Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
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Book Reviews of Things Fall Apart
Book Review: Things Fall Apart
Summary: 5 Stars
Chinua Achebe's 1959 novel, "Things Fall Apart" is an extraordinarily well written and moving work. It explores the traditions and cultural practices of the Ibo people of Nigeria in Western Africa at a moment of dramatic, astounding, horrific transition. Achebe provides us with a narrative seen through the perspective of Okonkwo, a man of quality and power in his village. At the same time, Achebe's deep knowledge of European and American literature and the effects of European cultures on the native culture of Nigeria courses through the novel. "Things Fall Apart" begins with the recounting of Okonkwo's history - his rise from a family with a poor, indolent father to being a wealthy and successful farmer, warrior, and leader. When a neighbouring village offends his own, Okonkwo represents his villages interests in a conference, in which retribution returns with Okonkwo in the form of Ikemefuna, who is sentenced to death, but forms a vital link in Okonkwo's strictly run household between himself and his own son, Nwoye. The action of the novel follows the ramifications of the culturally-demanded execution of Ikemefuna on Okonkwo and his family.
Achebe's novel shows an astute sense of awareness of the various political structures of Ibo society. Particularly, gender relations are brought into high relief throughout the novel - the councils led by men; their rank and status signalled in part by the number of wives a man has; and by Okonkwo's insistent, but shielded love for his daughter Ezinma, whom he continually wishes was a man. Relationships between families are complicated with the coming of European colonists whose Christianity and industry endanger the Ibo way of life.
With tightly controlled narrative and emotionally understated elegance, Achebe's novel presents a proud individual, Okonkwo, representing the final undisturbed generation of a long-lived people. His internal and external struggles are compelling and for the receptive reader, potentially devastating. A brilliant novel.
Book Review: On Humanity and Good Writing: Novels Fall Apart
Summary: 3 Stars
I have just finished reading, after some effort to stay with it, Chinua Achebe's acclaimed 1959 novel Things Fall Apart, reputedly the most widely read African novel. Which is too bad, as it fails to achieve what apparently drove Achebe to write it: the desire to bring to life the ample humanity of tribal Nigerians at the time of British colonization. He did a much better job of it in his 1964 novel Arrow of God.
However, I cut Achebe some slack for Things Fall Apart, a training novel, as I see it, his first, when his craft was apparently still underdeveloped. Much of the important action of the novel comes in summary, that is, in his telling the reader what happens instead of developing full-blown scenes that put us there so we can see it, feel it and share in the emotion, as with the crucial accidental killing of a clansman by Okonkwo.
Most of the tribal characters remained unrealized and largely undistinguishable, serving as mere foils for Okonkwo, as with his three wives. Further, the novel fails structurally, there being not so much a plot with causality and reflective inevitability as chronological (largely) occurrences, often unrelated. Further, his seriously flawed protagonist Okonkwo is a hard one to love.
These weaknesses in craft and concept together undermine Achebe's purpose: to show his Nigerian ancestors as vital human beings deserving of our empathy. I found Okonkwo's ultimate downfall unmoving--less so even than Achebe's essays and lectures collected in The Education of a British-Protected Child (2009).
Those essays, albeit uneven, work to effectively remind us of the continuing horrors visited on Africa by slavery, colonialism and their aftermath. That said, Achebe misses the mark on his criticism of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, failing to distinguish the narrator Marlowe's observations from Conrad's, for one. But his overall posit about the distorted European narrative re Africa, which he documents, seems substantially on target.
Book Review: Achebe's Imperialism
Summary: 4 Stars
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe is a wonderfully written story about an Ibo tribe in Africa. This novel talks about the culture, customs, and hardships of the Umuofia people. The plot of the story includes imperialism, religion, and many conflicts of tribal traditions and rituals. I believe that the imperialism in this story is the main theme and topic discussed during this novel. Imperialism is the domination of one nation over a country land or area for a number of years. The imperialism that goes on during Things Fall Apart is most definitely not good for the people of Umuofia.
