Things Fall Apart is Achebe’s canvas to paint the picture of how the white dominion in Africa disintegrated their culture and customs, slowly reducing the natives into white-worshipping pawns. Achebe is proud of his African heritage. Every word shows this. His pain is acutely felt as he writes how a once proud culture was forced to bow down before the invading colonisers.
Achebe’s story is the story of many colonised nation. Their culture and customs were intruded, changing and destroying what the white couldn’t understand. Through religion, which was spread by missionaries, and education, they won many natives to their side. The incentives these converts received and the power bestowed on them were enough inducement for more to join the white camp. Power is a human weakness, and it’s natural for people to fall slave to power and embarce the powerful. That’s what happened in colonies. With their strength of weaponry and shrewdness white men had the advantage over the natives. When the natives, especially the younger generations, saw the white supremacy and power, they slowly pledged their allegiance to the newcomers, abandoning their age-old customs. What ultimately left for the colonies upon finally gaining independence were the remnants of their culture heavily mixed with that of the whites.
The story is centered on Okonkwo, a warrior and an influential leader of a clan. Through his story, Achebe brings out the culture and customs of Africa before the invasion of the Europeans. There is no proper plot; the story flows giving an insight to a lost culture. It’s true that male domination and the mythical worshippings that governed their culture are not acceptable in modern times, yet I found reading about this obliterated culture interesting. And even though I couldn’t summon any sympathy for the protagonist at the beginning for his cruel, unsympathetic character, I was full of sympathy for him as his pride received a great blow and he was humiliated to the point that he could bear it no more.
With his beautiful writing, Achebe brings out the story of a lost culture, winning the sympathy of the readers. It is a heartfelt and powerful account of how nations with different cultures were trampled and destroyed by the Europeans in their attempt to “civilise” the natives, how the European culture and religion was forcibly imposed on them disregarding established ways of the natives, how unsympathetic and insensitive the colonisers were towards the natives, brutally uprooting them from their age-old customs. As a citizen of a former colony, I understood the pain hidden in Achebe’s words. There were good things the colonisers brought to the colonies. Only if they had been more understanding and sympathetic towards local ways and customs, if they were more humane towards the natives of the colonies, things might not have fallen apart.
Rating: 4/5
