Book Review: Things Fall Apart

Title: Things Fall Apart

Author: Chinua Achebe

Rating: 4.5 of 5 STARS

Finished: February 13

Own: Yes!

Why Chosen: I've had it for so long I've forgotten what made me buy it!

I find Achebe's economical writing beautiful. It's lyrical yet clear. He makes you really see the huts, the children, the women, the food, the missionaries. This is the story of a prideful man and how his pride (which is rooted in fear) in the end destroys him. Okonkwo is the son of a agbala (a man who has taken no title) and he spends his whole life trying to prove that he is better than his father. By sheer strength of will, Okonkwo labors until he is a rich and honored man in his village with three wives, a large warehouse full of yams, and a brood of children. He is a brutal, determined, and violent man.

When he has almost achieved his most dreamed of goal in life, to hold four titles and become Lord of the village, he accidently kills a young man and is forced into exile for seven years. He runs to his mother's village with his wives and children where he again works the land and becomes prosperous. During his exile, Christian missionaries and British government come to his village. He comes home to a very changed place. A place he cannot accept.

I found the portrayal of the missionaries and the villagers who converted to Christianity very moving. It gave me more insight into the field of missions and what it might mean to bring the Gospel into a culture full of household gods. It was also moving to see how the outcasts of the village flocked to the church. ("The foolish things of this world...")

Favorite Excerpts:

Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palmoil with which words are eaten.

Okonkwo 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. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But 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 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.

The missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church there, won a handful of converts and were already sending evangelists to the surrounding towns and villages. That was a source of great sorrow to the leaders of the clan; but many of them believed that the strange faith and the white man's god would not last. None of his converts was a man whose word was heeded in the assembly of the people. None of them was a man of title. They were mostly the kind of people that were called efulefu, worthless, empty men.