Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart - Essay Example

 Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is a story of colonialism and of the imperial conquest of Nigeria. However, despite this fact, the depiction of white Europeans in the novel never falls into the simplistic or stereotypical view of the colonial situation: that of Westerners as the evil and violent aggressors of an innocent African homeland. Achebe realizes and understands the complexity of the colonial situation at the center of his novel, and the diversity of his representations demonstrate this. What's more, our reading of the white European in Things Fall Apart is further complicated by Achebe's insistence on remaining hidden behind a further layer, that of his narrative voice. As well as asking how Europeans are characterized in his novel, we must also ask by whom they are characterized. For most of the novel Achebe writes through the world view of someone from the Umofia or Mbanta tribes (the narrator speaks as though they believe in the tribes rites and ceremonies of the African peoples), and so the representation of 'the white man' is also mediated through another representation, that of the tribes themselves. The first characterization of 'the white man' in the novel is that he is something impossible, something so alien to the way that the tribe lives that he can only be considered as part of a fictional story or imagining. Okonkwo and Obierika are speaking jokingly, each suggesting something even more outlandish and outrageous. The final thing Obierika thinks of is, “the story of white men who, they say, are white like this piece of chalk” (p.53). For the tribesmen the notion of the white man is so unimaginably other that it belongs to the realm of myths and stories. Perhaps this is why, when the first actual white man appears in the story, he is rendered mythically. He comes to a tribe called the Abame, riding on what they think is an “iron horse” (p.101); later in the novel it is revealed to be a bicycle. The Abame gather round him and are so amazed by his appearance that they consult the oracle as to what his coming signifies. The reply of the Oracle – hardly a surprising one, considering the amount of fear something so strange might arouse – is that he is a sign of evil “that would break their clan and spread destruction among them” (p.101). As such, the tribe react to the white man in accordance with how they have characterized him and within the customs and traditions of their own people. White men, being strange, were compared to something familiar and which could be understood - “They were locusts, it said, and that first man was a harbinger sent to explore the terrain”. Equally, they treated him in the same way that they treated all negative signs from the Gods, “so they killed him.” (p.102) The village, of course, is soon wiped out by a vengeful colonial power. But what is more important to this section of the novel is the way that the white European has been classified by the tribe on their first meeting. Having no other frame of reference, the tribe fits the white man into their own cultural knowledge set, and so mythologizes him. Of course, this is not the only characterization of the white man, and is probably best seen as the tribe's way of rationalizing this new phenomena during the early stages of colonial contact. After the white man comes to Okonkwo's village, and sets up a mission there, the characterization of the Europeans in the novel changes (representing the change in attitudes of the tribe). The concept of the white man is no longer absorbed into the tribe peoples' own cultural framework. It is recognized as something separate from it and, in comparison with their own religious practices, something faintly ridiculous. Many are quite sure that “the strange faith and the white man's god would not last.” (p.105). This feeling, that the white man and his religion were somewhat foolish is only confirmed when those members of the tribe who join the new religion are precisely those who are considered lowly in Agbala society: Chielo, the priestess of the Agbala, speaks of these lowly ones as “the excrement of the clan, and the new faith was a mad dog that had come to eat it up.” (p.105). There is also the suggestion (particularly by Okonkwo, who prides himself on staying true to the old, patriarchal ways of his people) that the new religion is somehow more weak than the old way of living: the Europeans are “effeminate men, clucking like old hens” (p.112). The tribe at this stage, then, accept that the white man and his religion are separate from their lives, yet they do not see it as much of a threat. However, this negative view (represented from the standpoint of a loyal member of the Agbala) is not the only representation of the religion that can be found in this section of the novel. Achebe (brought up in a Christian household himself) also portrays a positive side to the new religion, mainly through the character of Nwoye, Okonkwo's son. Nwoye becomes a convert to the faith because of “the poetry of the new religion, something felt in his marrow” (p.108) and “the gay and rollicking tunes of evangelism which had the power of plucking at the silent and dusty chords in the heart of an Ibo man” (p.107). Equally, it is not difficult to see that the narrator shows a certain approval of the mission's saving of the twins that the tribe throw into the forest because they are considered an evil sign. Achebe also represents some of the other reasons why members of the tribes begin to join the new religion. The Europeans “built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umofia”(p.130), as well as Mr. Brown, the leader