on African civilization.

1. Achebe was among the founders of a Nigerian literary movement in
1950 that drew upon the conventional oral culture of its natives. In
1959, he published “Things Fall Apart” as a reaction to novel, Heart
of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, in which Africa has been painted as a
primitive and cultureless thwart for Europe. Being sick of reading
European’s accounts of how ancient, communally backward and
particularly language-less Africans were, Achebe required to
communicate a complete understanding of one African culture and
hence represents properly an underrepresented and oppressed
colonial focus.
Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s and portrays the conflict
between Nigeria’s colonial administration and the traditional
culture of the Igbo natives. Achebe’s novel shackels the stereotypical
European sketch of local Africans. He carefully portrays the
multifaceted, highly developed social institutions and creative
traditions of Igbo culture before its getting in touch with with
Europeans.
"Things Fall Apart" is mainly about the dissolution of African
ancestral tradition by European colonists. Achebe's description
makes a slight remarks on this theme by joining together western
and non-western language and allusions. The book diverses the Igbo
culture's language, proverbs, family histories and rituals throughout
the story, alongwith it, also has references to John Bunyan's
Christian allegory "Pilgrim's Progress," the Book of Common Prayer
and Biblical teachings. By combining the two cultural heritages,
Achebe demonstrates the battle between tradition and change that
drives Okonkwo's story.
As a story about a culture on the threshold of change, Things Fall
Apart deals with how the viewpoint and reality of change affect

2. various characters. The tension about whether change should be
advantaged over tradition mostly involves personal questions. For
example, Okonkwo resists the new political and religious orders
because he feels that they are not bold and that he himself will not
be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them. To some
extent, Okonkwo’s resistance of cultural change is also due to his
fear of losing social status. His sense of self-esteem is reliant upon
the traditional standards by which society judges him. This system
of evaluating the self inspires many of the clan’s outcasts to clinch
Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value
system a shelter from the Igbo cultural values that place them below
everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a more
prominent status.
The villagers commonly are wedged between resisting and
acceptaning change and they face the problem of trying to establish
how ideal to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the villagers are
energized for the new opportunities and techniques that the
missionaries bring. This European authority, however, threatens to
smother the need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming,
harvesting, building, and cooking. These traditional methods, once
vital for survival, are now surplus to requirements. Throughout the
novel, Achebe shows how reliant such traditions are upon
storytelling and language and thus how quickly the desertion of the
Igbo language for English could lead to the abolition of these
traditions.
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart narrates the collapse of African
culture through the life of a man, whose struggles within his tribe
and against colonial repression, present a picture of pre and post
colonised African society. Achebe attempts to counter the colonial
rendition of Africa by reclaiming its past with its prosperous culture,
which has been denied by the coloniser. Achebe combines
Okonkwo’s personal tragedy with detailed descriptions of the Igbo
tribal culture. This makes the tragedy of the Igbo community a

3. microcosm of the fall of the entire African civilisation as it is
subjected to the ‘civilising mission’ of the coloniser. In depicting how
a community with its own belief systems is uprooted, Achebe
replants it in the history of man that had been written by the
coloniser.
The Eurocentric version of African history denies that the African
continent has a history in the first place. Before the arrival of the
white man, Africa is portrayed as the “dark continent” whose myriad
cultures are reduced to one homogenised “African” culture that is
‘primitive’, ‘savage’, and needing the ‘enlightenment’ of the West.
Therefore not only is there a need to recreate African history but the
need to assert that it has a history in the first place. Achebe counters
the colonial viewpoint by writing in English and in the genre of the
novel. Although language and genre are of the coloniser, Achebe
uses a lexicon and narrative style that ‘Africanises’ the coloniser’s
language. The words of the Igbo lexicon are used instead of their
translations as it is against a simplistic translation of African culture
that the author is arguing. The narrative style is that of an oral
narrative which fulfils Achebe’s dual aim of writing back to the
Empire but also preserving the defining characteristics of African
culture. The fact that African tribes did not have the concept of
writing was exploited by the coloniser as it was easier to deny the
existence of a culture that did not have written record. As Mala
Pandurang observes:
“Ideological imposition in the African context was of a much harsher
nature than
in the Asian colonies because of the predominance of traditions of
oral communication in most indigenous African cultures. The
absence of a written
tradition allowed for the imposition of the coloniser’s language
through the mechanisms of education in English.”
When Achebe writes a book countering Western recording of
African culture in an oral narrative style, he is reasserting the oral
tradition of African culture but also using the written form to claim

