Silakova 1

Yulia Silakova

British Literature and the Processes of Culture

Colonial African novels through M.M. Bakhtin’s chronotope

“Time has to be experienced in order to make sense

or to become real”.

(Mbiti 17)

Time is a difficult word to define, and it becomes even more difficult in the context of African

traditional life. As A.A. Mendilow says, “time assumes different meanings in different systems and

varies from one frame of reference to another” (qtd. in Ker 35). The notion of time in West African

culture is no exception. Harry Olufunwa in his article Achebe’s spatial temporalities: literary

chronotopes in ‘Things fall apart’ and ‘Arrow of God’ refers to John S. Mbiti who claims that “the

linear concept of time in [European] thought, with an indefinite past, present and infinite future, is

practically foreign to African thinking”(qtd. in Olufunwa 50). Indeed, East and West have been

always different from each other in beliefs, traditions, culture, literature, policy and finally in the

way of thinking and perceiving the world. Even more, “for the non-West, the nation is a place of

Othering” (Fernandes 101). In case of West Africa the cultural perceiving is divided into two main

parts: pre-colonialism and post-colonialism. William R. Ferris in his article Folklore and the

African novelist: Achebe and Tutuola assumes that “the overall effect of colonialism was a de-

Africanization of traditional life that sought to destroy art, religion and other cultural traditions of

the native people” (Ferris 27). Therefore, African writing in the wake of colonialism tends to restore

the old customs, because “…the African novel is, nonetheless, a response to and a record of the

traumatic consequences of the impact of western capitalist colonialism on the traditional values and

institutions of the African peoples. This largely explains the African writers’ initial preoccupation

with the past” (Palmer 63). But to understand the significance of the concept of time, one must

place it in the context of a broader transformation. H. Olufunwa is quite right when he notes that “as

a literary genre, the African novel symbolizes the tension between African and Western notions of
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time and space, especially as they manifest themselves in an African setting” (Olufunwa 52). Thus,

the concept of space plays indisputably a crucial role in African novels. In addition, a literary critic

Emmanuel Obiechina claims that “the novels rely more on space than on time for their

development”. But in imagining the past for instance, notions of there-and-then unavoidably

portray the ‘there’ as ‘that space’ and the ‘then’ as ‘that time’. In other words, space is located in

time, whereas time moves in space (cf. Olufunwa 49). Hence, temporal and spatial dimensions

“play important roles in determining the nature of fictional genres, particularly their themes and

structures” (Olufunwa 49). This work is an examination of the two West African novels – The

Palm-Wine Drinkard and Things Fall Apart- by Nigerian authors Amos Tutuola and Chinua

Achebe from the point of view of the European chronotope concept, introduced by M.M. Bakhtin,

and its main aim is to show the ways in which a chronotopic analysis helps to clarify the issues

raised in both texts.

To examine the concept of time in traditional life of Africans doesn’t seem to be possible

without John S. Mbiti and his book African religions and philosophy, where he states that African

notion of time is a key to understanding their way of life. J. Mbiti draws us away from a traditional

three-dimensional concept of time toward seeing African time as “a two-dimensional phenomenon,

with a long past, a present and virtually no future” (Mbiti 17). He continues: “The future is virtually

absent because events which lie in it have not taken place, they haven’t been realized and cannot,

therefore, constitute time. It [time] moves ‘backward’ rather than ‘forward’ ” (Mbiti 17). This is an

interesting and suggestive way to analyze the comprehension of reality by an individual who sets

his mind not on future events but, on the contrary, events that have taken place (cf. Mbiti 17).

John Mbiti aptly illustrates that time and space are socialized. He points out that “a person

experiences time partly in his own individual life, and partly through the society which goes back

many generations before his own birth” (Mbiti 17). This experience is tied to the land (space) that is

an integral part of African time and way of life. “Space and time are closely linked, and often the

same word is used for both. As with time, it is the content which defines space” (Mbiti 27). Thus, if
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we go back in time, the land helped keep body and soul together and at the same time was

unquestionably tied to the ancestors who were holy for African tribes.

