SOURCE: “Narrative Techniques in Things Fall Apart,” in New Letters, Vol. 40, No. 3, Spring, 1974, pp. 73–93.

No West African fiction in English has received as much critical attention as Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe's first and most impressive novel. In defending its importance, most critics link its value solely to its theme, which they take to be the disintegration of an almost Edenic traditional society as a result of its contact and conflict with Western practices and beliefs. These enthusiastic critics, such as Gleason and Killam, are primarily interested in the socio-cultural features of the work, and stress the historical picture of a traditional Ibo village community without observing how this picture is delimited, how this material serves the end of art. This approach, which cannot withstand critical scrutiny, does great violence to the text and denies it the artistic vitality they so vigorously claim for it.

Overemphasizing the ways in which Okonkwo represents certain values fundamental to the Umuofia society, Killam turns Okonkwo into an embodiment of the values of this society, averring, “Okonkwo was one of the greatest men of his time, the embodiment of Ibo values, the man who better than most symbolizes his race” (The Novels of Chinua Achebe, 17). Eustace Palmer, a moralistic critic, presents a similar interpretation but extends Okonkwo's role from champion to victim:

Okonkwo is what his society has made him, for his most conspicuous qualities are a response to the demands of his society. If he is plagued by fear of failure and of weakness it is because his society put such a premium on success. … Okonkwo is a personification of his society's values, and he is determined to succeed in this rat-race.

(An Introduction to the African Novel, 53)

The inaccuracies of this view derive from disregarding the particularities of the rhetoric of Achebe's controlled presentation. Killam and Palmer take as authoritative Okonkwo's vision of himself as a great leader and savior of Umuofia and so fail to realize that this vision is based on a limited perception of the values of that society. Nowhere in the novel is Okonkwo presented as either the embodiment or the victim of Umuofia's traditional laws and customs. To urge that he is either, as do Killam and Palmer, is to reduce the work to a sentimental melodrama, rob Okonkwo of his tragic stature, and deny the reader's sympathy for him.

More responsive to the novel's simultaneous sympathy for and critical judgment of Okonkwo, David Carroll observes:

As Okonkwo's life moves quickly to its tragic end, one is reminded forcibly of another impressive but wrongheaded hero, Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge. They share in obsessive need for success and status, they subordinate all their private relations to this end, and both have an inability to understand the tolerant, skeptical societies in which their novel single-mindedness succeeds. … Viewed in the perspective of the Wessex, rustic way of life, Henchard is crass, brutal, and dangerous; but when this way of life as a whole is threatened with imminent destruction, then his fierce resistance takes on a certain grandeur. The reader's sympathy describes a similar trajectory as it follows Okonkwo's career. By the values of Umuofia his inadequacies are very apparent; but when the alien religion begins to question and undermine these values, Okonkwo, untroubled by the heart-searching of the community, springs to its defense and acts.

(Chinua Achebe, 62–63)

Carroll's comment is to the point in directing our attention to the crucial limitations Okonkwo places on his relationship to and acceptance of Umuofia's standards. But simply focusing attention on this matter is not sufficient; we must see how Achebe is able to achieve this control of sympathy for Okonkwo.

Things Fall Apart seems a simple novel, but it is deceptively so. On closer inspection, we see that it is provocatively complex, interweaving significant themes: love, compassion, colonialism, achievement, honor, and individualism. In treating these themes, Achebe employs a variety of devices, such as proverbs, folktales, rituals, and the juxtaposition of characters and episodes to provide a double view of the Ibo society of Umuofia and the central character, Okonkwo. The traditional Ibo society that emerges is a complex one: ritualistic and rigid yet in many ways surprisingly flexible. In this society, a child is valued more than any material acquisition, yet the innocent, loving child, Ikemefuna, is denied love, denied life, by the rigid tribal laws and customs. Outwardly, Umuofia is a world of serenity, harmony, and communal activities but inwardly it is torn by the individual's personal doubts and fears. It is also a society in which “age was respected … but achievement was revered.” It is this sustained view of the duality of the traditional Ibo society that the novel consistently presents in order to create and intensify the sense of tragedy and make the reader understand the dilemma that shapes and destroys the life of Okonkwo.