When the white missionaries came to the land of the Ibo people they basically tore their world apart. These white men took the Ibo's land, people, and basically took over their lives. The white man's imperialism eventually took over the whole village. Although the imperialism did what it is intended to do, (gain more land) I disagree with the manner of which this particular case of imperialism was taken out. "The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop." This quote from Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart shows how these intruders were trying to take over the lives of the Ibo people. Some people may say that these people were just trying to regulate the land without having any trouble. If you ask me they were the trouble. "Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo's body was dangling, and they stopped dead." This quote justly proves my point about the missionaries being the trouble in Umuofia.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe greatly communicates the theme and central message of imperialism and the unfair treatment of the white invaders into the indigenous people of Africa. From reading this book I learned much more about imperialism and it has given me a much better understanding of the idea of imperialism. This wonderfully written novel is a great piece of writing that I would recommend for everyone to read.
Book Review: Tearing Apart Things Fall Apart
Summary: 4 Stars
When I first picked up 'Things Fall Apart' by Chinua
Achebe I was very skeptical on whether I would like
it, as well as why on earth my teacher would make me
read it. A story about an African village did not seem
to fit into our curriculum, or interest me.
Nevertheless, I began to read it. At first the book
seemed very boring to me. Now that I've read the book
I know that you have to read the entire book to
comprehend the lesson it was trying to teach. Reading
the first 8 chapters and then giving up is a waste of
your time. Reading the whole book is reading time well
spent.
The book focuses mainly on the character Okonkwo
and his struggles. He feels guilty for his father's
laziness and vowes not to be like him. This does not
make him the most personable of people however. The
plot really only starts in the end. The beginning
chapters really all have different things happening.
This is really the only fault I found of the book.
Some say that the difficult names are a fault but they
aren't. The names make the book more authentic.
The book ties in with my school curriculum due to
the Ibo people's dealings with imperialism. I believe
imerialism had a devastating effect on the Ibo's. When
the white missionaries came to the villages, they
disrupted their whole wway of life. They disrespected
the faith and customs of the Ibo's, callin their God's
fake. Through their preaching, the missionaries got
many Ibo's to convert which caused anger between
members of the Ibo clan. The imperialists even caused
the main character, Okonkwo, to do something that is
very 'evil spirited'. Okonkwo had been strong to his
faith throughout the book but they forced him into
doing the unthinkable.
'Things Fall Apart' while confusing at times is a
great read
Book Review: A MASTERPIECE
Summary: 5 Stars
If you're not careful, you will think all Chinua Achebe is doing, in a very simplistic writing style, is giving a flat historical account of the Ibo (or Igbo) culture before and after its initial contact with the British empire. How wrong.
What Achebe has done so masterfully is bridge a primitive culture with our modern one to say, in essence, we're no different. I love how when the novel begins there seems to be an ageless, mythological aura to the story, with an earth goddess and with oracles and with the many naturalistic proverbs, and with how simplistic Achebe keeps his language--just as limited as the Ibo language itself.
What we have to do as readers is piece the many flashbacks and plotlines together. It's work, but it's wonderfully fun work, like fitting together a puzzle we don't yet know what it is a picture of, and when the picture is ultimately revealed, it's so surprising, how Nigeria slowly becomes the rest of the world, how paganism might as well be Christianity, how ultimately human nature is human nature.
There is criticism of colonialism, but there is more important criticism of "home," of the Ibo culture itself, in terms of how it rots from within at its core, due to its declining respect and barbaric treatment of women (which points directly to the declining faith of what the earth goddess herself embodies). So despite the simple language and seemingly simple plot, the novel is quite a complex metaphor for each and every one of us. Of both the best and worst within each one of us.
Which is a perfect reminder/warning to us on the outside: "Be careful. Don't judge. You're guilty, too. You're guilty of being strong, even too strong, and you're guilty of being weak, even too weak, and that's nothing to be afraid of. You don't need to feel superior or inferior due to this. You only need to be aware of this, to keep this about yourself in check."