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Position Paper Things Fall Apart Once Joseph Conrad, a British novelist, posed the question, Does life inevitably find us out by placing us in that very situation which most severely tests our values?" The man has always tried to find the answer whether his life is determined with the destiny or he can change it himself. In the story Things Fall Apart China Achebe showed how the reality of change influence various characters. The story has several themes including the struggle between change and tradition and questions of personal status. Achebe hints at the chaos that arises when a system collapses.
That the centre cannot hold (Achebe, 2000, ch. I) is an ironic reference to both the imminent collapse of the African tribal system, threatened by the rise of imperialist bureaucracies, and the imminent disintegration of the British Empire. The author emphasized in the story that if a person isolates and alienates himself from the society in which he lives it can lead to the destroying of his life and his hopes. Achebe represented the main character, Okonkwo, as a person whose aggressive motives and unflinching will destroyed his personality. Okonkwo was the son of Unoka. His father was idle, poor, and cowardly person.
Okonkwo rejected the way his father lived. Unoka was known for his great conversational skills. Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. (Achebe, 2000, ch. I) This quote, from the narrators recounting, in Chapter One, of how Unoka calmly interacted with someone to whom he owed money, alludes to the highly sophisticated art of rhetoric practiced by the Igbo. Later this rhetorical formal ness offers insight into the misunderstandings that occur between the Igbo and the Europeans. Okonkwo did not want to be gentle and poor like his parent.
The man decided to change his life and become wealthy and value manliness. In so doing, Okonkwo consciously possessed opposite to his fathers ideals that might be praiseworthy. He becomes productive, thrifty, and brave. He was given a position of high status in his clan due to his hard work and prowess in war. The man had great social and financial success. But at the same time Okonkwo rejects music and other soft things such as conversation and emotion.
Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them. He did not want to look weak like his father. His life without emotions caused his violent and rash behaviour. The man brought a great deal of trouble and sorrow upon himself and his family. In Chapter 5, at the Feast of the New Yam, Okonkwo shows impatience.
He is unable to join in festivities because he wants to be more active. This disgruntlement causes yet another emotional firestorm, and he beats his wife again - and shoots her! But the feast is also associated with the wrestling contest, and it was through wrestling that Okonkwo gained his fame, and gained the same wife that he almost shot. Okonkwo is totally absorbed in his concept of what it is to be a man - cannot see past it.
Okonkwo was unable to support the community around him at the time of change. In the context of Igbo society, Okonkwo is excessively individualistic too concerned about himself and not enough about the village so the seeds of his downfall are planted long before the arrival of the white men. To some extent, Okonkwo's resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal status. His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which society judges him.
This system of evaluating the self inspires many of the clans outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. As it becomes evident that compliance rather than violence constitutes the wisest principle for survival, Okonkwo realizes that he has become a relic, no longer able to function within his changing society. One can explain Okonkwo's tragic fate as the result of a problematic chia thought that occurs to Okonkwo at several points in the novel.
For the clan believes, as the narrator tells us in Chapter Fourteen, a man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi. (Achebe, 2000, ch. 14) But there is another understanding of chi that conflicts with this definition. In Chapter Four, the narrator relates, according to an Igbo proverb, that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. (Achebe, 2000, ch. 4) According to this understanding, individuals will their own destinies. Thus, depending upon our interpretation of chi, Okonkwo seems either more or less responsible for his own tragic death. Okonkwo himself shifts between these poles: when things are going well for him, he perceives himself as master and maker of his own destiny; when things go badly, however, he automatically disavows responsibility and asks why he should be so ill fated. The climax of the story is Okonkwo's murder, or uc, of a court messenger. Okonkwo kills their leader with his machete.
But the villagers in general are caught between resisting and embracing change and they face the dilemma of trying to determine how best to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the villagers are excited about the new opportunities and techniques that the missionaries bring; though the European influence, however, threatens to extinguish the need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking. At the end of Chapter Twenty during the conversation between Obierika and Okonkwo, the discussion centres on various events that have come to pass since the arrival of the colonialists, Obierika seems to voice Achebe's own thoughts on colonialism. Upset by the fact that the white men have come and completely disregarded the Igbo sense of justice, Obierika points out the impossibility of the colonialists understanding anything about the Umuofians without speaking their language. He points out the ludicrousness of denigrating unfamiliar customs, Does the white man understand our custom about land? How can he when he does not even speak our tongue?
