The phrase “cultural violence” need not refer only to violence between people of different cultures. It can also refer to violence that is encouraged by the beliefs and traditions of a given culture and practiced upon its own members. “Cultural violence” used in this sense would include ritual sacrifices, punishments for crimes, and other kinds of communally sanctioned violence. Often, the communal sanction given to acts of violence springs from unexamined assumptions and contradictions within the culture and shared by a majority of its members. This insight, I will argue, is a major theme of Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart, one of the most influential fictional statements on violence in a colonial setting. Although Achebe powerfully criticizes the violence of British colonial practices, the British do not enter the picture until after Achebe has explored the internal workings of Igbo culture. The main character, Okonkwo, is frequently violent, but Achebe's statements about the relations of culture to violence are better seen in the actions and beliefs of the group as a whole. Since the majority of Igbo in the novel tend to be less violent than Okonkwo, those forms of violence they do condone and enact are especially revealing of the widespread cultural forces that foster violence. I will argue that two of these cultural forces are particularly important to Achebe. One is the community's tendency to forget, selectively and temporarily, certain defining principles of its culture, so that contradictions arise between specific practices and general beliefs. The other is what Simon Gikandi has called “the Achilles heel in the Igbo epistemology,” that is, “its blindness [to], or refusal to contemplate, its own ethnocentrism” (1991, 38). Even violence internal to the culture is often conceptualized in terms of ethnocentric distinctions between insiders and outsiders, borders and borders crossings.

In one scene early in the novel, Achebe shows the Igbos' capacity for self-consciousness regarding violence within their culture when he reveals that some violent traditions have been changed. After Okonkwo pays his fine for breaking the Week of Peace, one of the oldest men in the village reflects on the way things used to be done. Ezeudu says, “in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. But after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve” (1959, 33). This brief passage leads us to several important issues at stake in the novel. We are told that the custom of killing offenders changed not because of a gradual and unconscious evolution, not because of personal favoritism toward an offender, but because the practice violated a principle the people wanted to uphold: “because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve.” This tells us that the change was conscious and was based on an analysis of the congruence between principle and practice. Since the very existence of the Week of Peace expresses the principle that violence is an affront to the earth, the punishment for violations needs to express the same general principle or there is contradiction. In this case, violence resulted from an unexamined contradiction that was later revealed and rooted out. At a certain point, it occurred to enough people that it made no sense to enforce a rule of non-violence with violence. What are the conditions of possibility for such a cultural change? First, a majority of people must have the freedom and the desire to analyze their traditions for moral and logical consistency. Second, they must see the general principles involved as more valuable than specific rituals or traditions. A culture that already has some violent traditions will tend to keep them as long as its highest priority is the preservation of tradition for its own sake. Finally, people must believe that changing inconsistent traditions makes them stronger as a people, that cultural change is not the same as cultural decay. In the case of the Week of Peace punishment, the change in the tradition is really toward a more perfect expression of the principle behind the tradition.

This example shows that in the not-too-distant past the conditions for questioning and constructive change of violent traditions were present in Igbo society. We might even say that there was a tradition of analyzing and adjusting certain traditions within the culture. If the Igbo, as depicted in the novel, fail to make changes in other areas where there are contradictions between principle and practice, then, it cannot be because such change is impossible. Through this brief example, Achebe establishes that violence is not an inherent feature of Igbo society or a necessary consequence of its religious beliefs. If change is always possible, then we must look at other cases of violence in the novel in terms of what forces inhibit or encourage analysis and change.

