Things Fall Apart

This article is about the novel. For other uses, see Things Fall Apart (disambiguation).

First edition cover of Things Fall Apart (1958)

Things Fall Apart is a 1958 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is Achebe's debut novel and was written when he was working at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. The novel was first published in London by Heinemann on 17 June 1958.

The story, which is set in British Nigeria, centers on Okonkwo, a traditional influential leader of the fictional Igbo clan, Umuofia, who opposes colonialism and early Christianity. The novel's title was taken from a verse of "The Second Coming", a 1919 poem by Irish poet W. B. Yeats. Things Fall Apart was considered Achebe's magnum opus and formed his "African trilogy" with his other novels; No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God. The novel explores many themes especially culture, masculinity, and colonialism.

Things Fall Apart is regarded as a milestone in African literature. It gained critical acclaim and popularity upon publication, and has been translated into over fifty languages. It was listed on Time's "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005". The novel has been adapted severally including the radio drama, Okonkwo (1961), by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation; 1971 film, Things Fall Apart, which starred Princess Elizabeth of Toro.

Plot

Okonkwo is a famous man in the village of Umuofia. He is a wrestling champion and leader of a clan. He strives to be the opposite of his father Unoka, who was an indolent debtor unable to support his wife or children, preferring flute-playing over struggling for success. Okonkwo works hard from a young age to build fame and wealth all on his own. Obsessed with manly strength and discipline, he often beats his wives and children.

Okonkwo is selected by the elders to be the guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy who was taken as a peace settlement between Umuofia and another clan after Ikemefuna's father killed a woman from Umuofia. The boy looks up to Okonkwo as his second father. The Oracle of Umuofia eventually pronounces that the boy must be killed. Ezeudu, the village elder, warns Okonkwo to stay away from the killing, but he brushes off the warning and carries out the grim task. After killing Ikemefuna, Okonkwo feels haunted by sadness and nightmares. During a gun salute at Ezeudu's funeral, Okonkwo's gun accidentally explodes and kills Ezeudu's son. He and his family are exiled for seven years to his motherland, Mbanta, as required to appease the gods.

While Okonkwo is in Mbanta, he learns that the white men are living in Umuofia with the intent of introducing their religion, Christianity. As the number of converts increases, the foothold of the white people grows and a new government is introduced. The village is forced to accept or oppose the imposition of the white people's nascent society. Okonkwo's son Nwoye becomes curious about the missionaries, and after he is beaten by his father for the last time, he decides to leave his family to live independently. Nwoye is introduced to the new religion by a missionary, Mr. Brown. In the last year of his exile, Okonkwo instructs his best friend Obierika to sell all of his yams and hire two men to build him two huts so he can have a house to go back to with his family. He also holds a great feast for his mother's kinsmen.

Returning from Mbanta, Okonkwo finds his village changed by the presence of the white men. After a convert commits the crime of unmasking an elder as he embodies an ancestral spirit of the clan, the village retaliates by destroying a local Christian church. In response, the District Commissioner representing the colonial government takes Okonkwo and several other native leaders prisoner pending payment of a fine of two hundred bags of cowries. Despite the District Commissioner's instructions to treat the leaders of Umuofia with respect, the native "court messengers" humiliate them, shaving their heads and whipping them. Outraged, the people of Umuofia finally gather for an uprising. Okonkwo, being a warrior by nature and adamant about following Umuofian custom and tradition, despises all cowardice and advocates war.

When messengers of the white government try to stop the meeting, Okonkwo beheads one of them. Because the crowd allows the other messengers to escape and does not fight alongside Okonkwo, he realizes with despair that the people of Umuofia will not fight to protect themselves. The result of this is that when the District Commissioner, Gregory Irwin, comes to Okonkwo's house to take him to court, he finds that Okonkwo killed himself because he saw he was fighting the battle alone and his tribe had given up. Among his own people, Okonkwo's actions have tarnished his reputation and status, as it is strictly against the teachings of the Igbo to commit suicide. Obierika struggles not to break down as he laments Okonkwo's death. As Irwin and his men prepare to bury Okonkwo, Irwin muses that Okonkwo's death will make an interesting chapter for his written book, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

Background and publication history

Achebe in Lagos, 1966; eight years after the publication of Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart was Chinua Achebe's first novel. After graduating from the University of Ibadan in 1953, he became a teacher in Oba, Anambra State, before working in the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) the following year. During his stay at NBC, he started writing the manuscript. He wrote in English since he considers the existing standard for written Igbo language as stilted; created by the combination of various dialects, which he revealed in a 1994 interview. In 1957 he removed the second and third parts of the manuscript, leaving only the story of Okonkwo, ultimately the main character of the story. He also restructured it and added new paragraphs and chapters.