But he says that our customs are bad (Achebe, 2000, ch. 20) This sentence, which concludes the novel, satirizes the entire tradition of western ethnography and imperialism itself as a cultural project, and it suggests that the ethnographer in question, the District Commissioner, knows very little about his subject and projects a great deal of his European colonialist values onto it, He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. (Achebe, 2000, ch. I) But many of the villages did not want to resist the new power, Our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? (Achebe, 2000, ch. 20) They allowed the other messengers to escape, Okonkwo realizes that his clan is not willing to go to war. Okonkwo, realizing the weakness of his clan, Our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. (Achebe, 2000, ch. 20) Obierika suggested that Okonkwo kill himself, which foretells Okonkwo's eventual suicide. The novel is highly symbolic, and it asks to be read in symbolic terms.
Two of the main symbols are the locusts and fire. The locusts symbolize the white colonists descending upon the Africans, seeming to augur good but actually portending troublesome encounters. In Chapter Fifteen: the Oracle... said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts... (Achebe, 2000, ch. 15) The passage from Chapter Seven represents, in highly allegorical terms, the arrival of the colonizers.
The branches that break under the weight of the locusts are symbols of the traditions and cultural roots of Igbo society, which can no longer survive under the onslaught of colonialism and white settlement, And at last the locusts did descend. They settled on every tree and on every blade of grass; they settled on the roofs and covered the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke away under them, and the whole country became the brown-earth colour of the vast, hungry swarm. (Achebe, 2000, ch. 7) Fire epitomizes Okonkwo's nature is fierce and destructive. Okonkwo is associated with burning, fire, and flame throughout the novel, alluding to his intense and dangerous anger the only emotion that he allows himself to display. Yet the problem with fire, as Okonkwo acknowledges in Chapters Seventeen and Twenty-Four, is that it destroys everything it consumes. Okonkwo is both physically destructive he kills Ikemefuna and Ogbuefi Ezeudus sound emotionally destructive he suppresses his fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma in favour of a colder, more masculine aura.
Just as fire feeds on itself until all that is left is a pile of ash, Okonkwo eventually succumbs to his intense rage, allowing it to rule his actions until it destroys him. Okonkwo is a tragic hero in the classical sense: although he is a superior character, his tragic flaw the equation of manliness with rashness, anger, and violence brings about his own destruction. Okonkwo is gruff, at times, and usually unable to express his feelings (the narrator frequently uses the word inwardly in reference to Okonkwo's emotions). But his emotions are indeed quite complex, as his manly values conflict with his unmanly ones, such as fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma. The narrator privileges us with information that Okonkwo's fellow clan members do not have that Okonkwo surreptitiously follows Ekwefi into the forest in pursuit of Ezinma, for example and thus allows us to see the tender, worried father beneath the seemingly indifferent exterior.
The conflict of the novel, vested in Okonkwo, derives from the series of crushing blows which are levelled at traditional values by an alien and more powerful culture causing, in the end, the traditional society to fall apart. China Achebe he has been able to illuminate two emotionally irreconcilable facets of modern African life: the humiliations visited on Africans by colonialism, and the utter moral worthlessness of what replaced colonial rule. Bibliography: Achebe, China. (2000). Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann. Rowell, Charles H. (1990).
An Interview with China Achebe. Callaloo, 13 January, 1990. Agatucci, Cora. (2004). Things Fall Apart.
Study Guide: Reading & Study Questions. Central Oregon Community College, 13 September, 2004. Retrieved 27 March, 2007 from web Brians, Paul. (2004). Things Fall Apart Study Guide. Washington State University, Pullman, 11 August, 2004. Retrieved 27 March, 2007 from web Began, Richard. (1997).
Achebe's Sense of an Ending: History and Tragedy in Things Fall Apart. Studies in the Novel, 16 p. , 1997.
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Research essay sample on Position Things Fall Apart