One of the most important examples of culturally sanctioned violence is the killing of Ikemefuna. Most critics agree that it is a mistake for Okonkwo to participate in this killing because of his special relationship to Ikemefuna (Taylor 1983, 20–21), but many fail to ask why the oracle and elders sanction this violence in the first place (Udumukwu 1991, 333; Obiechina 1991, 35). Some critics attempt to justify the killing as part of accepted practice among the Igbo (Rhoads 1993, 68; Cobham 1991, 95), and argue that condemnations of the killing inappropriately apply Western standards of humanism (Opata 1987, 75–76; Hawkins 1991, 83). Few seem to have noticed that the novel itself teaches us how to critique this incident on the basis of principle. The crime for which the people of Mbaino are punished is the killing of a woman from Umuofia. If there is a general principle operating here and not simply a policy of selfish revenge, it would be that villagers should not kill aliens or visitors in their midst. For Umuofia to punish this crime by taking a boy from Mbaino into their midst and killing him is to violate the very principle they would appear to be enforcing, thereby spoiling the peace they meant to preserve (Wright 1990, 79; Innes 1990, 29).

This objection to Ikemefuna's killing would apply no matter what person from Mbaino was taken as a hostage. When we learn that the hostage is the son of one of the murderers, a second principle comes into play. In one of his “ethnographic” generalizations about the Igbo culture (Gikandi 1991, 46), the narrator explains Okonkwo's rise to prominence by saying: “Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father” (Achebe 1959, 11). The ethnographic mode here claims to describe a general principle held by all the people, a central tenet or defining feature of their culture. This tenet seems related to the ability to question and change traditions mentioned above, for it asserts that the members of each generation are entitled to a fresh evaluation of their own merits. Neither worth nor worthlessness should be passed on automatically from father to son; rather, the process of “passing on” is to be interrupted by analysis, just as in the case of the Week of Peace punishment the passing on of a violent custom was interrupted by an analysis of its merits and drawbacks. Okonkwo personally benefits from the fact that this principle is widespread among his people, for it allows him to start with a “clean slate” without being held back by his father's failures. The narrator goes on to connect the principle explicitly with Okonkwo's relation to Ikemefuna. “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. Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders. And that was how he came to look after the doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by their neighbors to avoid war and bloodshed” (1959, 12; italics added). Because Okonkwo is not judged according to his father's worth, he becomes so respected in the clan that he is chosen to carry the threat of war to Mbaino and then chosen to keep Ikemefuna in his household. A great irony begins to emerge, however, when we read in the next chapter that Ikemefuna is selected as a hostage precisely because “his father had taken a hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia” (1959, 18). The boy himself is innocent of any wrongdoing but he is not selected at random from the young men of the village. He is judged according to the worth of his father, in direct contradiction of the principle in which we are told “these people” believe. Their attempt to bring about justice seems, according to their own most basic beliefs, to have created a new injustice. The original intent may have been to punish Ikemefuna's father by taking his precious son away from him, but the separation clearly punishes the son as well. At first Ikemefuna is afraid and tries to run away, then he refuses to eat and is ill for three weeks (1959, 29–30). Ikemefuna must feel like a slave or captive at this point, yet he is not guilty except insofar as he is tainted by his father's guilt. Is there any way to explain this contradiction in Igbo practice between the principle that worth is not tied to the father and the treatment of Ikemefuna? Is it intention or unwitting irony that the son who is being punished for his father's crime is placed under the care of a man who is conspicuous for not being judged by his father?

Answers to these questions are complicated by the fact that the elders of the clan seem to forget about Ikemefuna altogether for three years. During this time, Ikemefuna overcomes his sadness and fear and begins to enjoy life in Okonkwo's family. His natural liveliness makes him popular with Okonkwo's other children, especially Nwoye (Achebe 1959, 30). Okonkwo himself grows so fond of Ikemefuna that he allows him special privileges, such as carrying his stool to village meetings, and in return Ikemefuna expresses his affection by calling Okonkwo “father” (1959, 30). For three years, then, the story of Ikemefuna is a study in human adaptability. As a stranger in a village where he has no blood ties and where customs, songs, and stories are slightly different (1959, 36), Ikemefuna is able to adjust to the new conditions quite successfully. Likewise, Okonkwo and the other villagers adjust to his alien presence, giving no outward indication (until the oracle's decision) of latent animosity towards Ikemefuna for his father's crime. In transferring his affections and obedience to a new “father,” Ikemefuna is like the religious converts later in the novel who take on a new god. His conversion may be forced, but is no less genuine for that.