After Achebe saw an advertisement in The Spectator, he sent copies of his handwritten manuscript to a typing agency in London by ordinary mail. After he sent the requested fee of £22 by the agency through the British postal order, he heard nothing from the agency for many months. Towards the end of the year, his colleague, Angela Beattie, who was about to relinquish her post as Head of Talks at NBS, was going to London for her annual leave, Achebe asked her to check the status of his manuscript when she reach London. Following Beattie's intervention, the agency retrieved the manuscripts already covered with dust from a corner of the office, and sent only one typed copy to Achebe in Lagos.

Achebe was promoted as the Head of Talks at NBC. He sent his typescript to the literary agent of Gilbert Phelps in 1958. Several publishing houses rejected the typescript, giving the reason that fiction by African writers possessed no financial potential. The typescript was eventually taken to the office of William Heinemann, where it was presented to James Michie and through him, came to the attention of Alan Hill, a publishing advisor. Things Fall Apart was published in hardback on 17 June 1958 with around 2000 print copies. Although the publishers didn't re-edit or copyedit the manuscript, it achieved instant acclaim in the British national press. The Times Literary Supplement said that the novel "genuinely succeeds in presenting tribal life from inside while patterns of feeling and attitudes of mind appear clothed in a distinctive African imagery, written neither up nor down."

Themes

Culture

Things Fall Apart depicts the cultural roots of the Igbos and refers them as a universal principle, which revives the lost dignity of the people during the Colonial Nigeria.

one general point...is fundamental and essential to the appreciation of African issues by Americans. Africans are people in the same way that Americans, Europeans, Asians, and others are people. Although the action of Things Fall Apart takes place in a setting with which most Americans are unfamiliar, the characters are normal people who undergo real life experiences. The necessity even to say this is part of a burden imposed on us by the customary denigration of Africa in the popular imagination of the West.

— Chinua Achebe,

Historians focuses on past African Empires in order to improve the status of African history, but Achebe breaks this pattern by portraying Igbo people as isolated with an established tradition. For example, when the missionaries entered Mbanta, they expected there to be a king. Upon being told there was none, they set up their own ruling system. In Things Fall Apart, there is a contradiction between different cultural practices; for example, the Europeans allow men to fight over religion but the Igbo tradition forbids the killing of one another.

Achebe presents some standard for the Igbo culture while not idealizing the past, like the troubling culture for modern democrats is the law that says Ikemefuna should be killed for the sins of his clans. Although Achebe shows the treachery, ignorance, and intolerance of the British, he doesn't present them as fully evil people. Instead he uses both cultures—British and Igbo—to represent two mixture of human beings as seen in Okonkwo and Mr. Smith, who both refuse to compromise when their cultures are threatened.

Legacy

Influence

Before the publication of Things Fall Apart, most of the novels about Africa were written by Europeans and they portray Africans as savages who were in need of western enlightenment. Things Fall Apart paved way for African culture and it influenced other African writers to write efficiently about the expression of a particular social, historical, and cultural situation of modern Africa.

Achebe portrayes the Igbo society sympathetically, hence, allows his audience to examine the effects of colonialism from a different perspective. He asserted that the popularity of Things Fall Apart in Nigeria can be explained simply that "this was the first time we were seeing ourselves, as autonomous individuals, rather than half-people, or as Conrad would say, 'rudimentary souls'". Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka called the novel as "the first novel in English which spoke from the interior of the African character, rather than portraying the African as an exotic, as the white man would see him."

The language of the novel has not only intrigued critics but has also been a major factor in the emergence of the modern African novel. Because Achebe wrote in English, portrayed Igbo life from the point of view of an African man, and used the language of his people, he was able to greatly influence African novelists, who viewed him as a mentor.

