Evolution of African Culture in Achebes Things Fall Apart - Book Report/Review Example

Disintegration, Competition, and Evolution of African Culture in Achebe’s (1959) Things Fall Apart September 29, Disintegration,Competition, and Evolution of African Culture in Achebe’s (1959) Things Fall Apart Not all African heroes who end up in tragedy are tragic Greek heroes because some African tragedies are about continuous social transformations. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe (1959) narrated the life of a heroic anti-hero, Okonkwo, who both mirrors and rejects African culture. Okonkwo is the history of African culture, but he also exists in its margins, the margin between the Igbos before and after the arrival of Europeans. He straddles two worlds uneasily, until he ends up undercutting them both. But the novel does not end in his breakdown, as well as in its aspects of cultural disintegration. How does it express the concept of cultural disintegration in African culture by itself and because of its contact with a foreign culture? How does the novel demonstrate how one culture develops in direct competition against the surfacing of another foreign culture? How does it depict the evolution of African culture right after the arrival of the Europeans? The novel expresses cultural disintegration in African culture that it does it to itself by showing its contradictions and anxieties. It also depicts the competition between two different cultures through the African struggle in preserving its social, religious, and political autonomy. Furthermore, the novel portrays the evolution of African culture through a mixture of adapting to colonization, while challenging the Eurocentrification of its history. The novel expresses self-inflicted cultural disintegration by underscoring the complexity of African culture that has its own contradictions and anxieties. Rhoads (1993) emphasized that Achebe (1599) revealed the weaknesses of Igbo culture too, not only its good side. She stressed that Achebe did not want to romanticize his culture, and instead, he was painfully aware of its limitations, particularly its perpetuation of violent beliefs and practices. Okonkwo’s participation in Ikemefuna’s killing is not socially acceptable to his tribe. Ogbuefi Ezeudu asks Okonkwo to get involved in the killing of Ikemefuna and tells him: “That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death” (Achebe, 1959, p. 57). Okonkwo, however, chooses to kill Ikemefuna himself for fear of being called a coward. Ezeudu and Okonkwo represent the spectrum of African cultural beliefs: an indication of questioning its immoral cultural practices. Hoegberg (1999) noted, nevertheless, that though the Igbo culture showed self-reflexivity when it considers the context of its cultural actions, it has its inherent contradictions. The irony of taking a virgin and killing a boy from the clan who has killed a member of another clan begs cultural analysis from its readers (Hoegberg, 1999, p. 71). Cultural violence is one of the weaknesses of African culture that Achebe (1959) did not see as laudable, but rather, something that warrants social change. These differences in what parts of the culture should be removed or maintained are part of the cultural anxieties of the Igbos. Furthermore, African culture faces disintegration because of the arrival of a new foreign culture that questions its particular beliefs. Achebe (1959) indicated in Things Fall Apart that African culture had a conflicted approach to colonization. The Abame killed a white explorer, while the Igbos did not do the same with the arrival of the missionaries. Searle (2007) stressed that Achebe (1959) only illustrated the actual response of African groups to whites: “The reception of the missionaries and their message is rendered intelligible and shown to be a discerning, individually informed and variegated process of exchange and assimilation” (p. 52). These exchanges reflect the intersection between the arrival of the Europeans and the Igbos’ already-weakening cultural systems. Ten Korteenar (2004) noted some scholars who believed that things were already falling apart before the Europeans came, and it fell apart more from its division than its colonization (p. 773). Obierika explains to Okonkwo how the whites have taken away the political power of the Igbos in handling their tribal affairs: “Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government” (Achebe, 1959, p. 177). He does not speak of any forced religious conversion or violent colonization. He indicates the war for the minds and hearts that the Europeans won with the attraction of their religion and new systems and technology. The novel suggests that the “fault lines” are already in the Igbo culture (Ten Korteenar, 2004, pp. 773-774). A colonizer finds it easier to conquer what is already divided. This is not about blaming the Igbos for their colonization, but to rendering the weaknesses of a cultural system that faces both internal disintegration and attack from the white man’s acculturation. The next point is that the novel develops in direct competition with another foreign culture through the preservation of oral traditions in opposition to the printed world of the European culture. Watts (2010) asserted the importance of the oral nature of the Igbo culture because it emphasizes Achebe’s desire to preserve it. Ten Korteenar (2004) argued that Things Fall Apart is about a lost childhood where childhood is centered on the youthful innocence of the Igbo culture. The children’s love for folktales represents the oral mode of cultural transmission (Ten Kortenaar, 2004, p.781). The novel is filled with songs and tales that capture the cultural vivacity of African oral traditions. An example is the love story between the mosquito and the ear. The ear has rejected mosquito’s love because the latter is a skeleton, and so the mosquito goes to the near frequently to remind it that it is “still alive” (Achebe, 1959, p. 177). The lasting love of the mosquito for the ear can be an analogy for Achebe’s love and respect for African