No episode reveals more dramatically the concomitant rigidity and flexibility of the society than the trial scene in which the domestic conflict between Uzowulu and his wife Mgbafo is settled. Uzowulu has beaten his wife so often and so severely that at last she has fled to her family for protection from him. While such conflicts are usually settled on a personal level, Uzowulu is the kind of man who will listen only to the judgement of the great egwugwu, the masked ancestor spirits of the clan. This ceremony proceeds with marked ritual (Things Fall Apart [hereafter cited as TFA] 85).

The ritualistic procedure of this event reflects the seriousness and formality with which the people of Umuofia deal with internal problems, even trivial ones, that undermine or threaten the peaceful coexistence of the clans. The stereotyped incantatory exchange of greeting, the ceremonious way in which the spirits appear, the ritual greeting, “Uzowulu's body, I salute you,” and Uzowulu's response, “Our father, my hand has touched the ground,” even the gestures of these masked spirits, define the formality of the society and dramatize the fact that the peace of the tribe as a whole takes precedence over personal considerations. The decrees of the gods are always carried out with dispatch, even if it means a ruthless violation of human impulses, as in the murder of Ikemefuna or the throwing away of twins. But this formality does not preclude dialogue, probing, and debate, aptly demonstrated in that the parties involved in the conflict are allowed to present their opposing, even hostile views. The way this domestic issue is resolved reveals the unqualified emphasis the people of Umuofia place on harmony and peaceful coexistence (TFA, 89).

The formality of this event, the firmness with which the society controls impending disorder, becomes even more apparent when contrasted with the spontaneous communal feasting that precedes it—the coming of the locust. This sudden occurrence aptly demonstrates the joy and vitality of the society when it is not beleaguered by internal disharmony (TFA, 54–55).

The overabundance of locusts provides an equal measure of joy for Umuofia. While the people restrain themselves enough to heed the elders' instructions on how to catch the insects this control of happiness is momentary, and no one spares either time or effort in responding to this unexpected feast. For the moment, Umuofia is at peace; Okonkwo and his sons are united in sharing the joy which envelops the community. Against the joyfully harmonic rhythm of this event, the withdrawn, controlled formalism of the judgement of the egwugwu stands in sharp relief. By juxtaposing these events, Achebe orchestrates the modulating rhythms of Umuofia, the alternating patterns of spontaneous joy and solemn justice. This modulation of rhythms developed out of the juxtaposition contrasting events open as well within the framework of the same episode. The suddenness with which the locusts descend on the people, bringing joy, is matched by the suddenness with which that joy is taken away. The very moment that Okonkwo and his sons sit feasting, Ezeudu enters to tell Okonkwo of the decree of the Oracle of the Hills and Caves (TFA, 55–56).

Just as Okonkwo's response to the celebration of feasting is controlled by the almost simultaneous announcement of the doom of the innocent child, Ikemefuna, so the narrator modulates the reader's response to the contrasting values and customs of Umuofia. On the very day Ikemefuna sits happily with his “father,” Ezeudu somberly states, “Yes, Umuofia has decided to kill him.”

Similarly, in order to articulate and call attention to the rigidity of the Ibo code of values in requiring the exile of Okonkwo for the inadvertent killing of Ezeudu's son, Achebe skillfully orchestrates the circumstances of the boy's death. In presenting this scene, Achebe emphasizes the atmosphere, the action, and the situation without individualizing Okonkwo's role. Such deliberate attention to the circumstances that day intensifies the sense of accidental occurrence. The death of Ezeudu's son comes as a result of the situation, of the circumstances, not as any deliberate act on Okonkwo's part. With this sense of chance established, the scene makes more apparent the rigidity of the tribal laws in dealing with this accidental event:

The only course open for Okonkwo was to flee from the clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman, and a man who committed it must flee from the land. The crime was of two kinds, male and female. Okonkwo had committed the female because it had been inadvertent. He could return to the clan after seven years.

(TFA, 117)

In probing and evaluating this code whose rigidity negates circumstantial and human considerations, the thoughtful Obierika questions, “Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently?”