External videos
Discussion on the 50th anniversary on Things Fall Apart featuring Achebe, 24 March 2008, C-SPAN

Achebe's fiction and criticism continue to inspire and influence writers around the world. Hilary Mantel, the Booker Prize-winning novelist in a 7 May 2012 article in Newsweek, "Hilary Mantel's 5 Favorite Historical Fictions", lists Things Fall Apart as one of her five favourite novels in this genre. A whole new generation of African writers – Caine Prize winners Binyavanga Wainaina (current director of the Chinua Achebe Center at Bard College) and Helon Habila (Waiting for an Angel [2004] and Measuring Time [2007]), as well as Uzodinma Iweala (Beasts of No Nation [2005]), and Professor Okey Ndibe (Arrows of Rain [2000]) count Chinua Achebe as a significant influence. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of the popular and critically acclaimed novels Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), commented in a 2006 interview: "Chinua Achebe will always be important to me because his work influenced not so much my style as my writing philosophy: reading him emboldened me, gave me permission to write about the things I knew well."

Things Fall Apart was listed by Encyclopædia Britannica as one of "12 Novels Considered the 'Greatest Book Ever Written'".

The 60th anniversary of the first publication of Things Fall Apart was celebrated at the South Bank Centre in London, UK, on 15 April 2018 with live readings from the book by Femi Elufowoju Jr, Adesua Etomi, Yomi Sode, Lucian Msamati, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Chibundu Onuzo, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Ben Okri, and Margaret Busby.

On 5 November 2019 BBC News listed Things Fall Apart on its list of the 100 most influential novels.

Reception

Things Fall Apart is regarded as a milestone in Anglophone African literature, and for the perception of African literature in the West. It is studied widely in Africa, Europe,and North America, where it has been the subject of secondary and tertiary analytical works. It has been translated to over 50 languages. Time listed the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka described Things Fall Apart as "the first novel in English which spoke from the interior of the African character, rather than portraying the African as an exotic, as the white man would see him." During the 60th anniversary of the novel, it was read at the South Bank Centre in London on 15 April 2018 by Femi Elufowoju Jr, Adesua Etomi, Lucian Msamati, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Chibundu Onuzo, Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Ben Okri, and Margaret Busby.

On 5 November 2019 BBC News listed Things Fall Apart on its list of the 100 most influential novels.

Adaptations

Things Fall Apart was adapted into a radio drama, Okonkwo, by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in April 1961. It featured Nigerian playwright and poet Wole Soyinka in a supporting role. In 1971, the novel was turned into a film of the same name directed by Hansjürgen Pohland and starred Princess Elizabeth of Toro, Johnny Sekka and Orlando Martins. In 1987, The novel was adapted by director, David Orere, into television miniseries broadcast by the Nigerian Television Authority. It starred Pete Edochie as Okonkwo and Justus Esiri as Obierika. Others included Nkem Owoh and Sam Loco Efe in supporting roles.

In 1999, the American hip-hop band the Roots released their fourth studio album Things Fall Apart in reference to Achebe's novel. Also, a theatrical production of Things Fall Apart adapted by Biyi Bandele was performed at the Kennedy Center. In September 2024, a television adaptation was announced to be in development at A24 with Idris Elba and David Oyelowo as the producers.

Bibliography

News and websites

• Okwuego, Oluchi (28 September 2024). "Cast Nigerian Actors in 'Things Fall Apart' Remake – Mike Nliam". Voice of Nigeria. Retrieved 3 February 2025.
• admin (23 July 2024). "Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" makes list of 50 most influential books of all time". TheNiche. Retrieved 3 February 2025.
• Jilani, Sarah (8 June 2023). "Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe and the languages of African literature". The Conversation. Retrieved 3 February 2025.

Journal and books

• "Chinua Achebe of Bard College". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 33 (33): 28–29. Autumn 2001. doi:10.2307/2678893. JSTOR 2678893.
• Rhoads, Diana Akers (1993). "Culture in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart". African Studies Review. 36 (2): 61–72. doi:10.2307/524733. JSTOR 524733.
• Ezenwa-Ohaeto (1997). Chinua Achebe: A Biography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-33342-1. Archived from the original on 9 May 2021. Retrieved 21 March 2023.
• Ochiagha, Terri (20 April 2022). "Chinua Achebe". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.814. ISBN 978-0-19-027773-4.