4. for African culture a place in the written annals of human history.
The description of Igbo culture is written with the aim to emphasise
its exclusivity and difference from the culture of the coloniser.
Achebe describes in detail various customs of Igbo tribe: wresting
match, wedding rituals, harvest feast, and settling of disputes. The
procedure of settling disputes that involves religious ritual and
communal involvement is strikingly different from the Western
system that the reader is exposed to. The procedure stands out as an
example of how the Igbo culture differs from the West, but at the
same time, how it is a self sufficient culture capable of resolving
tensions as any civilised group. The conscious attempt to show the
self sufficiency and difference of the Igbo tribe is present in all
descriptions of its social events. This is because the coloniser sees
this difference as a shortcoming of the culture. As Edward Said’s
theory of ‘the self and the other’ has established, the West depicts
the ‘otherness’ of the native as a sign of its inferiority. Achebe not
only highlights the ways in which African culture is different, but
also how it neither demonises the Western ‘other’ nor treats it as
inferior. This is illustrated in Uchendu’s reply to Obiereka’s
incredulity on hearing of the white man’s ways of living:
Obierika:
“We have heard stories about white men who made the powerful
guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but
no one thought the stories were true.”
Uchendu:
“There is no story that is not true. The world has no end, and what is
good among one people is an abomination with others.”
In this dialogue Achebe illustrates how Uchendu- a wise, elder
member of the Igbo clan encourages open-mindedness towards
alternative ways of existence. It is interesting how Uchendu does not
pass any judgement on the white man’s overtly brutal actions. It also
shows that Igbo people, who receive news through oral means of
communication, are capable of more tolerance than the white man

5. whose written record is a distortion of events to justify brutality
committed for economic gain. Achebe however does not provide a
romanticised image of pre-colonial Igbo culture. The rigid laws that
govern the Igbo people are marked by a sense of unfair harshness
but are presented to the reader without any authorial judgement.
As Niel Kortenaar argues, even if the laws are too rigid, they
prioritise peace and prosperity of the clan as a whole above
individual interests. This foresight and insistence on peace shows
that the Igbo people are rational beings capable of deliberating on
matters concerning their community. The scenario therefore is
unlike the disorganised chaos that the white man sees in their
different way of dispensing justice. The religious faith of the Igbo
tribe has a stronghold on the laws as a man does not dispute the
Oracle even if it decrees the death of his son. The laws are also
repressive to certain members of the Igbo community called the osu,
whose marginalisation also finds place in the narrative. This may
appear to the reader as a society increasingly superstitious and
falling into the irrational category that the coloniser places it in. The
reader however must question how ‘rational’ Western societies
were, as their laws were also influenced by religion. In fact,
Achebe’s attempt to present a realistic picture of Igbo culture and
not shying away from including the problematic aspects allows him
to connect the problems of pre colonial times to the advent of
colonial rule.
The osu, mothers of twins, and Okonkwo’s rebelling son are the ones
who deflect to Christianity. The loopholes in Igbo cultural fabric are
what tear it apart when it is subjected to the colonial gaze and
manipulation. In avoiding a romanticised past, Achebe achieves a
complexity in describing Igbo culture with its positive and negatives
that are present in all cultures. Such a realist account humanises the
African people as even their difference stresses the sameness they
share with cultures all over the world. As Achebe works with the
genre of the English novel, recreation of Igbo history is
accomplished through focusing the narrative on the life of its

6. protagonist Okonkwo. His personal conflict with the cultural
systems he encounters is replicated at the larger level in the tragedy
of African culture. By narrating the events in the life of a tribal man,
Achebe challenges the coloniser’s denial of individuality to the
African native. Achebe is not just recording a counter history of
African culture, but through fiction he is claiming for the native a
complexity of character that is absent in the white man’s record.
The end of the novel is a brilliant juxtaposition of the
writer’saccount of a lived experience of colonial oppression with a
false and humiliating chronicling of the same by the District Officer.
The reader is alarmed at Okonkwo’s suicide, but is aghast at how a
man’s painful lifelong struggle would be reduced to a paragraph in
which he is the one who will be vilified. The novel’s endingaffirms
the author’s aim in writing it as the reader is made to completely
distrust the white man’s account. Okonkwo’s aspirations of rising
high in his social sphere are not just unrealised but the very sphere
falls apart. His tragedy, in spite of being one of the many tragedies
brought on by colonial rule, distils the physical, psychological and
cultural trauma of the colonised. This distillation is Achebe’s
recreation of African culture and its encounter with colonial
brutalities.