Obierika's thoughts reflect the submerged fears of the village elders, particularly Uchendu, Okonkwo's uncle, and Ezeudu, as well as the doubts and questions of Okonkwo's wives and even his son Nwoye. Indeed, he gives voice to the very question the reader himself asks.

The inflexibility of this tribal code and its application is revealed not only in the formal decrees of the Oracles and the judgments of the egwugwu but also in the small details of every day life. The simple act of a cow getting loose in the fields is met with a harsh penalty (TFA, 108–109). Since the preservation of crops is essential in an agricultural society, the imposition of a severe fine on those whose animals destroy the produce is understandable. But the crucial point the narrator stresses here is that the laws are applied with absolute rigidity, with no regard for mitigating circumstances. Even though the responsible party in this instance was only a small child being watched by his father, who does not usually watch the children, while the mother was busy helping another prepare a feast to ensure the proper observance of the marriage ceremonies, the same penalty is exacted. Just as Okonkwo is harshly punished for an inadvertent act which occurred while he was observing the proper funeral rites of the clan, so is Ezelagbo's husband punished for an offense his small child committed both unintentionally and unknowingly. In these subtle ways, Achebe succeeds in presenting the inflexibility of the code of values of Umuofia as it responds to any threat, no matter how small, to the overall stability of the clan.

Yet to insist that this code is entirely inflexible is to present only one-half of the picture. The people of Umuofia can adapt their code to accommodate the less successful, even effeminate men, like Okonkwo's father, Unoka, despite the fact that according to their standards of excellence, solid personal achievement and manly stature are given unqualified emphasis. This adaptability to changing or different situations is further demonstrated in Ogbeufi Ezeudu's comment on the punishment meted out to Okonkwo for his violation of the sacred Week of Peace.

“It has not always been so,” he said. “My father told me that he had been told that 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.”

“Somebody told me yesterday,” said one of the younger men, “that in some clans it is an abomination for a man to die during the Week of Peace.”

“It is indeed true,” said Ogbuefi Ezeudu. “They have that custom in Obadoani. If a man dies at this time he is not buried but cast into the Evil Forest. It is a bad custom which these people observe because they lack understanding. They throw away large numbers of men and women without burial. And what is the result? Their clan is full of evil spirits of these unburied dead, hungry to do harm to the living.”

(TFA, 33)

It seems clear from this instance that in some ways the social code of Umuofia is responsive to change; if the people find elements of the code contradictory, they will alter them, provided such modification does not conflict with the will of the gods. This receptivity to change is coupled with a willingness to accept and accommodate even those who do not perfectly conform to their ways, in accordance with the proverbial wisdom, “Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break” (TFA, 21–22). Though Unoka was the subject of jest, he was not cast out, and even the albinos, whom the Ibos of Umuofia consider aliens, were accepted members of the clan, for, as Uchendu indicates to Obierika, “‘There is no story that is not true,’ said Uchendu. ‘The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?’” (TFA, 130). Throughout the novel, this complex, dualistic nature of the customs and traditions of the Ibo society of Umuofia is made clear. This duality is well presented through Achebe's technique of skillfully juxtaposing contrasting events, events which define and articulate the code of values of the tradition oriented people. On the one hand, we see the villagers actively engaged in a spontaneous communal activity, such as enjoying a marriage feast, or in gathering and sharing the locusts, while, on the other hand, we see the rigid application of tribal laws and decrees of the gods which often deny and violate human responses.

These elements are set in opposition to one another to give a complete, if self-contradictory, view of the society. To accept and emphasize only one aspect is to oversimplify and defend, as does Okonkwo, a limited perception. It is against this balanced view of the proud traditional Ibo society that the novel invites us to evaluate the actions and tragic life of the central character, Okonkwo. Only through such examination do the problems of Okonkwo's relationship to the culture of his people become clear.

