ACHEBE, CHINUA (November 16, 1930-- ), Nigerian novelist, writes: "I was born in Ogidi in Eastern Nigeria of christian parents. The line between christian and non-christian was much more definite in our village thirty years ago than it is today. When I was growing up I remember we tended to look down on the others. We were called in our language 'the people of the church,' and we called the others--with the conceit appropriate to followers of a higher religion--'the people of nothing.'
    "Thinking about it today I am not so sure that it isn't they who ought to have been looking down on us for our apostasy. But the bounties of the christian God were not to be taken lightly--education, paid jobs and other things that nobody in his right senses can look down upon. In fairness I should add that the new faith stood and stood firmly for certain civilized standards of behaviour; it said, for instance, that twins were not evil and must no longer be destroyed.
    "My father joined the new faith as a young man and eventually became an evangelist and church teacher. His maternal grandfather who had brought him up (his own parents having died early) was a man of note in the village. From all accounts he had a strong sense of humour. He had received the first missionaries in his own compound, but after a few days sent them packing again for their doleful singing. Said he, 'My neighbours might think it was my funeral dirge.' But in the end he did not stop my father joining them; the old fellow also had foresight.
    "I was baptized Albert Chinualumogu. I dropped the tribute to Victorian England when I went to university, although some early acquaintances (e.g. my mother) still call me by it. The second name which in the manner of my people is a full-length philosophical statement I curtailed into something more businesslike.
    "I have always been fond of stories and intrigued by language--first my mother tongue, Ibo, and later English which I began to learn at about the age of eight.
    "I did not know I was going to be a writer because I had no notion that such beings existed until relatively late. The folk stories my mother and elder sister told us had the immemorial quality of the sky and the forests and the rivers. Later at school I got to know that the European stories we read were written by Europeans--the same fellows who made all the other marvellous things like the motor-car. We didn't come into it at all. We made nothing that wasn't primitive and heathenish.
    "The nationalist movement after the Second World War brought about a mental revolution which began to reconcile us to ourselves. We saw suddenly that we had a story to tell.
    "At the university I read some appalling European novels about Africa (like Joyce Cary's much praised Mister Johnson) and realized that our story could not be told for us by anyone else no matter how gifted or well-intentioned.
    "Although I did not consciously set about it in that way my first book, Things Fall Apart, was an act of atonement with my past, the homage of a prodigal son.
    "But things do happen fast here. I had hardly begun to bask in the sunshine of reconciliation when a new cloud appeared. Political independence had come; the nationalist leader of yesterday (with whom it was not difficult to make common cause) became today the not-so-attractive party boss--or worse. It seems I shall never know real peace."

 Chinua Achebe is widely regarded as the most accomplished of the many African novelists now writing in English and is certainly one of the most successful: his first novel has sold half a million copies*. His theme, as the titles of his books often suggest, is the conflict of old and new ways of life in Africa, a conflict which his own life experience typically reflects. He was educated first at the village school provided by the Church Missionary Society, where his father taught, then at the Government Secondary School at Umuahia, and at the University College of Ibadan, where he studied English literature, and became one of the first generation of graduates in 1953. In 1954 Achebe began work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service as talks producer, and in 1961 he was appointed director of external broadcasting, a post which took him frequently abroad. In 1966 he became chairman of the Society of Nigerian Authors and a member of the Council of the University of Lagos.

    At a conference on Commonwealth literature held in Leeds in 1964, Achebe commented on his motivation as an artist: "It would be foolish," he said, "to pretend that we have fully recovered from the traumatic effects of our first confrontation with Europe.... I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past--with all its imperfections--was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them. Perhaps what I write is applied art as distinct from pure. But who cares? Art is important but so is education of the kind I have in mind. And I don't see that the two need be mutually exclusive."
    Things Fall Apart, Achebe's first--and in the opinion of many his finest--novel, deals with the traumatic encounter itself. It is set in Umuofia, an Ibo village, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and involves two intertwined tragedies: the personal tragedy of Okonkwo, who lives his life strictly according to the tribal code; and the public tragedy of his village, which hands down its collective wisdom from generation to generation but is defeated, when the white man comes, by its inability to deal with a situation without precedent.

*According to Random House, worldwide, there are eight million copies in print in fifty different languages of Things Fall Apart

- Biography from World Authors 1950-1970 (1975), published by The H.W. Wilson Company

Wednesday, March 19, 7 p.m.

Carl Fields Center, 86 Olden Street, Princeton University will host this discussion let by Simon Gikandi, professor of English at Princeton. No registration required.

1. Traditional societies are often thought to be generally free of internal conflicts about values, and to be fixed and essentially unchanging over time. What aspects of the society depicted in Things Fall Apart might resist those assumptions?

2. When Europeans arrive in Okonkwo's village, one result is a new kind of government and a new kind of law. How do the new legal and governmental practices and institutions differ from those that preceded them? Are the changes good, bad, or something more complicated, and why?

3. Okonkwo's self-understanding is deeply bound up with his need to affirm and protect what he thinks of as his "manliness." What are the main features of Okonkwo's view of masculinity, and how does his view relate to that of other important characters in the novel?

4. Our own news media pre-programs us to view the kind of culture clash represented here as being purely racial in basis. Does Achebe's work impress as being primarily concerned with black versus white tensions? If not, what else is going on here?

