Silence In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

The confused order of the events that lead up to the death of Ezeudu’s son creates an unbiased and unemotional recounting of the events that pushes the reader to determine for himself what he believes is the emotional effect of the events. Sometime during the incident Achebe tells the reader, “All was silent,” (123) a statement clearly lacking any reference to the time in which it took place. What causes a silence is imperative in determining the emotion in the silence, but without this the reader is pushed to consider for himself what caused the silence, the shock from Okonkwo’s gun exploding, or possibly of the sadness from the realization of the son of Ezudu being killed. To further this point, the sixth sentence of the paragraph reads, “In the center of the crowd a boy lay in a
By stating this line in a manner of fact Achebe removes all emotional weight from the event. With this is mind the reader is forced to project his own reaction to the events onto those who witnessed this tragedy. Lastly Achebe ends the paragraph with, “Okonkwo’s gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierced the boys heart,” (124) an event that clearly takes place before any acknowledgment of the boy’s death. Placing this event at the end of the paragraph gives the statement an overarching nature that implies to the reader that this statement has the ability to summarize the events as a whole. Not only does this statement not possess adjectives,t but Achebe makes the decision to place the verb “had exploded” on Okonwo’s gun rather than on Okonkwo himself. Through this decision Achebe avoids any description of Okonwo’s emotions or actions associatebcqv bq d with the event and thereby urges the reader to decide these things for