The success of Ikemefuna's integration into the community makes his execution all the more puzzling. What exactly is the oracle's motive? Ikemefuna's father's punishment cannot be increased by the killing since his son is equally lost to him whether dead or alive, so it does not further the cause of peace by deterring violence. If Ikemefuna had acted like a misfit in Umuofia, the decision could be seen as an admission that the attempt to incorporate him into the clan had failed, but Achebe does not allow this interpretation, either. There is no event or disaster preceding the decision to suggest that the Umuofians feared they were being punished by the gods for delaying the sacrifice. And after three years, emotions are cooled so that even revenge is not a likely motive. Indeed, Achebe's point seems to be that there is no clear and conscious motivation for the killing. Here is a case that cries out for the sort of analysis that led to the change in punishments for the Week of Peace, yet no one seems to notice that the killing violates two basic principles of Igbo culture: the prohibition against killing strangers, and the belief that sons should not be judged by their fathers' worth. These unexamined contradictions give birth to the culturally sanctioned violence against Ikemefuna. Achebe provides readers with enough evidence to critique the killing according to the internal standards of the community itself.

If the conditions for change are present in Igbo tradition, why are they not active in Ikemefuna's case? I would suggest that the very success of Ikemefuna's conversion or assimilation is a key factor in the meaning of this incident. Over the course of three years, Ikemefuna's status in Umuofia becomes more and more ambiguous. Is he an alien or a son of Okonkwo, a sacrificial victim awaiting execution or just another boy of the village? By the time he is killed, Ikemefuna has become a symbol of blurred boundaries between self and other. The oracle's decision suggests that the community is willing to tolerate such ambiguous status only up to a point and only for so long. Once the limit of tolerance is reached, the matter is settled by identifying Ikemefuna once and for all as an alien, a hostage, rather than an adopted son. Whatever its conscious motivation, the killing of Ikemefuna is in effect a denunciation of the adaptation process, a reminder that in the oracle's and the elders' minds, Ikemefuna can never be accepted no matter how well-liked or well-assimilated he may be. When Ezeudu says to Okonkwo, “That boy calls you father” (Achebe 1959, 55; italics added), his phrase highlights both the extent of Ikemefuna's conversion and its futility in the “official” view of the elders. Pretending that Okonkwo is his father has become second nature to the boy, Ezeudu seems to say, but this is finally only pretense and it can go on no longer. When seen as a story about adaptation and rejection, the story of Ikemefuna is thematically parallel to the later parts of the novel involving the alien presence of Christians and British officers. The oracle declares that the alien boy should not be assimilated and must be attacked, taking the same sort of hard-line stance Okonkwo later takes regarding the alien presence of the whites and their religion.

The full irony of the oracle's attempt to enforce a communal boundary appears only when we look at its consequences. As is well known, Ikemefuna's killing is so emotionally devastating to Nwoye that he becomes alienated from both his father and his culture (Innes 1990, 29). When this happens he is a prime candidate for conversion to Christianity, whose preaching, says the narrator, “seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul—the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed” (Achebe 1959, 137). By showing the causes of Nwoye's interest in Christianity, Achebe shows that the attempt to strengthen boundaries between “us” and “others” actually weakens those very boundaries. The attempt to squelch Ikemefuna's conversion hastens Nwoye's conversion.