The spatial setting of the novel Things Fall Apart is pretty well structured. The opening

paragraph defines “the firmly established spatial certainties: “Okonkwo was well known throughout

the nine villages and even beyond” (qtd. in Obiechina 129). His “personal achievements” are

established in the spatial border of the nine villages, but when he has to move beyond this border

(when he fights Umofia’s wars or flees to Mbanta after his accidental homicide) he faces the outside

world which he doesn’t like (cf. Obiechina 131). The spatial setting of the traditional life is also

stressed in the describing of Okonkwo’s prosperity:

He had a large compound enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His own hut, or obi, stood

immediately behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had her own hut,

which together formed a half moon behind the obi. The barn was built against one end of the

red walls, and long stacks of yam stood out prosperously in it. At the opposite end of the

compound was a shed for the goats, and each wife built a small attachment to her hut for the

hens. Near the barn was a small house, the ‘medicine house’ or shrine where Okonkwo kept the

wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral spirits (Achebe 11).

The closely set huts draw intimate social relationships within the village, the clans and the family.

It is interesting enough that the spatial focus goes beyond the individual, ancestors and society and

spreads on animals that are definitely connected with the land. The story about the appearance and

disappearance of locusts serves as a good example.

And then the locusts came. It had not happened for many a long year. The elders said locusts

came once in a generation, reappeared every year for seven years and then disappeared for

another lifetime. They went back to their caves in a distant land, where they were guarded by a

race of stunted men. And then after another lifetime these men opened the caves again and the

locusts came to Umuofia” (Achebe 47).

Therefore, the traditional concept of space is intimately bound up with the entire life of the tribes.
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Unlike Things Fall Apart, the episodic structure of the novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard makes the

spatial dimension quite ambiguous. Tutuola’s opening paragraphs portray the Drinkard’s first

spatial location: “So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it

contained 560,000 palm trees…” (Tutuola 7). Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that throughout

the novel the author makes mention of “vast distances (to miles and miles and miles) that his hero

and other characters are capable of covering in very limited periods of time in spite of the fact that

in many cases there are no roads or pathways…” (Larson 175). “Then we left that town after the 3 rd

day that we arrived there; from that town to the Deads’ town there was no road or path which to

travel, because nobody was going there from that town at all” (Tutuola 41). At first sight the

concept of space by Tutuola differs radically from both Achebe and the West. What is far more

interest, Charles R. Larson in his article Time, Space and Description: The Tutuola World assumes

that “time and space frequently repel one another. Therefore, Tutuola’s merging of time and space

frequently leads to surrealistic passages” (Larson 176). “When we entered inside the white tree,

there we found ourselves inside a big house which was in the centre of a big beautiful town, then

the hands directed to us to an old woman, and after the hands disappeared” (Tutuola 67).

Doubtlessly, Tutuola’s descriptions of space are limited to the supernatural world full of weird

creatures. However, as in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Amos Tutuola blends the narrative with

African folktale traditions. The depictions are “filled with references to jujus and transformations

that are common motifs in traditional Yoruba lore” (Ferris 33). Thus, the Tutuolan concept of space

is, for one thing, linked to that of Achebe’s portrayal of spatial dimension. For another thing, the

people of Umuofia have a sense of place, and the change of “place and time develops Umuofia but

not Okonkwo who returns to the village as fiery and as misguided as he left it” (Ker 145). The

Palm-Wine Drinkard travels outside his palm-tree farm and his journey “is to be characterized by a

rhythmic movement between, on one hand, states of terror and distress, and, on the other periods in

temporary Edens associated with farming, trees, and another recurrent image of harmony, music

and dance” (Edwards 256).

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Then we continued our journey as usual to the Deads’ Town and when we had travelled for 10

days we were looking at the Deads’ Town about 40 miles away and we were not delayed by

anything on the way again. But as we were looking at the town from a long distance, we

thought we could reach there the same day, but not at all, we travelled for 6 more days, because

as we nearly reached there, it would still seem to be very far away to us or as if it was running

away from us. We didn’t know that anybody who had not died could not enter into that town by

day time, but when my wife knew the secret, then she told me that we should stop and rest till

night. When it was night, then she told me to get up and start our journey again. But soon after

we started to go, we found that we need not travel more than one hour before we reached there.

Of course we did not enter into it until the dawn, because it was an unknown town to us

(Tutuola 95).

So far, I have focused on Tutuola’s and Achebe’s concept of space. It would have been useful as

well to bring forward the discussion of the European concept of space and time under the umbrella

of African temporality and spatiality.

