Flashback in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall

Apart”

Flashback is a technique that Chinua Achebe uses often in the

first chapters of the book. The first chapter of the book is a

flashback. It mainly places the emphasis on Unoka, Okonkwo’s

father, who was poor and considered a failure by his clan. The first

paragraph of the chapter is a flashback into Okonkwo’s youth, when

he managed to win a very important wrestling match, thus gaining

great respect, and his fame “had grown like a bushfire in the

harmattan”. Through these flashbacks of Okonkwo’s youth and of

his father’s past, Achebe wants the reader to understand the

difference between Okonkwo and his father.

Continuing onto chapter 3, Achebe uses flashback again to

describe Unoka’s hard life and death. Several stories are told in

flashback in this chapter that reveal Okonkwo’s increasing hatred of

his father as well as his desire to go beyond his disgraceful legacy

through aspirations and hard work. The custom of consulting the

Oracle is mentioned in this chapter as an essential element of this

culture. The Oracle was Agbala and many people came to confer

with him even though the trip was very difficult and entailed

entering a small opening, and crawling on one’s belly until coming in

view of the priestess.

Okonkwo had to struggle and work hard to keep his family away

from hunger because his father was lazy and too old to work.

Unoka’s laziness left Okonkwo without a barn to inherit or a title to

his back, but he managed to work things out and become one of the

greatest fighters of Umuofia. Furthermore, on page 17 of chapter 3,

there is a reference to religion (“The priestess in those days was a

woman…his story”1). Religion played a very important role in the Ibo

society and grew into a tradition. Additionally, chapter 3 is very

important because through the flashback we also learn about

several customs of the Ibo society such as share cropping,

consulting the Oracle, leaving a sick man to die in the Evil Forest,

the division of gender roles, and the use of proverbs etc.

Achebe uses flashback mainly in the first to build the

foundations on which the story will develop. The reader has to learn

about the complex customs of the Ibo tribe, as some of them have

been described above. We get to know why Okonkwo has become

such a violent tempered man who doesn’t want to be thought of as

weak. Unoka is the reason behind Okonkwo’s personality. His

laziness and weakness stigmatized Okonkwo forever in his life and

we can see this throughout the novel, especially when Okonkwo

commits suicide, unable to stand to see everything that he hoped,

believed, and fought for, fall apart.