Another case of inherited guilt accompanied by a fear of permeable boundaries can be seen in the community's treatment of its osu, or outcasts. The narrator tells us that an osu is “a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart—a taboo for ever, and his children after him” (Achebe 1959, 146). That osu is an hereditary category means that, like the punishment of Ikemefuna, its existence violates the general principle that sons should not be judged according to the worth of their fathers. Furthermore, although osu are natives of the village, every effort is made to treat them as permanent strangers or outsiders. The osu “could neither marry nor be married by the freeborn. He was in fact an outcast, living in a special area of the village, close to the Great Shrine. Wherever he went he carried with him the mark of his forbidden caste—long, tangled and dirty hair” (1959, 146). These rules about marriage, residence, and appearance mean that osu can never be fully assimilated, either biologically or socially, into village life; clear boundaries are set up indicating the communal fear of ambiguous status. Although Ikemefuna is not placed in the category of osu when he arrives, these details shed light on his case, for he is killed at the very moment when he threatens to lose the marks of his otherness, something the osu are required by law to preserve. “He had become wholly absorbed into his new family,” says the narrator at the beginning of chapter seven, “he was like an elder brother to Nwoye” (1959, 51). Since it is later in the same chapter that the intent to kill Ikemefuna is announced, we are invited to conclude that his successful merging with the community may be precisely what sparks the oracle's decision.

In the context of a discussion of cultural boundaries and their permeability, the fact that Ikemefuna's story is also a version of the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac becomes very interesting. Many critics have noticed this allusion but few have discussed its significance as a cross-cultural literary gesture (Cobham 1991, 95; Bascom 1988, 71). The Biblical parallel, the novel's title, and other Western allusions in the novel show that it was part of Achebe's plan to create an intertextual work, one that would to some extent blur the boundary between African and Western literature. The allusion to Abraham and Isaac occurs at the very moment when Achebe's characters are trying to reassert a cultural boundary. The act of rejecting the assimilated alien, Ikemefuna, takes literary form as a textual assimilation of an alien (non-Igbo) religious text. The parallel helps to clarify Achebe's own position when we see that he is doing in the very act of telling the story what the characters in the story fail to do socially, that is, accepting the alien as something that can add strength and value (Ikemefuna's name means “let my strength not become lost”). Just as important, however, is the fact that the Biblical text is changed as it is digested. The god asks Okonkwo to relinquish not his own son but an adopted son from another village. This difference complicates the meaning of obedience in the story, for in this context to obey is both a gift to the god and a continuation of a conflict between rival villages; in other words, both an act of love and an act of hate. Furthermore, the violation of cultural principles involved calls the oracle's judgment into question in a way that does not apply to the Biblical text. In what sense can the oracle be said to “speak for” the group or to carry absolute authority when its words are in direct opposition to other revered elements in the culture? For Achebe, blind obedience to the god, whether by Okonkwo or the other elders, is not necessarily the wisest course, as it is for Abraham. Remember that Obierika, the “man who thought about things” (Achebe 1959, 117), is the one elder who stays away from the killing even though he has no fatherly tie to the boy (1959, 64). The two stories side by side show the different ways in which divine authority can be textualized as either absolute or limited depending on how a narrative is structured. The biblical text presents God's judgment as unquestionably right and Abraham's faith as laudable, whereas in Achebe's story such faith is neither demanded nor particularly useful (see Jeyifo 1990, 57–61). Achebe's use of an alien text, then, provides an implicit criticism of the Igbo rejection of the alien without holding the Western example up as better; in short, it is Achebe's act of inclusion with critical scrutiny, not Abraham's act of obedience, that is most important here.

Further illumination of the logic of cultural violence is provided by the Igbo traditions regarding the ogbanje, children who torment their parents by dying and returning only to die again. In the Igbo belief system, ogbanje (the word means “repeater” [Uchendu 1965, 102]) such as Okonkwo's daughter, Ezinma, are seen as travelers between the spirit world and the world of the living. Ekwefi's series of dead children is described as the “evil rounds of birth and death” (Achebe 1959, 76) of a single soul or identity. When Ezinma reaches the age of six, her parents believe that “perhaps she had decided to stay” (1959, 76), yet her recurring bouts of illness raise the fear that she will depart again. Since the ogbanje is imagined as a traveler, it is subject to the same cultural anxieties about border crossing that we have seen in the other examples and, as in the other examples, these anxieties are expressed through ritual interventions. In the case of ogbanje, however, there are two possible ritual responses, each performed by a medicine man and each relying upon different principles and methods. The first attempts to use violence to intimidate the ogbanje spirit into stopping its cycle of reincarnations. This is the method Okonkwo and Ekwefi try after the death of their third child, Onwumbiko. The medicine man mutilates the body of the child with a razor and drags it away to the Evil Forest. “After such treatment it would think twice before coming again, unless it was one of the stubborn ones who returned, carrying the stamp of their mutilation—a missing finger or perhaps a dark line where the medicine man's razor had cut them” (1959, 75). The principle or theory underlying this approach is that violence is a strong deterrent to future harm. The ogbanje is classified as an enemy and physically attacked. Notice, however, that the cultural sanction for this violence also comes with a disclaimer. Mutilation ought to scare the ogbanje away for good unless it is “one of the stubborn ones” who respond to violence not by staying away but by strengthening their resolve. As Achebe describes it, in other words, the belief system that condones the violent approach includes an awareness that violence may not produce the desired result and may even backfire.