John S. Mbiti was not the only philosopher who became interested in the connection between

time and space. Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, the Russian scholar, philosopher and literary critic,

coined the term ‘chronotope’ that literally means ‘time-space’. In his essay ‘Forms of Time and of

the Chronotope in the Novel’ he defines chronotope as “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and

spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature” (qtd. in Pechey 84). To put this

another way “there is no experience outside of space and time, and both of these always change. In

fact, change is essential” (Haynes 166). Any event takes place in time and in a concrete spatial

location. Both space and time form an indissoluble unity of the image of the event. Moreover, signs

of time are discovered in space and space is interpreted and measured by time. Apart from the fact

that chronotopes establish the inseparable connection between time and space in a continuous series

of historical development, they “are not cut from the cultural environments in which they arise”

(Holquist 111). But why all of this matter? Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher, said that “anyone

who invents a concept takes leave of reality” (qtd. in Clark and Holquist 278). “But chronotope is a
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way not to take leave of reality; it is precisely the opposite, a concept for engaging reality” (Clark

278). The chronotope is “a product of specific kinds of spaces” (Fernandes 100). The individual and

his relations form the center of the chronotope and he gives meaning to both space and time. In

particular, it is the individual’s time and space that are defined by his efforts, life, needs, activity.

In literature Bakhtin sets out different types of chronotope which evolve from the various forms

of time and space “in specific fictional genres” (Olufunwa 50). Thus, he distinguishes the

chronotope of meeting where “characters are in the same place at the same time; the chronotope of

the threshold which involves characters’ arrival at life-altering situations with the potential for

either progress or disaster. To these can be added the chronotope of memory, which is the act of the

recall and prediction in which the human mind goes back in space and time to recall the past, or

forward to anticipate the future” (Olufunwa 50), and the chronotope of parting in which characters

are shown at the same time but separated by a spatial distance. I should also mention the chronotope

of an alien world where characters are separated by time and space. But of particular importance is

Bakhtin’s chronotope of the road, “which represents the temporal and spatial progression of

characters over a given area” (Olufunwa 50). The chronotope of the road, “which is associated with

movement over time and space, cannot be considered apart from the chronotope of the threshold,

which involves the traversal of critical intersections of time and space, or from the chronotope of

meeting, which has as its purview the presence of disparate elements at particular loci in time and

space” (Olufunwa 50). Moreover, it cannot be separated from the chronotope of an alien world,

where the road serves as the point of intersection of spatial and temporal dimensions. Hence,

different types of the chronotope are interrelated and can’t be ignored in a novel since the

intersection of time and space leaves their traces in the life of the individual. Is M. Bakhtin’s

chronotope universal and transcultural nevertheless? Could the non-West novels be readable

through the European concept?

Harry Olufunwa in his article Achebe’s spatial temporalities: literary chronotopes in ‘Things fall

apart’ and ‘Arrow of God’ states that Bakhtin’s chronotope “appears to contain certain notions of

time which, although universal in their essential particulars, are in some important respects different
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from many indigenous African notions of time” (Olufunwa 50). Indeed, many African authors who

write about Africa have a different concept of time in mind. Trying to understand the gap between

Africans and Europeans, Joyce Cary in his novel Mister Johnson searches for the answer in the

changing society where the characters “live from moment to moment. Therefore, cause and effect,

development and change, and concepts of time are alien to them. Cary’s African characters exist

only in the present tense, from one isolated event to the next” (Innes 36). It's worth mentioning that

Joyce Cary was an Anglo-Irish novelist, who couldn’t see African culture from the bottom. Being

Africans, both Chinua Achebe and Amos Tutuola use another style of writing. “The qualities

exhibited in the opening passages of Things fall apart serve as a model for the structure of the novel

as a whole as it moves backward and forward in time. … the story is set in the past, and is in turn

related to a more distant historical and mythical past” (Innes 37). So the events of the novel do

happen in a different temporal movement in order to get the reader involved into the present life of

the main character Okonkwo. At the same time Achebe “insists on reflections about the cause and

effect, with particular regard to Okonkwo’s success and failure in his attempt to control his future”

(Innes 37).

