The novels of Chinua Achebe, the best of the new generation of West Africans writing in English,¹ begin with the coming of the white man to the bush and end in contemporary Lagos, and show the process of moral and cultural disintegration that results from colonialism. The novels reveal the changing perspectives of each succeeding generation, which have also been described by the Nigerian leader Awolowo before independence: "Our grandfathers with unbonded gratitude adored the British. . . . Our immediate fathers simply toed the line. We of today are critical, unappreciative, and do not feel that we owe any debt of gratitude to the British. The younger elements in our group are extremely cynical, and cannot understand why Britain is in Nigeria."² Achebe's first and best novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), re-interprets the European view of African culture and history prevalent since the zenith of imperialism. Basil Davidson declares that "Even within the last ten years the former Governor of Nigeria could write that 'for centuries, while all the pageant of history swept by, the African remained unmoved—in primitive savagery'. . . This belief that Africans had lived in universal chaos or stagnation . . . [was] exceedingly convenient in imperial times"³ and provided the necessary justification for conquest and exploitation. This historical view is still voiced today by such prominent men as Sir Alan Burns, former Governor-General of the Gold Coast and author of a standard history of Nigeria, who continues in the antiquated though unbroken tradition of Lugard's pronouncement—"the Animism and Fetish of the pagan represent no system of ethics and no principles of conduct"⁴—and who asserts of pre-colonial Nigeria:

in the bad old days under tyrannical indigenous rulers the unfortunate peasants had no chance to cultivate their land properly and little opportunity to reap for their own benefit what they had sown. . . . Free men also suffered from the cruelty and rapacity of indigenous rulers. They were liable, at the whim of a chief or through the instigation of a fetish-priest, to indescribable tortures and brutal punishments. Trade was hampered by bad communications and the depredations of robbers and pirates who plundered and murdered peaceful traders. Tribal warfare caused much loss of life and destruction of property.⁵

The two corollaries of this historical misconception are Burns' claim that "the inhabitants of these [African] territories as a whole stood aside during the fighting and willingly accepted British rule," and the traditional "defense of colonies"—"At its lowest assessment British rule was the lesser of two evils."⁶

We have put a stop to slavery and human sacrifice, we have checked the cruelty and corruption of indigenous rulers, we have stamped out certain diseases and reduced the incidence of others, we have brought a measure of education to people who were generally illiterate. We have developed backward countries by the construction of roads and railways, we have opened up mines and improved on the primitive agriculture of the past. We have allowed trade to develop under the protection of a firm administration.⁷

The patronizing and self-righteous speech of Achebe's District Commissioner echoes Burns' claim:

we have brought a peaceful administration to your people so that you may be happy. If any man ill-treats you we shall come to your rescue. But we will not allow you to ill-treat others. We have a court of law where we judge cases and administer justice just as it is done in my own country under a great queen.⁸

This speech illustrates the central defect of British rule: a cultural ethnocentrism that denies the validity, and even the existence, of African customs, law and morality. The DC employs court messengers who are both brutal and corrupt, and judges cases in total ignorance. He does not understand African customs, for, as one elder asks, "How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad" (p. 160).

One of the themes of this novel is the need for cultural relativity, which the Africans possess but the British lack. "What is good among one people is an abomination with others" (p. 127), says one of the African leaders; and another elder states, "he does not understand our customs just as we do not understand his. We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his" (p. 172). This simple language expresses an important idea first expounded by Edmund Burke: that societies evolve organically, upon the basis of their own traditions and necessities, and that to impose alien institutions and controls undermines stability and the restraining force of the moral code.

The frustration and violence of the hero Okonkwo are a mute expression of what has been stated by the most eloquent African leaders and intellectuals. Nkrumah says that "The white man arrogated to himself the right to rule and to be obeyed by the non-white; his mission, he claimed, was to 'civilise' Africa. Under this cloak, the Europeans robbed the continent of vast riches and inflicted unimaginable suffering on the African people."⁹ Mphahlele asserts that "Capitalist economy has for a long time now been battering on African traditions. Our traditional forms of communism and communal responsibility in which the land belongs to the people under the chief's trusteeship, co-operative farming, and so on, are fast going."¹⁰ And Kaunda declares that "The Western way of life has been so powerful that our own social, cultural and political set-up has been raped by the powerful and greedy Western civilization. . . . The result is . . . moral destruction."¹¹

When asked about the moral view of Things Fall Apart, Achebe replied: "I feel that this particular society had its good side—the poetry of the life; the simplicity, if you like; the communal way of sharing in happiness and in sorrow and in work and all that. It also had art and music. But it had this cruel side to it and it is this that I think helped to bring down my hero."¹² There is a dichotomy, then, between the traditions, rituals and ceremonies of tribal life that Achebe celebrates with dignity and pride, and the cruelty that he narrates with honesty and restraint.