5. What should we make of the role of women in the novel? Are the female characters just dispensable appendages of the male characters in the story? Of Ezinma, Okonkwo thinks: "She should have been a boy." Why is it necessary to the story that Okonkwo's most favored child be a girl?

6. Stories and storytelling play a central role in the novel. What are some of the most important aspects of that role, for instance, in the preservation of social customs, and the shaping of individual identities?

7. Okonkwo's friend Obierika is described as "a man who thought about things" (125). What does Obierika think about, and how does that reflection ultimately put him at odds with Okonkwo?

8. An epic hero, like Odysseus, is typically set apart from other characters by his capacity to endure many trials and tests. A tragic hero, like Hamlet or Oedipus, is typically a man of consequence brought down by an insuperable conflict, or through his own weakness. Is Okonkwo an epic hero, a tragic hero, or is he a hero at all?

9. It is said of Okonkwo at one point that "Clearly his personal god or chi was not made for great things. A man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi. The saying of the elders was not true-that if a man said yea his chi also affirmed. Here was a man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation." (131). How should we understand the roles of fate and individual responsibility in the novel in light of the role that the Ibo notion of chi plays throughout the story?

10. In "English and the African Writer," Achebe writes that his work represents "a new voice coming out of Africa, speaking of African experience in a world-wide language." What features of the novel embody this ambition? Do they help or hinder Achebe's attempt to make the world depicted in the novel accessible to a broad audience?

11. An important assumption in the novel is the close connection between an individual's action and the communal fate of all. Okonkwo is told by the priest of the earth goddess, Ani, "The evil you have done can ruin the whole clan." (30) Does this explain why, strong willed as he is, Okonkwo accepts without question the communal sanctions prescribed for his misdeeds?

12. The title of the novel is derived from the William Butler Yeats poem entitled The Second Coming, concerned with the second coming of Christ. The completed line reads: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." What layers of meaning are discernible when this completed line is applied to the story?

Agbala (Ahg-bah-lah): The Oracle of the Hills and the Caves, who influences all aspects of Umuofian life, based on the real Oracle at Awka, who controlled Igbo life for centuries.

Chielo (Chee-eh-loh): A village widow who is also the priestess of Agbala.

Ekwefi (Eh-kweh-fee): Okonkwo's second wife; the mother of Ezinma, her only living child.

Nwoye (Nuh-woh-yeh): Okonkwo's oldest son, age twelve at the book's beginning.

Booker, M. Keith, ed. The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press, 2003.

Ezenwa-Ohaeto. "Chinua Achebe: A Biography"

Gikandi Simon. "Reading Chinua Achebe"

Killam, G.D. The novels of Chinua Achebe, 1969. Non-F 896.309 Kil

Lindfors, Bernth, ed. Conversations with Chinua Achebe, c1997. Non-F 823 Ach

"Chinua Achebe"  Dictionary of Literary Biography.  The Gale Group, 1992.  Available through Literature Resource Center

"Chinua Achebe"  Contemporary Black Biography.  Gale Research, 2007.  Available through Biography Resource Center

Things Fall Apart ; With an Introduction By Kwame Anthony Appiah, (1958) 1992
F Ach

No Longer At Ease, (1960) 1994
F Ach

Arrow Of God, (1964) 1989
F Ach

A Man Of The People, (1966) 1989
F Ach

Chike And The River; With Drawings By Prue Theobalds, 1966
F Ach

Girls At War and Other Stories, 1973
F Ach

Anthills Of The Savannah, 1987
F Ach

Hopes And Impediments : Selected Essays, (1988) 1990
Non-F 809 Ach

Home And Exile, 2000
Non-F 818 Ach

Collected Poems, 2004
Non-F 821.914 Ach

Review: [untitled]
Mercedes Mackay
Reviewed Work(s): Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
African Affairs, Vol. 57, No. 228 (Jul., 1958), pp. 242-243
Stable URL
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Chinua Achebe and the Invention of African Culture  

Simon Gikandi
Research in African Literatures, Vol. 32, No. 3, Nationalism (Autumn, 2001), pp. 3-8
Stable URL
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Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe: Two Antipodal Portraits of Africa
Clement Abiaziem Okafor
Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Sep., 1988), pp. 17-28
Stable URL
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Culture in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Diana Akers Rhoads
African Studies Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Sep., 1993), pp. 61-72
Stable URL
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The White Man's Faith; THINGS FALL APART. By Chinua Achebe. 215 pp. New York: McDowell, Obolensky. $3.75.
Selden Rodman. New York Times. New York, N.Y.: Feb 22, 1959. p. BR28 (1 page)

Abani, Chris. Graceland, 2004

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Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus: A Novel, 2003

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Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of the Yellow Sun, 2006

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Habila, Helon. Measuring Time: A Novel, 2007

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Kessler, Cristina. No Condition is Permanent, 2000 (Grades 9 and up)

YA F Kes

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poinsonwood Bible, 1999

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Larson, Charles R., ed. Opaque Shadows and Other Stories from Contemprary Africa, 1976

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Naidoo, Beverley. Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope, 2003 (Grades 5-7)

YA F Nai

Obradovic, Nadezda, ed. African Rhapsody: Shtors Stories of the Contemporary African Experience; with a foreword by Chinua Achebe, 1994

Non-F 808.83 Afr

Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country, 1948

F Pat