of the mission, opening a school to teach Umofia children to read and write English, which could lead to better jobs as part of the new African elite. Some white Europeans, particular Mr. Brown, are not represented as aggressors, but as moderates who believe in their faith and want to convince those around them to it. However, a more damning view of the white man comes with the exploration of another of his functions in the novel – the white European as administer of justice. With the news of the new government and court that the white men set up in Umuru comes a more familiar picture of the white colonialist as he has come to be known. “They had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance” (p.127), the narrative voice says, the 'ignorance' to which it refers being an ignorance of the laws of the native peoples. Which is not to say that the District Commissioner is seen as corrupt or unjust, but that he is imposing a law that is alien to a people who do not recognize its authority. After the incident in which Enoch unmasks the egwugwu and the tribe go to the church threatening to burn it to the ground, the District Commissioner invites the elders of Umofia to speak with him, and then imprisons them in a “prison which was full of men who had offended against the white man's law.” (p.127). While the District Commissioner upholds 'the white man's law' the law of the Umofia (that one of their God's may not be unmasked) goes ignored. Yet, even now, Achebe does not represent the white man as being callous or cruel to the native people – at least no more than the Umofia themselves, who are a people as violent and as wedded to their laws as the Europeans (we must remember Okonkwo cut down Ikemefuna - who had come to call him father - in cold blood). Rather, the actions of the white man's justice are the necessary conclusion of a clash of civilizations, both of which, by their very natures, are unable to understand the other. Okonkwo asks Obierika, “Does the white man understand our custom about land?”and he replies, 'How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad...” (p.129). Perhaps the most tragic characterization of the Westerners in Things Fall Apart, then, is less their role as evil colonizers (though they are not absolved of the blame for colonialism) but more as the means by which the old ways become unraveled. This is how Okonkwo and Obierika come to see the white man, as a force that, by a tragic momentum, starts to destroy the old world, “he has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” (p.121). In these sections, the White man once more takes on the form of the myth and the harbinger of death – though this time less in the cultural world view of the Umofia tribe, and more in the tragic tale told by Achebe. In the tragic demise of Okonkwo as an individual, and the demise of the culture he represents, the white man becomes a factor without motivation or historical context. In the final meeting of the elders of the tribe (the one at which Okonkwo kills the District Commissioner's messenger) Okika stands and says “Our fathers never dreamt of such a thing, they never killed our brothers. But a white man never came to them” (p.148). The white man's coming is characterized here less as an event in time and history than as a mythical event that has doomed the tribe to extinction. The final characterization of the white European is slightly different from the ones that I have discussed above. It is different because the narrative focus of the novel changes and we are no longer seeing the novel's events through the eyes of a believer in the ways of a tribe but, instead, from the point of view of the District Commissioner, as a representative of Western civilization. This characterization, painted with heavy irony by Achebe, is probably the most damning of the novel, more damning even than the notion of the white European as evil colonizer. The District Commissioner comes to the village, seeking Okonkwo so that he might punish him for the murder he has committed. He is taken to Okonkwo's body, still hanging from a tree because it is the custom of the Agbala not to touch a corpse that has died by its own hand. He looks on it and, despite a passionate outburst from Obierika, feels nothing for the man that he has destroyed. Nothing except that he might make an interesting chapter in the book the Commissioner is writing - “Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph at any rate” (p.152). This is the characterization of the white man that Achebe leaves us with, not cruel, not malicious, but entirely unfeeling, apathetic to the culture that his presence is slowly but surely bringing to an end. The black man is nothing to the District Commissioner, and his continent is nothing but a blank slate on which he may write. Okonkwo is not even considered human by this (supposed) Christian; the Commissioner dehumanizes him just as the people of Africa are dehumanized by the title of the book he is to write: “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.” (p.152). Achebe puts forwards many characterizations of the white colonialist, complicating our view of the Western European role as an imperial force. Although he is reconstructing what the tribe people of Nigeria might of thought of the white men they encountered, this reconstruction gives us an insight into the different roles the white man played in the colonization of their country. More than anything, Achebe represents the white man as the unknowing, and certainly uncaring, destroyer of an old way of life, one that the white man could not understand, nor even tried to. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Penguin, 2001. Read More