More than half the novel describes the life and customs of the clan, for as Achebe says, "I think I'm basically an ancestor worshipper; if you like. Not in the same sense as my grandfather would probably do it, pouring palm wine on the floor for the ancestors . . . With me it takes a form of a celebration, and I feel a certain compulsion to do this."¹³ During the Feast of the New Yam, for example, he describes the woman who "set about painting themselves with cam wood and drawing beautiful black patterns on their stomachs and backs. The children were also decorated, especially their hair, which was shaved in beautiful patterns" (p. 34). Achebe celebrates the bonds of kinship in family life, the respectful and ceremonial visits, the worship of the ancestral spirits, the veneration of the Oracle and of the elders; the virgin's confession, the arrangement of the bride price, the feasts of marriage, of harvest, and of farewell; the singing, the drumming, the dancing and the wrestling; the village councils and oratory, the courts of justice and the last rites for the dead. The proverbs and folk tales that richly endow the novel represent the very essence of cultural traditions and homely wisdom, for "Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten" (p. 6).

But tribal life is not entirely idyllic. Human heads are captured in war, the diseased are abandoned to their solitary death agonies in the Evil Forest, slaves are kept, human being are sacrificed, twins are murdered and babies are mutilated. It is this cruel side of tribal life that drives the sensitive Nwoye, Okonkwo's oldest son, out of the clan and into the church:

The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear 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. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth (p. 134).

Despite these cruelties, the fundamental and intrinsic belief that "the law of the land must be obeyed" (p. 63) underlies every aspect of this tribal life. Offenses against the moral sanctions of the law inevitably lead to tragedy, and are committed by Okonkwo, by the entire clan and by the white missionaries and their followers.

Okonkwo is the ambitious and impetuous son of a weak and indolent father. He is a great wrestler, a brave warrior, an industrious worker and a respected leader, who venerates the ancient customs and glories of his people. "He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women" (p. 165). Okonkwo's offenses against the law magnify and intensify as the novel progresses, and his destructive path leads from disturbing the week of peace and shooting at his wife, to participating in the sacrifice of his adopted son Ikemefuna, accidentally killing a clansman, deliberately killing the messenger of the whites and finally hanging himself.

The central episode in these tragic events and the best scene in the novel is the death of Ikemefuna, who the Oracle suddenly declares must be sacrificed. Okonkwo is warned by his friend, "That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death" (p. 51), but he accompanies his clansmen into the forest where the sacrifice is to be performed. The music and dancing from a nearby village that the executioners hear suggests the mixture of good and evil, joy and terror in the world; and the "giant trees and climbers which perhaps had stood from the beginning of things, untouched by the axe and the bush-fire" (p. 53) symbolize the primitive element in the tribal customs that demands the slaughter of the innocent victim. Though Ikemefuna's cry, "My father, they have killed me!," recalls the last words of the crucified Christ, the sacrifice is a re-enactment of the trial of Abraham and Isaac in the land of Moriah (when Nwoye, Ikonkwo's son and Ikemefuna's adopted brother, converts, he takes the name of Isaac)—but without the intervention of a harsh but just God. "Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak" (p. 55).

The tragedy of the clan, like that of Okonkwo, begins with the sacrificial murder of Ikemefuna. It is followed by the murder of the first white man who unexpectedly appears on a bicycle; and then by the destruction of the mission church, which is provoked by the white missionaries and the British government that stands behind them.

The missionaries appear in the second part of the novel, while Okonkwo is in exile for the accidental murder of a clansman, and their insidious progress works like a subtle poison to undermine the solidarity of the tribe. They first attract the undesirables, oppose the animist gods, thrive in the Evil Forest despite its fatal reputation (and thereby enhance their own), rescue abandoned twins, admit the outcasts and destroy the sacred python. They then begin to attract more worthy men, divide the tribe, bring trade, prosperity and education, and sacrilegiously kill the ancestral spirits. Finally, the British arrest, humiliate and torture the leaders, and drive Okonkwo to murder and suicide.

