Things Fall Apart Essay

9/25/2013

Through the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Adolphe Louis Cureau’s Savage Man in Central Africa, my understanding of the societal underpinnings of African society has heightened greatly. Specifically, colonization of Africa and eurocentrism as it was during the time of the novel are two key ideas conveyed through the texts. These, along with Cureau’s academic writing involving the “biological” differences of Europeans and African individuals help me to understand the complicated misconceptions of how African countries are understood across Europe while fitting with the class discussions pertaining to eurocentrism and the nineteenth century colonization of Africa. As a North-American reader reading Things Fall Apart for the first time, I felt astutely that I had seen, without being asked to make a judgment, how the world made sense to people Umofia, and how the destruction of any element of its world-view threatened the whole fabric of life in which they lived. The Igbo community of Nigeria is the novel’s setting. It is a community with rules, and punishments for those who do not follow them like the majority of modern day societies. The government structure, however, is intertwined with religious concepts and superstition. Africa’s Sokoto Caliphates, those who held both secular and religious power, started becoming more prominent around Africa into the 1800s, as discussed in class.1 Nature also had a profound influence on Nigeria’s culture; the agriculture of the Igbo society was important. Inhabitants used yams for every traditional celebration and kola nuts to offer their “chi” or personal God. These foods, as Achebe described, were also involved with religious or ancestral spirits. Along with this, the narrative Achebe offers us in powerful yet understated prose, this clan’s principle beliefs include definitive roles of each family member. The men were typically overly domineering while the women and children were disciplined through beatings and verbal threats. For a man, polygamy was an important symbol of status. Through the description of these cultural foundations, Achebe recreates for the reader the earlier world of Umuofia in which the people lived in peace and harmony before the arrival of the “white man.”
Okonkwo of the Umofian society, the novel’s protagonist, serves as a visual representation of the standards of success in Igbo society. He becomes a prosperous farmer and a strong man in spite of his lazy father and aspires to embody the social values his people cherish most. As stated by Achebe, “age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.”2 Through his masculine and strong personality, he managed to create a life for himself that would not have been possible otherwise. This fits nicely into the class discussion that
Up until Okonkwo beats his second wife during the week of peace, abiding by the traditions laid out by his peers suited him quite well in regard to achieving Umofia’s standard of success. He soon falters, however, by shooting a gun in the center of Umofia, striking an innocent citizen. Killing an innocent person of one’s tribe is an unforgiveable sin, thus Okonkwo and his family were forced to leave for seven years as punishment. It is during these seven years of absence that Umofia’s way of life turns into a society starkly influenced by European idealism.
Colonialism of Africa, represented by the arrival of white Christian missionaries, caused huge changes in the region. At the start of the 19th century, new beliefs surfaced in Africa. As the Europeans started colonizing Africa, they brought with them different values and the Christian religion, enforcing their values on the people through violence and treats. The Ibo civilization, however, was already rich in culture, tradition, and religion before the Europeans attempted to convert the inhabitants with different values.
What Okonkwo experienced as he returned to his village echoed the concern of many other inhabitants. The white man had interrupted a way of life, and had cultural bias along with foreign ideas of government and how religion and government should co-exist. “But apart from the church, the white men had also brought a government. They had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance.”3 These changes, viewed through the eyes of the white man, were generally positive and were seen as important contributions to Africa’s way of life. Although from Okonkwo’s point of view, this was not the case. To him, it was a violent disruption to the Umofian way of life and the sense of tradition passed down from generation to generation. Eurocentrism refers to how Europeans viewed their specific culture and way of life as superior. They believe that because of their superiority, it was their duty to enlighten the rest of the world. This practice has described as the “white man’s burden” or the civilizing mission.4 Cureau’s article helps to clarify why exactly this is the case. It asserts that biologically, people of African descent have inferior intelligence to those of European decent. He claims that while Europeans are prone to civilized behavior, the “negro’s intellectual progress during first ten or twelve years is rapid; after that it slackens, becomes stationary, then slowly decreases during about fifteen years, finally swift decay supervenes.”5 This biased standpoint seems to be derived from the ethnocentric viewpoint present in Europe at the time. Merely by using the word “savage” in the title, Cureau already casts a dark shadow over the African race. It is no wonder, then, why the colonization of Africa was so easily justified by its invaders. Eurocentric thinking in regard to biological misperceptions created a shroud of ignorance in which colonization of an occupied land could be justified. This white man superiority relates well to the “great chain of being” discussed in class, which is the idea that all ethnicities aside from “white” were ranked below them, and therefore should abide by their specific caste system. 6 This helps me understand that Europeans were not changing Africa to be reckless, but they thought they were doing the right thing.
Through the lens of cultural bias spread around by Cureau, colonization was not desired, but necessary. Mr. Brown, the first missionary from Europe, represents the golden perspective from which Africa should have been seen. He was unbiased, fair, not quick to judge, and allowed inhabitants of Igbo to voice their opinions when there was disagreement. Reverend James Smith, however, represents the cruelty and ignorance that often came with the white man’s arrival, and “saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in a mortal conflict with the songs of darkness.” 7Achebe seems to use the Reverend as a personification of how evil Europe’s occupation of Africa was, and seems to assert that his “black and white” thinking in regard to Africa is detrimental to understanding its culture.
Reverend James Smith’s attitude toward the African natives seen through the lens of Cureau’s research helps me to understand why Africa was misperceived by Europe, while clarifying the dangers involved in what we think it means to “help” Africa. It seems as if through generations of deceit and incorrect scientific research, Europeans had convinced themselves that imposing their culture onto Africa was something that must be done. However, Africa already had its own defined purpose and beliefs, and therein lays the danger of colonization. By portraying the perspective of Okonkwo’s return to Umofia, Achebe helps me to understand how forced change severely altered the culture and tradition of African societies during the 19th century colonial period. This novel supplements the class discussions on eurocentrism and the colonialization period in a way that makes Africa’s history more authentic to me as I continue to expand my knowledge of the continent.