Okonkwo and Ekwefi engage the second ritual option, the search for the buried iyi-uwa, after Ezinma has almost died from a serious illness at the age of nine. More elaborate than the mutilation ritual, this option receives a lengthy description from Achebe indicating its importance to the overall design of the novel. A medicine man asks Ezinma where she buried her iyi-uwa and encourages her to lead him to the exact spot. All of the family and some of the neighbors participate as spectators of the search, quietly and cheerfully following Ezinma as she takes them on a long journey into the bush and back home to Okonkwo's compound (Achebe 1959, 77–79). The journeying of the ritual recapitulates the ogbanje's habitual wandering while reducing its power to hurt because the family and neighbors—the very people who would be most grieved if Ezinma were to die—actually go along on the journey. The ritual thus produces travel without departure. It also casts Ezinma in the role of leader of the group, making her own decisions about direction and destination despite the presence of her elders. As Achebe says, her “feeling of importance was manifest in her sprightly walk” as she playfully runs, stops, doubles back, while “the crowd followed her silently” (1959, 78). Cultivating this “feeling of importance” may in fact be the main function of the ritual, for Ezinma's “sprightly walk” is the sign of a link between a person's physical symptoms and how s/he feels about her/his relationship to (or position in) the community. If the Igbo believe in such a link (even if none “actually” exists), it would explain how a ritual like this is supposed to work to stop the ogbanje's cycle of illness and death. Making a child feel important, welcome, and valued, (the theory goes) would produce a sprightliness, a vigor, and therefore a tendency toward healthiness. Conversely, a child treated with suspicion and fear that s/he might be an ogbanje or, worse, one of the “really evil children,” would tend to feel unwelcome and depressed. The medicine man's demeanor also serves the ritual's goal of cultivating social bonds. Throughout the scene his voice is described as “cool,” “confident,” and “quiet” (1959, 77, 79). When Okonkwo fumes at Ezinma with threats such as “if you bring us all this way for nothing I shall beat sense into you” (1959, 78), Okagbue, the medicine man, restores calm: “I have told you to let her alone. I know how to deal with them” (1959, 78). Okonkwo's repeated outbursts threaten to turn this ritual into a version of the mutilation ritual, but Okagbue holds his ground and will allow no intimidation or violence. Characteristically, Okonkwo does not see that the spirit and method here are entirely different and fails to understand the power of gentleness.

The two main rituals that constitute the Igbo response to ogbanje—the mutilation of the dead child and the search for the iyi-uwa—offer violent and non-violent approaches to the same problem. Both rituals are designed to settle the ogbanje child's ambiguous status by resolving its continual crossing of boundaries between worlds into either permanent absence or permanent residence. Suspicion and fear of the traveler motivate the violent approach and intimidation is its method. The non-violent approach, by contrast, uses kindness to disarm the child's power to torment and requires tolerance and flexibility from the group. In my reading of the iyi-uwa scene, it is not the finding of the buried object that matters most but the relationship between child and community that is set up in and through the journey. The large number of “spectators” who participate and the medicine man's gentle manner help to stress the ritual's function of communal inclusion. The ritual is designed not to scare the child away but to break its “bond with the world of ogbanje” (Achebe 1959, 77) by forging new and unbreakable ties to the world of the village, especially the extended family and neighbors. Notice, however, that Achebe does not suggest that the non-violent method is any more or less effective at controlling disease than the violent one, for both methods sometimes fail (1959, 75, 77) and Ezinma gets sick even after her iyi-uwa is found. The main point for my purposes lies in the cultural beliefs about principle and method expressed in the two different practices. That the Igbo have no one consistent approach towards the ogbanje is a measure of the complexity and variety its traditions can accommodate. The very existence of the second option demonstrates that the community constructs and endorses alternatives to violence and, more specifically, non-violent ways of dealing with those perceived as strangers or dangers in their midst.