Achebe's novel reflects the deliberate destructive policy of the missionaries who, writes James Coleman,

did not seek to preserve traditional society, but rather to transform it¹⁴ . . . included among the preconditions for entry into the Christian fold [were] the abandonment of such customs as initiation ceremonies (a crucial phase in the African system of education), dancing (a vital part of the esthetic and recreational life of the African), marriage payment (a bond linking the families of the bride and the groom), polygyny (at the core of the entire African family system), secret societies (very often key institutions in the traditional political system), and ancestor worship (the symbol of community which linked the individual to a larger whole through time), not to mention so-called witch-doctoring, semi-nudity, African names, and traditional funeral ceremonies. . . . The main consequences of the early negative approach of missionaries were the undermining of parental authority, the weakening of traditional sanctions, the general alienation of Christian elements from the balance of the community, and the inculcation of disrespect for traditional cultures.¹⁵

When Okonkwo returns from his maternal village he finds the tribe in chaos and despair. "He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man's god" (p. 139).¹⁶ The unity of the tribe has been destroyed for "our brothers have deserted us and joined a stranger to soil their fatherland. If we fight the stranger we shall hit our brothers and perhaps shed the blood of a clansman" (p. 183). Okonkwo realizes that the white man "has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart" (p. 160). As he mourns for his friends and tribesmen, "It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming—its own death . . . All our gods are weeping . . . Our dead fathers are weeping because of the shameful sacrilege they are suffering and the abomination we have all seen with our eyes" (pp. 168, 182–83). In the midst of a futile clan meeting to decide what action should be taken against the whites, messengers appear to break up the gathering. While his tribesmen cower in fear and confusion, Okonkwo alone is capable of action. He restores his dignity as a man and a warrior by decapitating a messenger, though this violence and vengeance must lead to the final abomination of suicide.

Things Fall Apart, then, is about the destruction of a traditional culture and society after the impact of a more powerful western civilization and technology; and it is a celebration of and nostalgia for the virtues of that society, and a mourning for its extinction. This novel opposes Burns' materialistic views and demonstrates the existence, the beauty and the value of the African culture. It shows how the Africans opposed white domination, which, when forcibly established, was in many ways worse, not better, than pre-colonial life. Achebe's conservative vision represents African tradition. He recreates the vital rhythms of the ageless life in the bush, the animist religion and the popular feasts, that are the very sources of cultural and spiritual vitality in the life of the people. Achebe's book reveals that no amount of material progress and law and order can compensate for lack of liberty and personal dignity, a lack that degrades every aspect of personal, cultural, social and moral life.

Notes

1. See Achebe's "The English Language and the African Writer," Moderna Spraak (Sweden), LVIII (Dec. 1964), 438–446, where he defends Africans' use of English as a common world language.

2. Quoted in James Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley, 1958), p. 412.

3. Basil Davidson, The Lost Cities of Africa (Boston, 1959), pp. viii–ix.

4. Quoted in The New Statesman, LXX (9 July 1965), 56.

5. Sir Alan Burns, In Defense of Colonies (London, 1957), pp. 63, 67.

6. Ibid., p. 42. Michael G. Smith, Government in Zazzau (Northern Nigeria) (Oxford, 1960), p. 199, refutes this view: "In 1897 British forces of the Royal Niger Company under the command of Sir George Goldie overpowered the Fulani kingdom of Nupe and overawed its neighbor, Ilorin." Josiah Kariuki, Mau-Mau Detainee (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964), pp. 48–49, expresses the modern African viewpoint, now generally accepted in the West, when he writes of Kenya, "The Kikuyu rightly felt that their uneducated forefathers had not understood the nature and implications of the requests forced on them by the early administrators and settlers, nor had they the weapons or power to refuse any demand that was pressed really hard."

7. Ibid., p. 23.

8. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1958), p. 175. Italics mine. Subsequent page references will be cited in parentheses after the quotation.

9. Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom (New York: Praeger, 1961), p. IX. Albert Schweitzer, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (London: Fontana, 1961), p. 124, also criticizes the human and moral degradation of colonialism and asks, "Who can describe the injustice and the cruelties that in the course of centuries they have suffered at the hands of Europeans? . . . Anything we give them is not benevolence but atonement."

10. Ezekiel Mphahlele, The African Image (New York: Praeger, 1962), p. 21.

11. Kenneth Kaunda, Zambie Shall Be Free (London: Heinemann, 1962), p. 114.

12. Quoted in Louis Nkosi, "Some Conversations with African Writers," Africa Report, IX (July 1964), 19.

13. Ibid., p. 20.

14. Coleman, p. 91. A very progressive view, which opposes this policy, is expressed by Mary Kingsley, West African Studies (London, 1899), p. 383: "The knowledge of native laws, religion, institutions, and State-form would give you the knowledge of what is good in these things, so that you might develop and encourage them."

15. Ibid., pp. 97, 100.

16. See Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God (London, 1964), pp. 104–105, 286: The chief priest laments, "there is no escape from the white man. . . . As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. . . . What could it point to but the collapse and ruin of all things? Then a god, finding himself powerless, might take to his heels."