The story begins with the description of the main character Okonkwo, who is about forty years

old, and his “personal achievements”. The recollections trace us back to the wrestling match that

took place when Okonkwo was eighteen. The next paragraph again returns to the forty-year-old

Okonkwo: “That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this time Okonkwo’s fame

and grown like a bush fire in the harmattan” (Achebe 1). In the fourth paragraph Achebe moves us

back to the death of Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, who passed away ten years previously. The fifth

paragraph tells us about Unoka’s childhood, the sixth paragraph refers to his adulthood at a time

parallel to Okonkwo’s present: “That was years ago, when he was young. Unoka, the grown-up,

was a failure” (Achebe 3). The next paragraphs return to Unoka’s death and Okonkwo’s

achievement. Chapter 2 describes Okonkwo in the household and his responsibility for Ikemefuna.

Aptly, chapter 3 moves back again in time to Okonkwo’s boyhood and difficult struggle as a young

man. “With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo didn’t have the start in life which many young men had.
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He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even a young wife” (Achebe 15). It is interesting enough

that all five paragraphs begin at one moment in time, but before moving forward, they keep moving

further back (cf. Innes 37). To put it differently, the past is always repeated in the present as well is

the present is the cause and effect of the past. “…Traditional thought operates, not a linear

conception of time but a cyclic reality” (qtd. in Olufunwa 51). Olufunwa continues that “past,

present and future don’t constitute separate stages which succeed one another in a rigid

sequentiality, but are in face indicative of a complexly realized continuity manifested along

different temporal and spatial planes” (Olufunwa 51). Furthermore, the concept of recurrence

repeats itself in the successors of the clan and in the belonging to the place of birth. In Things fall

apart the recurrence of the successors seems to be broken, because Okonkwo’s son Nwoye doesn’t

justify his father’s hopes. “Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great farmer and a great man. He would

stamp out the disquieting signs of laziness which he thought he already saw in him. “I will not have

a son who cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan. I would sooner strangle him with my

own hands” (Achebe 28). Besides, Nwoye breaks the traditional cycle when he joins the

missionaries. “I am one of them” (Achebe 129).

In The Palm-Wine Drinkard the reader is constantly aware of time, because Tutuola makes

references to hours, days, months, years. “…Then my father died suddenly, and when it was the 6th

month after my father had died, the tapster went to the palm-tree farm on a Sunday evening to tap

palm-wine for me” (Tutuola 8). Although time is being calculated, “still there is the impression that

many of the events that the Drinkard encounters are beyond the control of the normal dictates of

time” (Larson 171). But unlike a cyclic reality in Things Fall Apart, in The Palm-Wine Drinkard

Tutuola adheres strictly to linear time. The novel begins in the present and it is quite regular in

plotting sequence, one event leads to another (cf. Ker 35). For it is worthy of note, that the author

doesn’t specify the time frame of the Drinkard’s journey to his Tapster. Though, Charles Larson

more broadly suggests that “ten years have passed from the time the Drinkard begins his search for

his Tapster until the time he locates him” (Larson 171). Unlike Achebe, Tutuola seemingly

calculates the time by a more traditional temporal system, namely “time is related to the incidents
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involved in the Drinkard’s going and coming from the Deads’ Town and in the relative value of

these incidents” (Larson 172). Therefore, the time concept of The Palm-Wine Drinkard could be

categorized into “evil time” and “good time”. The point might be further to suggest that both the

“evil time” and the “good time” could be speeded up or slowed down by the author. The terrible

creatures in the novel operate in a time distinct from their victims.

By the time that he was saying so, he was humming with a terrible voice and also grew very

wild and even if there was a person two miles away he would not have to listen before hearing

him, so this lady began to run away in that forest for her life, but the Skull chased her and

within a few yards, he caught her, because he was very clever and smart as he was only Skull

and he could jump a mile to the second before coming down. He caught the lady in this way: so

when the lady was running away for her life, he hastily ran to her front and stopped her as a log

of wood” (Tutuola 21-22).

Apart from the Skull, the evil child of the Drinkard and his wife has a definite advantage over the

people in the village because of a different temporal system.

…To my surprise when the thumb bust out suddenly and there we saw a male child came out of

it and at the same time that the child came out from the thumb, he began to talk to us as if he

was ten years of age. Within the hour that he came down from the thumb he grew up to the

height of about three feet and some inches and his voice by that time was as plain as if

somebody strikes an anvil with a steel hammer” (Tutuola 31-32).