As a careful reading of Things Fall Apart reveals, one of Achebe's great achievements is his ability to keep alive our sympathy for Okonkwo despite our moral revulsion from some of his violent, inhuman acts. With Obierika, we condemn him for participating in the killing of the innocent boy, Ikemefuna. We despise him for denying his son, Nwoye, love, understanding, and compassion. And we join the village elders in disapproving Okonkwo's uncompromisingly rigid attitude toward unsuccessful, effeminate men such as his father, Unoka, or Usugo. Yet we share with the narrator a sustained sympathy for him. We do not simply identify with him, nor defend his actions, nor admire him as an heroic individual. We do give him our innermost sympathies because we know from his reactions to his own violence that deep within him he is not a cruel man. It is this contrasting, dualistic view of Okonkwo that the narrator consistently presents. On the one hand, we see Okonkwo participating in the brutal killing of Ikemefuna, his “son,” but on the other, we see him brooding over this violent deed for three full days. In another instance, we see him dispassionately castigating his fragile, loving daughter, Ezinma, and deeply regretting that she is not a boy, while on another occasion we see him struggling all night to save her from iba or returning again and again to the cave to protect her from harm at the hands of Chielo, priestess of Agbala.

Throughout the novel, Okonkwo is presented as a man whose life is ruled by one overriding passion: to become successful, powerful, rich, found a dynasty, and become one of the lords of the clan of Umuofia. And Okonkwo's unflagging commitment is not without cause, for

… his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion—to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.

(TFA, 16–17)

Emphasis here is placed on Okonkwo's divided self, especially on his inner struggle to control and suppress his fears of failure which arise in reaction to his father's disastrous life and shameful death. In some respects, the reader's initial reaction is to identify with Okonkwo, to join with him in severe condemnation of his father, for “Unoka the grown up was a failure. He was poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat. People laughed at him because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back” (TFA, 9). In modulating this initial response, the narrator also makes it quite clear that among these same people, “a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father,” and that while achievement was revered, age was respected. In violently repudiating all that his father represented, Okonkwo repudiates not only his undignified irresponsibility, but also those positive qualities of love and compassion and sensitivity (TFA, 8, 10). Many of the qualities which to Okonkwo were marks of femininity and weakness are the same qualities which were respected by the society Okonkwo wished to champion. In a larger sense, Okonkwo's rigid repudiation of his father's “unmanliness” violates a necessary aspect of the society's code of values. We come to see that in suppressing his fears and those attributes which he considers a sign of weakness, Okonkwo denies as well those human responses of love and understanding which Umuofia recognizes as requisite for greatness.

This obsession with proving and preserving his manliness dominates Okonkwo's entire life, both public and private: “He ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children” (TFA, 16). Even in the informal, relaxed story-telling sessions, Okonkwo sees a threat to himself and his “dynasty,” for these stories will make women of his sons, make them like their grandfather rather than like their father. So, at those times, “Okonkwo encouraged the boys to sit with him in his obi, and he told them stories of the land—masculine stories of violence and bloodshed” (TFA, 52).

No episode in the novel dramatizes Okonkwo's desire to assert his manliness more clearly than the killing of Ikemefuna whom Okonkwo loves as his own. It is the closeness of this father-son relationship, reiterated in the feasting on the locusts, that Ezeudu interrupts to tell Okonkwo that Ikemefuna must die. But Ezeudu provides more than this stark message; as a respected elder of the clan he also advises Okonkwo on his conduct in heeding the decree, “‘Yes, Umuofia has decided to kill him. The Oracle of the Hills and Caves has pronounced it. They will take him outside Umuofia as is the custom, and kill him there. But I want you to have nothing to do with it. He calls you his father.’” Though his feeling for the boy comes through in his effort to cloak the grim reality from the youth's eyes—“later in the day he called Ikemefuna and told him that he was to be taken home the next day” (TFA, 56)—Okonkwo nevertheless disregards Ezeudu's advice and accompanies the men in their brutal task—“Okonkwo got ready quickly and the party set out with Ikemefuna carrying the pot of wine” (TFA, 56–57). This same mixture of feelings controls Okonkwo's actions on that mission. He walks behind the others and gradually draws to the rear as the moment of execution arrives; indeed, he looks away when one of the men raises his machete to strike the boy. But he is forced by his own dogged insistence on masculinity to deal the fatal blow. The child runs to Okonkwo for protection but finds instead the cold, hard steel of Okonkwo's machete: “As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry, ‘My father, they have killed me!’ as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down” (TFA, 59). He does so, as the narrator affirms, because “he was afraid of being thought weak.” So extreme is his desire that he might not appear weak, that he might not be like his father, that Okonkwo blinds himself to the wisdom of the advice of the elder Ezeudu, the wisdom Obierika reasserts, “‘If I were you I would have stayed at home … if the Oracle said that my son should be killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it’” (TFA, 64–65). So determined is his effort to be known for achievement, which his society reveres, that Okonkwo gives no heed to the wisdom of age, which his society respects. The way which both Ezeudu and Obierika espouse is the way of compromise, of blending the masculine and feminine, but this is a compromise of which Okonkwo is incapable.

