The breakup of African tribal society is the subject of [Things Fall Apart]…. This theme has been discussed before with the same melancholy conclusions, but Mr. Achebe's book is distinctive in that most of it concerns African life before any European interference occurs.

Mr. Achebe's hero and his environment are described with care, and no attempt is made to disguise their unlovable aspects. Even by the standards of his own people, Okonkwo is not a particularly attractive man: hard working and a good provider, but overambitious, short tempered, heavy handed, humorless, and self-important. (p. 101)

To Okonkwo's credit, he is honest, conscientious in his civic duties (he has risen to the honorable office of representing one of the ancestral spirits during their masked appearances in public), fond of his wives and children despite his bullying manner, and devoted to his gods. He also has physical courage, although he is short of nerve on moral questions and always takes the easy, conventional way out.

This is the portrait of any ordinary, proper, businesslike citizen, and Mr. Achebe has been very clever in building it up in terms of mud-walled compounds, yams, and human sacrifice…. These affairs permit Mr. Achebe to record the habits, jokes, stories, work, and festivities of the tribesmen in detail, until the structure of their society rises as clearly as his hero's character.

Okonkwo's world is brutal in some respects, very gentle in others, highly organized but quite incapable of contending with jails and policemen. These arrive hard on the heels of the first missionary, and everything is thrown topsy-turvy. Okonkwo, a born conservative, fights for the old gods and is beaten at once. He becomes a paragraph in a projected book on The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger, to be written by a man who does not understand any more about the society he is busily destroying than Okonkwo does about bookkeeping. (p. 102)