Suspicion of hybrid cases and border crossings, of course, extends to the British as well. One of the clearest examples of this is Mr. Smith, the missionary. Unlike Mr. Brown, whose “policy of compromise and accommodation” (Achebe 1959, 169) had brought many converts into the Christian churches and schools, Mr. Smith “saw things as black and white” (1959, 169). He is intolerant of converts who lack a complete understanding of Christian doctrine or who retain some of their Igbo religious beliefs along with the Christian. Achebe demonstrates Smith's intolerance by describing one of his earliest acts among the Igbo:

Within a few weeks of his arrival in Umuofia Mr. Smith suspended a young woman from the church for pouring new wine into old bottles. This woman had allowed her husband to mutilate her dead child. … Four times this child had run its evil round. And so it was mutilated to discourage it from returning.

Mr. Smith was filled with wrath when he heard of this. He disbelieved the story which even some of the most faithful confirmed, the story of really evil children who were not deterred by mutilation, but came back with all the scars.

(Achebe 1959, 169–70)

The woman's husband uses intimidation to try to banish the spirit of the ogbanje from their household. Mr. Smith's response is to be “filled with wrath” and to suspend the woman from the household of the church. As a convert, the woman is a border-crosser like the ogbanje and her tolerance of the mutilation ritual tells Smith that she has not left the Igbo world completely. The metaphor of new wine in old bottles shows how suspicious Smith is of people who live in two worlds at once. Apparently, however, the irony of his response is completely lost on Mr. Smith himself. He does not see that he is acting on the same principle as the woman's husband—that intimidation deters future injury—and that he is therefore in essence performing a version of the ritual he claims to disapprove. Why is Smith so blind to the implications of his own actions? I would argue that it is because he has not learned to analyze human behavior in terms of the principles it expresses. Smith objects to the use of the mutilation ritual not because he rejects intimidation as a tactic (which he clearly does not) but because it is an Igbo practice and not a Christian one. He is thinking in terms of loyalty or disloyalty to specific cultures and not in terms of underlying principles, and this leads him to fall into the trap of self-contradictory action. Interestingly, some of the “most faithful” of his own congregation try to warn him of this. When these faithful Christians tell him “the story of really evil children who were not deterred by mutilation, but came back with all the scars,” he simply disbelieves it without hearing the implied warning it carries. The point of the story is that those who use intimidation may see their actions backfire, and this applies as much to Smith's “wrath” as it does to the woman's husband. Smith does not have to believe in the literal existence of ogbanje to get this message from the story, but he does have to be willing to submit himself and his culture to scrutiny.

Achebe encourages in his readers the sort of analysis that leads to positive cultural change by pinpointing contradictions between principle and practice that alienate members of a community and lead to violence. Using traditions of violence as examples, he also makes the more general point that the moral principles expressed in cultural practices are more important than the specific practices themselves. The stories of Ikemefuna, Nwoye, and Ezinma, along with several smaller episodes, are thematically linked by notions of conversion, assimilation, and the crossing of boundaries. In a subtle but persistent way, Achebe shows that victims of violence and oppression are often conceptualized as hybrids or ambiguous cases, suggesting that one of the main underlying motives for violence among the Igbo is fear of the instability believed to result from the blurring of familiar categories. The irony is that this fear of instability is itself a source of instability.

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