For the most part, Okonkwo resorts to violence in order to maintain control of a situation and assert his manliness. Even in his relationship to his chi, or personal god, Okonkwo exerts force to mold his chi to his will. But in wrestling with his chi, in coercing it into submission to his will, Okonkwo violates the conventional, harmonious relationship one has with his personal god: “The Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes, his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly, so his chi agreed. And not only his chi, his clan, too” (TFA, 29). On all levels, then, Okonkwo must dominate and control events; by sheer force and, if necessary, brutality, Okonkwo bends to his will his chi, his family, and his clan. If “things fall apart,” it is because “the center cannot hold”—because Okonkwo cannot maintain the precarious tension which forcefully holds in place chi, family, and clan.

Yet Okonkwo is not wholly a brute force. Even at the very moment of his violence against Ikemefuna we glimpse the humanity locked inside: “As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away.” Okonkwo looks away not because he is a coward, nor because, like his father, he could not stand the sight of blood; after all, “in Umuofia's latest war he was the first to bring home a human head,” (TFA, 14), his fifth. Okonkwo looks away because this brutal act is too much even for his eyes and his “buried humanity” struggles to express itself.

The narrator includes these subtle details which emphasize the submerged human responses of Okonkwo to explore Okonkwo's tragic dilemma and modulate our responses to him. Reemphasizing these positive human aspects which Okonkwo possesses but which he struggles to stifle lest he appear weak, the narrator sympathetically relates Okonkwo's reaction to his own violence, without approving the violent act itself:

Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna. He drank palm-wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of a rat when it is caught by the tail and dashed against the floor.

He did not sleep at night. He tried not to think about Ikemefuna, but the more he tried the more he thought about him. Once he got up from his bed and walked about his compound. But he was so weak that his legs could scarcely carry him. He felt like a drunken giant walking with the limbs of a mosquito. Now and then a cold shiver descended on his head and spread down his body.

In private, unguarded moments like this, Okonkwo cannot but allow his “buried humanity” to express itself. But he does not allow his reaction to Ikemefuna's death to lead to self-pity and, in so doing, does not allow our sympathy for him to degenerate into pity. In his rigid view, any brooding, introspection, or questioning is a sign of weakness: “Okonkwo was not a man of thought but of action” (TFA, 66). For this reason, on the morning of the third day of brooding over Ikemefuna, Okonkwo calls for food and answers his brooding with action. His attitude these three days brings him to question himself, but these questions do not investigate motive nor justify his deed; instead, they chastise him for his weakness in responding so to the death of his “son.” “He sprang to his feet, hung his goatskin bag on his shoulder and went to visit his friend, Obierika” (TFA, 63). It is now daytime and no one must see Okonkwo submit to the human feeling of grief.

Publicly, especially among the members of his own clan, Okonkwo struggles to maintain the image of an unusually calm and stalwart individual, a man worthy to be a lord of the clan. It is only in private—and often in the dark—that Okonkwo spontaneously reveals the love and warmth he feels for his family. In the dark, he rushes to protect his daughter from harm by Chielo; without thought, he rushes to save her from iba. Ironically, it is with the same quickness that Okonkwo prepared for the killing of Ikemefuna that he attends to the dying Ezinma (TFA, 72–73).

For Okonkwo, the conflict between private self and public man is the conflict between the feminine and masculine principles. His inability to comprehend the fact that those feminine attributes he vigorously suppresses in himself are necessary for greatness is revealed in his näive comments on the deaths of Ogbuefi Ndulue and his eldest wife, Ozoemena (TFA, 65–66).