A tiny evil creature encountered in the novel is able to wreck a cleared field in a few minutes (cf.

Larson 173). “…Before 30 minutes that he was watching the field, he saw a very tiny creature who

was just a baby of one day of age and he commanded the weeds to rise up as he was commanding

before” (Tutuola 50). Tutuola also vividly depicts the evil birds that “were chasing the animals up

and down”.

When these birds started to eat the flesh of those animals, within a second there we saw about

50 holes on the bodies of those animals and within a second the animals fell down and died, but
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when they began to eat the dead bodies it did not last them more than 2 minutes before they

finished them (bodies) and as soon as they had eaten that, they would start to chase others about

(Tutuola 53).

In the course of the “good time” the speeded-up time works to the Drinkard’ and his wife’s

advantage. More importantly, “time is definitely on their side” (Larson 173). “But to my surprise,

these grains and the seeds germinated at once, before 5 minutes they became full grown crops and

before 10 minutes again, they had produced fruits and ripened at the same moment too, so I plucked

them and went back to the town (the Wraith-Island)” (Tutuola 48). Interestingly enough, unlike the

“evil time” where it took a few seconds an incident to happen, the duration of the “good time” is

calculated by hours, weeks, years. “…she [Faithful-Mother] took us to her hospital where we met

again many patients on sick beds and she handed us to one of the patentees to treat our heads

without hair which the people of the “Unreturnable-Heaven’s town” had cleared with broken bottle

by force” (Tutuola 69). The harmless creatures act rather slower than the harmful ones, though for

the Drinkard the time itself operates as quickly as it did in the period of troubles. “Now we were

living with the Faithful-Mother and she was taking care of us with her faithfulness, but within a

week that we were living with this mother, we had forgotten all our past torments…” (Tutuola 69).

As aforementioned, Amos Tutuola examines time in his own special way, namely discovers

“good time” (accomplishment) and “evil time” (hindrance or stagnation). The literary critic Charles

Laron more broadly interprets an African sense of time as being measured by “human values and

human achievements” (cf. Larson 175). To put this another way, the concept of time relates to

“human accomplishments rather than to clocks and Western measurements” (Larson 175).

Undoubtedly, we can find the similar time calculation in Things Fall Apart, for time (in a Western

sense) doesn’t exist for Okonkwo till his return from the exile. “For Okonkwo, time exists only

when the conventional value system has been thrown out of balance” (Larson 175).

Seven years was a long time to be away from one’s clan. A man’s place wasn’t always there,

waiting for him. As soon as he left, someone else rose and filled it… Okonkwo knew these

things. He knew that he had lost his place among the nine masked spirits who administered
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justice in the clan. He had lost the chance to lead his warlike clan against the new religion,

which, he was told, had gained ground. He had lost the years in which he might have taken the

highest titles in the clan. But some of these losses were not irreparable. He was determined that

his return should be marked by his people. He would return with a flourish, and regain the

seven wasted years (Achebe 153).

Most significantly, though Achebe’s work indicates an interesting contrast to that of Tutuola’s,

both authors intended to depict the social changes the African tribes got face to face with. The

world of Tutuola’s and Achebe’s stories is “the world of traditional lore where human beings

mingle freely with beings from the spirit world. It is a world in which animals, vegetation and

spirits are frequently given human attributes and human paraphernalia, whereas human beings are

endowed with miraculous supernatural powers” (Palmer 14). “When the people of that town saw

him there with us again, they drove us away with juju and they said that we were carrying a spirit

about and they said that they didn’t want a spirit in their town” (Tutuola 36).

Apart from spirituality, Tutuola’s and Achebe’s works contain extensive data on tribal social and

seasonal traditions. Both Nigerian authors don’t use European calendars years, but the seasons,

agricultural work and festivals to demarcate the year by cycle. Accordingly, there are two kinds of

seasons, the rainy and the dry. The rainy implies the very season of agricultural work, planting,

weeding and cultivation. The dry season is the time of harvest, rest and preparation for the next

season (cf. Obiechina 124). “So one night, when it was one o’clock in the mid-night, when I noticed

that he slept inside the room I put oil around the house and roof, but as it was thatched with leaves

and also it was in the dry season…” (Tutuola 34). In Things Fall Apart the seasons are clearly

defined. The key events of the plot move on through time and space and, furthermore, are promoted

by this kind of seasonal association. Ikemefuna appears in Okonkwo’s compound before the new

agricultural year. “Ikemefuna came to Umuofia at the end of the carefree season between harvest

and planting. In fact he recovered from his illness only a few days before the Week of Peace began.