culture that is embedded in its oral culture. The Europeans, however, bring their printed world with them. The novel ends with the District Commissioner thinking about a book on Africans and he wanted to entitle it, “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger” (Achebe, 1959, p. 209). The effect is the domination of printed word and world over the Igbos’ oral culture and society. The competition is for cultural control through the domination of the modes of cultural transmission. Aside from of the competition for cultural transmission, the novel shows direct competition between African culture and Western culture through differences in religious and political systems. Searle (2007) explored the role of Christian missionaries in displacing the local particulars of the spiritual beliefs of the Igbos. He understood that Christianity had its associations with “imperial oppression” (Searle, 2007, p. 60). Christian missionaries undermine Igbos’ gods and ancestors when they say: “We have been sent by this great God to ask you to leave your wicked ways and false gods and turn to Him so that you may be saved when you die” (Achebe, 1959, p. 145). Eurocentricism underlies Christianity’s complete rejection of African religions as valid religious systems. As for the competition in political systems, Rhoads (1993) stressed that Achebe (1959) underscored the flaw of the linear evolution of sociopolitical systems. The Igbos had a democratic culture that contrasted with the tribal-to-monarch-to-parliamentary-government evolution of European society (Rhoads, 1993, p. 63). Their democracy competed with the oppression of the parliamentary government that came and applied their laws without consideration of Igbo politics. Competition lies in the battle for control over religion and politics too. The novel shows, however, that resilience is essential to the continuation of any culture and that its verisimilitude lies in showing how the Igbos transformed because of its contact with and adaptation of the foreign culture. Some scholar rejected that the Igbos faced certain death through colonization because it exhibited flexibility through adaptation. When the missionaries added a free-education arm and commerce to their activities, an increasing number of Igbos participated in them (Achebe, 1959, p. 182). They see the goodness in self-development and economic social development. Searle (2007) stressed that Christianity also gave something positive to Africans that the latter received and nourished for their welfare, such as change in violent practices and learning new knowledge and skills. Furthermore, Achebe (1959) described the struggle for cultural autonomy through the resistance against the complete writing of their history. Okonkwo’s suicide is not what happened to the Igbos. They did not choose to die because they could not face a strong adversary. The ending of the novel is ambiguous, however, because it ends with the title of the Commissioner’s intended book. The effectiveness of this title, however, is its dramatic irony. By adding the title in the end of the novel, Achebe (1959) undercut its authenticity. “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger” (Achebe, 1959, p. 209) means that the Europeans did not pacify the African tribes because the latter believed in them and their promises. Though Europeans pacified the Africans through violence, things fell apart because of the division in the African tribes too. Moreover, “primitive” is already laughable by the end of the novel. After Achebe (1959) showed what is good and bad in African cultures, he proved that they are not primitive and that their democracy and communal practices are even superior to European parliamentary government and individualistic systems. He challenged the Eurocentrification of African history through their proud history and culture in Things Fall Apart. Cultural analysis shows the process of disintegration, competition, and evolution that African culture demonstrated before and during European colonization. Okonkwo is a hero, alongside with his community members who tried to preserve their traditional beliefs and practices. Okonkwo, however, competes with the foreign culture with outright violence that resists transformation in face of undeniable social changes. When he died, his culture moves on with colonization, evolving along the way. Achebe (1959) has created a literature of the oral history of the Africans, so that they will not be pushed to the margins of the invisible. In Things Fall Apart, the tragic hero dies because he does not know how to productively cope with change. The Igbos, however, did not perish. Achebe and others from the Igbo clans live on to tell their side of the story, the story of African tribes who were far from being primitive, because they are as complex, dynamic, and nuanced as any other European culture. For just when things seemed like falling apart, these African tribes took what could be put together from their identities and post-colonized identities to create a constantly-developing, self-reflexive modern African culture. References Achebe, C. (1959). Things fall apart. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Hoegberg, D. (1999). Principle and practice: The logic of cultural violence in Achebes Things Fall Apart. College Literature, 26(1), 69-79. Retrieved from JSTOR. Rhoads, D.A. (1993). Culture in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart. African Studies Review, 36(2), 61-72. Retrieved from JSTOR. Searle, A. (2007). The role of missions in Things Fall Apart and Nervous Condition. Literature & Theology, 21(1), 49-65. DOI: 10.1093/litthe/frl061. Retrieved from Humanities Source. Ten Kortenaar, N. (2004). Becoming African and the death of Ikemefuna. University of Toronto Quarterly, 73(2), 773-794. DOI: 10.3138/utq.73.2.773. Retrieved from Humanities Source. Watts, J.L. (2010). “He does not understand our customs”: Narrating orality and empire in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 46(1), 65-75. DOI: 10.1080/17449850903478189. Retrieved from Humanities Source. Read More