The sudden, willed death of Ozoemena is strange, as Ofoedu, Obierika, and Okonkwo agree. Yet, as is characteristic of Okonkwo, he can perceive and respond only to the obvious and well-defined. What Okonkwo cannot understand in this episode, despite Obierika's explanation, is the full significance of Ozoemena's death, especially as it is a willed response to her husband's death. The union in life and in death of Ndulue and Ozoemena is a symbolic dramatization of the union of the masculine and feminine attributes essential in a great man. Ndulue was a great warrior and a great man, the respected elder of his village, because he was able to find that balance of strength and sensitivity, of masculine and feminine principles. And it is this union men as Ndulue and Ezeudu are able to achieve and which Umuofia respects and seeks in its leaders. For Okonkwo, one is either a man or a woman; there can be no compromise, no composite. He is baffled by Ndulue's relationship to Ozoemena, for to him a strong man would in no way depend on a woman. This one-sided concept of what it takes to be a man determines Okonkwo's actions and attitudes, and can be seen clearly in his thoughts about his children. To him, Ezinma should have been a boy and Nwoye has “too much of his mother in him” (TFA, 64).

Okonkwo has held this monochromatic view of what people should be, with men and women performing sexually-defined tasks and exhibiting equally well-defined characteristics, since his youth. Traumatized by his father's failure as owing to his gentleness and idleness, Okonkwo determines to be all that his father was not—firm and active. But in living up to this design, Okonkwo becomes inflexible and his action allows no room for reflection. Throughout his life he clings to this pattern steadfastly and without question. Such a rigid commitment to a code of behavior and design for action thwarts Okonkwo's personal development. He does not grow and change with age and experience; as a man he is dedicated to the same stereotypes he formed in his youth. Even after his code fails him and necessitates his exile, Okonkwo cannot see the limitations of that code in its denial of the “feminine” principles. While in exile in his mother's land, Mbanta, Okonkwo is lectured on the importance of these feminine principles by the elder Uchendu, but still Okonkwo cannot see:

“Can you tell me, Okonkwo, why it is that one of the commonest names we give our children is Nneka, or ‘Mother is Supreme’? We all know that a man is the head of the family and his wives do his bidding. A child belongs to its father and his family and not to its mother and her family. A man belongs to his fatherland and not to his motherland. And yet we say Nneka—‘Mother is Supreme.’ Why is that?”

There was silence. “I want Okonkwo to answer me,” said Uchendu.

“I do not know the answer,” Okonkwo replied.

Through probing questions, Uchendu deliberately attempts to lead Okonkwo to an understanding of the importance of the feminine qualities which Okonkwo seeks to deny: he reminds Okonkwo that the consequence of this denial which has already resulted in Okonkwo's alienation from his clan, his family, and himself, is doom. But Okonkwo is not the type of man who does things half way, “not even for fear of a goddess.” He is too “manly,” too single-minded to deal with subtleties which do not fit easily into his well-defined code of action. For this reason, he cannot respond to Uchendu's questions, for they directly threaten his rigid philosophy of life.

Uchendu, like Ndulue and Ezeudu, represents the traditional way of life which allows for flexibility and compromise within its exacting system. And in rejecting compromise and flexibility, Okonkwo rejects the values of the society he determines to champion. In contrasting these two antithetical modes of perception and patterns of action, the narrator illustrates the extent to which Okonkwo has alienated himself from his society. The contrasting modes of action determine the different reactions of Uchendu and Okonkwo to Obierika's tales of the killing of the white man on the iron horse, in Abame, which in turn led to the death of a large number of villagers. Hearing this tale of disaster and death, Uchendu ground his teeth together audibly and then burst out, “Never kill a man who says nothing. Those men of Abame were fools. What did they know about the man?” (TFA, 129). As is characteristic of a wise and prudent man, Uchendu blames the people of Abame for not being cautious and for fighting a “war of blame” which the society condemns. But Okonkwo sees the whole situation as supporting his method of turning to violence for a solution to all problems. Instead of questioning and seeking a compromise between conflicting views, Okonkwo demands a violent action, “‘They were fools,’ said Okonkwo after a pause. ‘They had been warned that danger was ahead. They should have armed themselves with their guns and their machetes even when they went to market’” (TFA, 130).