And that was also the year Okonkwo broke the peace, and was punished, as was the custom, by
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Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess” (Achebe 24). But even the seasonal rhythm undergoes the

radical changes:

The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie was the worst year in

living memory. Nothing happened at its proper time; it was either too early or too late. It

seemed as if the world had one mad. The first rains were late, and, when they came, lasted only

a brief moment…That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers wept as they

dug up the miserable and rotting yams (Achebe 19).

The writers are always conscious of the close connection between time and space. For this

reason, they convincingly emphasize the closeness of things and places in the traditional setting,

especially through the closeness of sounds. Sound is a way of establishing spatial contiguity or

temporal belonging.

Then the crier gave his message, and at the end of it beat his instrument again. And this was the

message. Every man of Umuofia was asked to gather at the market-place tomorrow morning.

Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was amiss. He had

discerned a clear overtone of tragedy in the crier’s voice, and even now he could still hear it as

it grew dimmer and dimmer in the distance (Achebe 7).

The sound of the drum is an integral part of African culture. It could easily rouse the population of a

village, like it happens in Things Fall Apart:

Go-di-di-go-go-di-go. Di-go-go-di-go. It was the ekwe to the clan. One of the things every man

earned was the language of the hollowed-out wooden instrument. Diim! Diim! Diim! Boomed

the cannon at intervals…The first cock had not crowed, and Umuofia was still swallowed up in

sleep and silence when the ekwe began to talk, and the cannon shattered the silence. Men

stirred on their bamboo beds and listened anxiously. Somebody was dead (Achebe 107).
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Tutuola highlights the importance of the drum, for it appears as the edge of the sky, song emerges

as the river, dance – as the mountain. As a consequence, the three elements of culture transmute

themselves into the landscape (space).

But at last “Drum” was beating himself till he reached heaven before he knew that he was out

of the world and since that day he couldn’t come to the world again. Then “Song” sang until he

entered into a large river unexpectedly and we couldn’t see him anymore and “Dance” was

dancing till she became a mountain and did not appear to anybody since that day, so all the

deads rose up from the grave returned to the grave and since that day they couldn’t rise up

again, then all the rest of the creatures went back to the bush etc. but since that day they

couldn’t come to the town and dance with anybody or with human-beings (Tutuola 85).

Evidently, these three essential components of culture are fairly potent, but they quite clearly form

the landscape of the Yoruba people. Their creation of the landscape hence suggests a return to a

primitive state, in which nature acts as the basis of African culture.

The way temporal and spatial dimensions are organized in the novels under discussion requires

our further attention. The transformations in people’s basic conceptions of time and space are

believed to be unfolded by historic transformations in their way of living. An investigation how and

where history gets into literature doesn’t seem to be possible without borrowing Bakhtin’s method

of constructing a ‘chronotopic’ concept that implies “reading texts as x-rays in the culture system

from which they spring” (Sholz 143). Things Fall Apart and The Palm-Wine Drinkard are fruitful

to be approached by Bakhtin’s analysis, for both novels are full of chronotopic references.

According to M.M. Bakhtin, the chronotope of meeting is “probably the most important” (Bachtin

281). It is fundamental to plot development and is closely linked to motifs such as “parting, escape,

acquisition, loss [and] marriage”, all of which play significant roles in the exposition of the events

being narrated. (qtd. in Olufunwa 54). Indeed, this type of the chronotope represents the coherence

of time and space when a spatial and temporal path of two characters (cultures) crosses or meets at

one point both temporal and spatial. To put it differently, the meeting happens in the same place and

at the same time. In the texts of our focus the chronotope of meeting is greatly important, because
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we discover the encounter not only between the main characters, but between two cultures as well.

