Everything falls apart (1958) is Achebe’s best-known work. As the author himself explained, it arose in response to a classic narrative of British colonialist literature, Mister Johnson (1939) by Arthur Joyce Lunel Carey (1888-1957), soldier and administrator in Nigeria between 1910 and 1920. This novel sketched a portrait denigrant of the African natives, typical of the ancient Tarzan films: ignorant, uncouth, cruel. Achebe set out to contradict Carey by showing the rich cultural heritage of his people, the Igbo, and the result of the effort was Things Fall Apart (original title of the novel, taken from a poem by William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming ).
The action takes place in Umuofia, a fictitious village in southeastern Nigeria; at the end of the 19th century, when the region was Christianized by British missionaries, an episode that appears in the final part of the story. Throughout history we witnessed the growing social prominence of Okonkwo, warrior and champion of struggle, but also a man of observance, a whole bulwark of the traditions of his race, which is not strange, because thanks to them he enjoys status social and public admiration: “As our people say, he who honors the great prepares the way of his own greatness.” The peak of his personal triumph will coincide with the fall of the world that has uplifted him, and of which he is a devotee. There is a model scene in this novel because of its narrative efficiency. It is about telling the movement of some emotions through actions, a movement that seeks to reach the suggestion by means of contrast: it shows how actions speak of something that apparently does not belong to them: interiority.
The scene is one in which the death of Ikemefuna, adopted son of the protagonist of the novel, Okonkwo. This child is from a neighboring village and was handed over to the village of Okonkwo as a pledge for the reparation of an offense committed. Okonkwo is the strongest warrior and the child is placed in his care until he decides what his destiny will be. Okonkwo comes to consider him a son and appreciates him as much or more than his own. And finally, Ikemefuna and the son of Okonkwo also establish a true fraternal relationship.
Then it happens that the village decides that the ritual form of reparation for the offense committed is the death of Ikemefuna. This is not announced to the reader, but indirectly. One day, several warriors prepare to go out into the jungle taking Ikemefuna with them. Then, one of the warriors says to Okonkwo: “That boy calls you father. Do not participate in his death ».
But Okonkwo decides to go with them, which is an admirable sample of his confusion, because he can not avoid that death. He announces his departure at home, says that he will be returned to his village and will even have the child carry a pitcher of palm wine, which is a ritual gift among the villages. Then the first silence falls on his house, a silence provoked by adults who know and children who intuit that something bad is going to happen. The only one who does not know is Ikemefuna. The way to dramatically enhance the scene is as follows: the narrator is telling the relaxed tone of the group’s march in contrast to the silence that reigns in the house of Okonkwo. At the same time, he operates as Ikemefuna’s alter ego and notes that he feels something strange, but that he soon dismisses this sensation when he sees that Okonkwo, his adoptive father, walks behind him, which makes him feel safe. Let’s not forget that the reader continues to know that Ikemefuna is going to die and that Okonkwo, almost certainly, will not be able to do anything to avoid it. The drama is truly high and because it has the reader as much as the situation.
The next step is that the feigned animation of the group decays and silence (second silence) takes over. Then Ikemefuna – again the narrator operates as alterego – begins to think about his real mother (not the father, because for him, the father is Okonkwo, who goes behind him keeping his back) and will be alive in his village; he invokes it by playing the game of singing a song that, according to the end, stepping with the left or the right foot – like the game of defoliating the flower under the question “he loves me, he does not love me” – will tell him if his mother is dead or live Thus, the narrator operates in parallel: on the one hand, the attitudes and movements of the group in motion; on the other, the thoughts and feelings of the little Ikemefuna.
Suddenly, one of the men behind him clears his throat and Ikemefuna turns around. The man growls at him and tells him to continue and do not look back. In the way of saying of the man there is something that produces a chill in Ikemefuna: at this moment the sensations of the reader come together, who is helpless and shaken to what is going to happen, and the sensation of shuddering Ikemefuna. But, in addition, Ikemefuna asks himself a question: why did Okonkwo, who was after him, have disappeared towards the last positions of the line of men that advances through the forest?
Death is narrated by the narrator, in a genius trait, from a new point of view: that of Okonkwo, whom he has reintroduced brilliantly in the scene with the previous question. Okonkwo sees how the warrior who cleared his throat raises his machete to deliver a blow to Ikemefuna. Okonkwo does not look, but he hears the noise of the pitcher that Ikemefuna was carrying when he fell and broke. The next thing he hears is the voice of the child, who shouts: “My father, they have killed me!”; then look and see him running towards him. And so the author closes this scene: “Stunned by fear, Okonkwo unsheathed the machete and finished off the boy. I was afraid they would consider him weak. ”
Not only is the narrative mechanism impressive that impresses the reader impressively by that death. It is that, in addition, in the rituality of that death the central dilemma of the protagonist of the novel, Okonkwo, who wishes to be one of the lords of the village, who possesses the image of being the best of the warriors and to whom the The need to maintain and consolidate this position leads to the killing of a boy whom he has loved and in whom he placed more hope than in his own son to succeed him. At its highest emotional point, Okonkwo’s desire for power manifests itself as fear and confusion.
Those who read this novel may not see beyond an exotic story or, at best – and that’s enough, because that is the background on which the drama unfolds – the conflict of a clash of cultures, the white one and the aborigine. But there is one more point that makes it a powerful work: in Okonkwo-and, in an ingeniously summarized way, in the aforementioned scene-fate and the servitude of power are in all their power. One of the great themes of all time.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. “Things Fall Apart.” Science, vol. 291, no. January, 2006, p. 212, doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(12)60755-6.
George Linden, “John Neihardt and Black Elk Speaks”, in The Black Elk Reader, ed. Clyde Holler, Syracuse University Press, 2000, accessed 20 June 2011