Throughout his life then, Okonkwo is bound to violence. He rigidly commits himself to a code of values which negates human response and severs him from his traditional roots. Even at crucial moments when all indications point to the limitation and inadequacy of his rigid system, Okonkwo still holds firmly to these values, even to his death. The failure of his code is clear in his attitude toward Nwoye and in his son's subsequent rejection of him. The feelings of tenderness and affection Okonkwo has so long suppressed erupt as violence. When he is confronted by the limitation of his values in responding to human needs, especially manifest in Nwoye's turning to Christianity for an answer to these needs, Okonkwo's recourse to violence is even more extreme:

It was late afternoon before Nwoye returned. He went into the obi and saluted his father, but he did not answer. Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when his father, suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck.

“Where have you been?” he stammered.

Nwoye struggled to free himself from the choking grip.

“Answer me,” roared Okonkwo, “before I kill you!” He seized a heavy stick that lay on the dwarf wall and hit him two or three savage blows.

“Answer me!” he roared again. Nwoye stood looking at him and did not say a word. The women were screaming outside, afraid to go in.

“Leave that boy at once!” said a voice in the outer compound. It was Okonkwo's uncle, Uchendu. “Are you mad?”

Okonkwo did not answer. But he left hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never returned.

(TFA, 141)

The bondage in which Okonkwo has kept his “feminine” qualities is the bondage in which he has tried to keep Nwoye. Coercing, cajoling, threatening, and even beating his son into conforming to his ways, Okonkwo alienates the “dynasty” his actions sought to insure. For Nwoye will not be kept enslaved to Okonkwo's ways; he seeks release from bondage in the new religion of the white man.

Okonkwo's tragedy is not merely that he fails to understand the needs of his son Nwoye but that he also cannot comprehend certain of the society's values. Unable to change himself, he will not accept change in others, in the world around him, in the people of Umuofia. When he returns from exile, Okonkwo faces an altered society, a society that in its flexibility has allowed a place for the white Christian missionaries. Like the recalcitrant Rev. Smith, Okonkwo views the situation in terms of absolute, irreconcilable antipodes.

When the entire clan gathers to decide how to deal with the inroads established by the missionaries, Okonkwo's response is predictable. He will brook no compromise and demands a violent repulsion of the new religion. But this recourse to violence is not the view of this society any more now than it was in the past. Indeed, Okonkwo's views set him apart from his clan at this moment as earlier in his exile: but it is too late for Okonkwo to change now. If the society will not violently repel this threat, Okonkwo will. Compelled by his own uncompromising attitudes as they confront and clash with the equally adamant positions of Rev. Smith, Okonkwo turns to the only means he knows—violence—to solve the problem:

In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo's machete descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body.

The waiting backcloth jumped into tumultuous life and the meeting was stopped. Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action. He discerned fright in that tumult. He heard voices asking, “Why did he do it?”

He wiped his machete on the sand and went away.

(TFA, 187–188)

When the society does not respond as he does, Okonkwo comes to the sudden, belated realization that he is all alone, set apart from his clan by the values he holds. This most recent act of violence severs finally the precarious link between Okonkwo and his people. And, as before with the killing of Ikemefuna and the beating of Nwoye, Okonkwo's brutal force creates for him an even greater dilemma than the one he resorted to violence to solve. If at the edge of Umuofia before this last violent act, Okonkwo is now pushed outside his society. He cannot return. He cannot begin again. Having no place in this new Umuofia, driven out by his own inability to bend and change, Okonkwo ends his life as he lived it—by violence.

This act of violence against himself ironically fulfills Obierika's “request” of several years ago:

“I do not know how to thank you.”

“I can tell you,” said Obierika. “Kill one of your sons for me.”

“That will not be enough,” said Okonkwo.

“Then kill yourself,” said Obierika.

“Forgive me,” said Okonkwo, smiling. “I shall not talk about thanking you any more.”

(TFA, 131–132)

Okonkwo's suicide is, as Obierika explains (TFA, 190–191), an offense against the earth, an abomination. Okonkwo's clansmen cannot touch him, cannot bury him, cannot consider him one of their own. In death, as in life, Okonkwo's commitment to achievement through violence ostracizes him from the very society he sought so desperately to champion and honor.

