Is This Analysis too Obvious?

The lens most commonly associated with Things Fall Apart is the Post-Colonial lens, but I hesitated to write about it for that exact reason. However, I was genuinely interested in how that lens impacted the book, especially considering that Things Fall Apart does not take place in a post-colonial era, rather during the colonial era. As such, I hope this post will reveal the nuances and faceted nature of this application.

A reader analyzing a work of literature through the Post-Colonial Lens looks for ways in which colonial oppression (almost always European oppression) has affected society, whether the story fits definitively in that regard (such as Things Fall Apart), or in less distinct/more ambiguous stories, such as how colonialism has affected urban life, social class, etc. The reader will look at things like which characters/societies are portrayed as outsiders, the language associated with those societies, and how interactions between them affects the hegemony between them. They will also question the legitimacy of the Western canon, believing it to be representative of cultural domination.

Fortunately for this analysis, there is no need to look excessively at symbols or archetypes to identify the cultural relationships and colonial action because, well, that is the point of the book. I also feel the need to preface the analysis by mentioning that the application of the Post-Colonial lens parallels unbelievably well with the New Historicism lens, and I’ll make a number of references throughout. Chinua Achebe writes his novel with the intent to provide an alternative portrayal of the Nigerian (and by nature African) people, who had up to that point in history, been portrayed in literature as a most savage and and primitive people. During the civil rights movement, however, African-Americans began to fight back against the oppression they faced, and this is reflected in Things Fall Apart. As such, in an effort to illustrate equality between the two races depicted in the novel, Chinua Achebe portrays the Igbo people as having the same complex society, emotional development, and mental complexity as any other society, thus destroying any argument for aggressive colonization. He does this all without dehumanizing the Westerners themselves, I might add. (Check out Daniel’s blog to see more on this).

Achebe creates a society which depicted not as colonial fodder but as a living, breathing, working society just as complex as those found in the West. Look no further than Okonkwo: the man faces a lifelong struggle of balancing his public perception with family care, yet he adheres unconditionally to values with which he has grown up (much like Western colonizers, interestingly enough). Achebe also illustrates the legitimacy of Igbo literature in the face of Western works which would have discredited it as superstitious. The Oracle of Abame, for instance, correctly predicts the nature of the Europeans:

“The elders consulted their Oracle and it told them that the strange man would break their clan and spread destruction among them”

Things Fall Apart pg. 138

A new convert falls ill and dies after killing a sacred python:

“His death showed that the gods were still able to fight their own battles”

Things Fall Apart pg. 161

The author then turns his attention to the destruction of the Igbo way of life at the hands of the colonizers, who have taken over the village from within. The entire depth of the fall, the despair of the clansmen, and the hopelessness of the situation can be portrayed by Obierka’s words in Part 3:

“‘Does the white man understand our custom about the land?’

‘How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us?'”

Things Fall Apart pg. 176

The European missionaries have even dominated the Igbo people’s language baffling them with technology that can only be described as an “iron horse”. And yet, through all this destruction, Chinua Achebe refuses to outright denounce European customs: the missionaries build a successful church in the Evil Forest despite the apparent curse and provide Nwoye with a meaningful lifestyle for the first time in his life.

It seems that the application of the Post-Colonialist lens suggests, much like the New Historicist Lens, that Chinua Achebe wanted to reconcile the differences between two cultures by showing the evils of colonialism without discrediting the Western way of life. However, I suppose that no one necessarily needed the Post-Colonial critical theory to arrive at that conclusion, so perhaps this post was futile in that regards. I still thought it interesting that the application of several critical theories could yield the same conclusion, especially when not many works nowadays do that. If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to comment below!