Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Nigeria at a crossroads

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart is likely the most widely read work of Black African literature among English-language readers worldwide (as opposed to white African writers like Algerian Albert Camus or South Africa’s J. M. Coetzee). Achebe wrote the novel in English, and it was published by Heinemann as the first novel in their African Writers Series, a series that would eventually encompass about 300 books. Things Fall Apart takes place in a rural village of the indigenous Igbo people (sometimes spelled Ibo), when Nigeria was a British colony (1914–1960).

Okonkwo lives in the village of Umuofia. Though he came from humble beginnings, through hard work, ambition, and physical strength, he has elevated himself to a position of high status within his clan. He lives with his family of three wives and several children in a mud brick-walled compound of several huts, where they raise crops and some livestock. To settle a conflict with a neighboring village, a boy from another clan is given to Umuofia as a hostage. The leaders of the Umuofia clan charge Okonkwo with the care of this boy, Ikemefuna, whom he raises as if the boy were his own son. In a twist worthy of a Greek tragedy, however, this act ends up setting in motion a chain reaction of karmic retribution that threatens Okonkwo’s downfall.

The second half of the novel deals with the encroachment of British culture into this isolated village. Christian missionaries and government bureaucrats arrive, a few of whom are white, the rest being Nigerians from outside the clan. Achebe describes how Christianity wedges its way into the Igbo people’s lives, garnering some earnest converts, while others cling to the traditional gods and customs. Okonkwo is firmly on the side of the old-schoolers who resist the influence of the whites. As depicted by Achebe, Igbo culture places high importance on a traditional conception of masculinity, and Okonkwo considers any man who deviates from the old ways to be “womanly.” In this clash between tradition and modernity, Achebe lets the reader see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, he clearly shows the iniquity and brutality of British colonialism in Nigeria. On the other hand, he implies that elements of Christianity offer a more compassionate alternative to some of the restrictive superstitions, prejudicial thinking, and more violent aspects of traditional Igbo culture. Achebe’s views on Nigerian independence are clear in this book, but his feelings towards the Christian church are not so clear cut.

In Things Fall Apart, Achebe gives readers a vivid look at traditional indigenous life in Nigeria. This contrasts with his fellow Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, who writes mostly about urban intellectuals in Nigeria. Achebe grew up amid both Igbo and Christian traditions and went on to become a university professor and one of his nation’s leading man of letters. For most of the book, Achebe’s writing gives the reader a feeling of being a member of the Umuofia clan. The last few chapters on Christianity and imperialism, however, feel a little more like they were written from the perspective of a university professor looking at Igbo culture from the outside.

One main reason why I read the literature of foreign nations is in hopes of gaining an understanding of the lives, cultures, and perspectives of people from other parts of the world. Things Fall Apart is certainly satisfying in that regard. This isn’t just the Western literary tradition transplanted to an exotic locale. This is a quintessentially African work of literature and a very fine novel by any standard of world literature.  

The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka

Needlessly confusing and obscure

Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, is best known as a playwright, poet, and essayist, but he has also published three novels to date. The first of these, The Interpreters, was published in 1965. The novel centers around a handful of characters who had gone abroad to study in England or America, but have now returned to lives and careers in Nigeria’s capital city of Lagos. None of them are literally professional interpreters, but presumably Soyinka sees them as interpreters of Western culture in modern Nigeria, or of Nigerian culture to Western visitors, hence the title. Sagoe is a journalist, Egbo is a government bureaucrat, Bandele is a professor, Sekoni is an engineer, and Kola is an artist. There is also a woman among the group named Dehinwa, but little is revealed about her other than she is girlfriend to one of the gang. On the surface, one can facetiously look at The Interpreters as a sort of Nigerian St. Elmo’s Fire, especially since the characters spend large portions of the book hanging around drinking together and pursuing love affairs.

The plot ventures off into other directions, however, and in fact, too many directions all at once. The narrative is a collage of disconnected scenes not necessarily arranged in chronological order, each one of which seems to open in mid-conversation, with the reader being expected to know what’s going on. All sorts of plot lines are introduced, with few of them followed up. Just when you think you’ve found something interesting to grab onto, it’s off on another tangent. In addition to the core coterie of friends, Soyinka is constantly introducing new characters, far too many to care about. The cast includes a few white visitors from America and England who get far more attention than they deserve, thus distracting the reader from any notable growth or change among the key Nigerian players. In a newly independent Nigeria, these young members of their nation’s intelligentsia must come to terms with their traditional Nigerian heritage while navigating their homeland’s transition to modernity. This is illustrated through minor culture clashes between Black and White, old and young, rich and poor, European and African.

The language employed is equally as confusing as the kaleidoscopic plot. The prose often resembles beat poetry more than narrative text—a barrage of adjectives hunting for a verb. I was ready to blame the translator for this illegibility until I found out that Soyinka himself wrote the novel in English. The Nigerian author clearly has a mastery of the English dictionary and thesaurus; he just chooses to use his words in a way that deliberately obscures the straightforward relation of any plot events, dialogue, or meaning. Soyinka does employ some native African terms, for which a glossary is provided, but they are not very obtrusive within the prose. More difficult to get accustomed to is the pantheon of gods that are constantly referred to metaphorically, plus the fact that one of the characters seems to have invented his own religion, the details of which are, like so much of the book, only hinted at.

The overall impression left by The Interpreters is that of an author trying just too hard to be unconventional. The book is really bogged down in the self-indulgent modernist conceit that the author’s originality, cleverness, and artistry are more important than the story being told. As a result, if there was a point to all of this, it was lost on me, though I imagine Nigerian readers would have an easier time making sense of it.
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