On the other hand, we do not justify Okonkwo's killing of the messenger in an effort to save the doomed way of life of his beleaguered clan, a way of life whose subtle codes Okonkwo does not understand. Nor do we approve his unflagging commitment to his own code which does not provide for life. Yet we sympathize with him, even in his death, though perhaps not so emotionally as Obierika who, at this moment, loses all sense of objectivity. Temporarily blind to Okonkwo's limitations, Obierika seems to make Okonkwo the innocent victim of the brutal laws of the white missionaries. Prior to this dramatic confrontation with the white missionaries, the narrator has made it inevitable that Okonkwo's violent actions will lead him to his doom. At the same time, this knowledge does not deny him our innermost sympathies, especially when we evaluate his actions as juxtaposed against the actions of the “purist,” Rev. Smith, who “saw things as black and white. And black was evil. He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal combat with the sons of darkness. He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophet of Baal” (TFA, 169). Rev. Smith's approach was, in all respects, antithetical to that of his predecessor, Rev. Brown, and Achebe shows Rev. Smith to be a far more vicious, brutal, and violent man than Okonkwo.

There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him. Mr. Smith danced a furious step and so the drums went mad. The over-zealous converts who had smarted under Mr. Brown's restraining hand now flourished in full favor.

Following Rev. Smith's cue, an over-zealous convert, Enoch, likewise resorts to extreme actions and goes so far as to unmask an egwugwu, throwing Umuofia into confusion (TFA, 170). In retaliation, the egwugwu swarm into the church and level it: “Mr. Smith stood his ground. But he could not save his church. When the egwugwu went away the red-earth church which Mr. Brown had built was a pile of ashes. And for the moment the spirit of the clan was satisfied” (TFA, 175). Replacing Rev. Brown's law of peace and love with his own code of aggression and hatred, Rev. Smith undoes the good Rev. Brown had accomplished. Rather than convert the heathen ways to Christian purpose, Rev. Smith determines to destroy the traditional practices. He will force the villagers to accept his ways and humiliate or eliminate those who don't.

Working through the District Commissioner, the new law of the land, Rev. Smith has the egwugwu, including Okonkwo, disgraced and humiliated, their heads shaved in testimony to their dishonor. Rev. Smith's malice goes far beyond Okonkwo's rigidity in ruthlessly dishonoring the customs of the Umuofia people and instigating an unprovoked attack on their religion. We are invited to condemn Rev. Smith's ruthless methods in converting these supposed heathens to his religion. Because we see Rev. Smith in such a negative light, we almost come to see his religion in the same terms. For these reasons, we sympathize with Okonkwo while we see the pointlessness of his violent action in killing the messenger and taking his own life.

Though Rev. Smith's actions tend to obfuscate the positive aspects of Christianity, we can still recall its essentially valuable tenets as lived and spread by Rev. Brown. This religion, with its emphasis on individual salvation and love responded to a need deeply felt by certain people in Umuofia, such as Obierika and Nwoye, but never openly expressed. Christianity answered these private fears and doubts over the arbitrariness of the gods' decrees, decrees which deny personal or human considerations in their application. Christianity is then the catalyst but not the primary cause of things falling apart. Umuofia was already disintegrating and re-forming, for Christianity would not have spread if it did not fill a pre-existing need. This new religion takes root and flourishes in the very place where the twins are thrown away and Ikemefuna was killed, the Evil Forest outside Umuofia.

From Achebe's juxtaposition of conflicting values and actions emerge the paradoxes and ironies of Things Fall Apart. The flexibility of Umuofia allows room for Christianity which in turn contributes to the passing of the traditional ways in fulfilling the needs the inflexibility of Umuofia left unanswered. For a time the traditional and the Christian can exist side by side in peace, before the coming of Rev. Smith and the return from exile of Okonkwo. Each man believes himself to be the champion of his society's religion and customs but each, in his extremism, distorts that religion and those customs so that ultimately—and paradoxically—he negates the very values he seeks to defend. This technique of juxtaposition works well in articulating the complexities and contradictions of Umuofia, of Okonkwo, and of the dilemma which arises when they confront Christianity.