“Things Fall Apart, as its title suggests, examines the fragmentation of a community and its culture,

a process which partly results from the spatiotemporal consequences of its encounter with British

colonialism”. In the words of Simon Gikandi, “Umuofia’s attempt to represent itself as an organic

and unchanging community is always confronted with, and often challenged by, temporal and

spatial progression” (qtd. in Olufunwa 55). “The new religion and government and the trading

stores were very much in people’s eyes and minds. There were still many who saw these new

institutions as evil, but even they talked and thought about little else, and certainly not about

Okonkwo’s return” (Achebe 163). Obierika claims that the white man has put a knife on the things

that held the Ibo people together and they have fallen apart (cf. Achebe 158). The things that hold

the Ibo community together are mainly realized in the encounters of its members within the

customary rules of their culture, namely in some religious ceremonies or festivals where the people

converse with their ancestors or deities.

The egwugwu house was now a pandemonium of quavering voices: Aru oyim de de de de dei!

filled the air as the spirits of the ancestors , just emerged from the earth, greeted themselves in

their esoteric language. The egwugwu house into which they emerged faced the forest, away

from the crowd, who saw only its back with the many-coloured patterns and drawings done by

specially chosen women at regular intervals. These women never saw the inside of the hut… If

they imagined what was inside, they kept their imagination to themselves. No woman ever asked

questions about the most powerful and most secret cult in the clan (Achebe 78).

Another equally important example of the meeting chronotope in Things Fall Apart serves to show

that a failure to meet can lead to a spatial displacement and temporal consequences. Harry

Olufunwa in his article refers to Okonkwo’s chi, “representative of the meeting of Okonkwo’s

human and spirit elements, and their arrival at some form of consensus on the path that his life is to

take. It is this culture, and this man, which encounter another culture, one with a very different set

of values, and it is a meeting that gives rise to the notion of culture conflict” (Olufunwa 55). “We

cannot leave the matter in his hands because he does not understand our customs, just as we don’t
 Silakova 15

understand his. We say he is foolish because he doesn’t know our ways, and perhaps he says we are

foolish because we don’t know his. Let him go away” (Achebe 170).

The chronotope of meeting in The Palm-Wine Drinkard provides the transition from the

traditional culture towards the culture of British Empire. Unlike Things Fall Apart, the intrusion of

the Western culture through techniques and artifacts is deemphasized in Tutuola’s novel. Although,

the Western style of the house of Faithful Mother in the White Tree with big halls and a large

kitchen with “three hundred and forty cooks” seems to be inappropriate in the Yoruba pristine

cultural atmosphere. “She took us to the largest dancing hall which was in the centre of that house,

and there we saw that over 300 people were dancing all together. The hall was decorated with about

one million pounds (£) and there were many images and our own too were in the centre of the hall”

(Tutuola 68). By the same token, guns, knives, bottles, cutlasses and other fighting weapons are

mentioned bring us toward the colonial culture of British Empire. “Faithful Mother in the White

Tree looks like strangely indulgent missionary and her establishment like an oddly undisciplined

missionary hospital” (Collins 65). “So she gave me a gun and ammunitions and a cutlass, then she

gave my wife many costly clothes etc. as gifts and gave us plenty of roasted meat with drinks and

cigarettes” (Tutuola 71). In Tutuola’s novel the new culture is closely interlaced with the old

African traditions, the myth (gods, spirits, sacrifices, etc.) is intertwined with the reality.

The chronotope of meeting couldn’t be seen without the chronotope of parting. It is highly

important for the life development of both the main character and the Ibo people in Things Fall

Apart. “The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were

amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can

no longer act like one” (Achebe 158). In Things Fall Apart Bakhtin’s chronotope of parting doesn’t

unfold its meaning. The Ibo people and the British missioners are parted by time, but not by space.

The delayed progress of pagan Africa is to cover a temporal distance within the same space. Hence,

two parted cultures are meant to meet at the same place within the same time.

The chronotope of parting in The Palm-Wine Drinkard fully follows Bakhtin’s theory. It serves

to show the simultaneity of two people parted by a spatial distance. “This would be a brief loss of
 Silakova 16

woman, but a shorter separation of a man from lover…As my wife disappeared with these Red-

people, I began to seek her about both night and day” (Tutuola 82-83). Unlike Achebe’s novel, the

main Tutuolan characters encounter each other within the same space in the same temporal

dimension. “But when I entered the new town, I went directly to the Red-king of this new town (the

same king) and told him that I wanted my wife, but when he heard so, he called her for me at once

and she saw me” (Tutuola 83).

As previously highlighted, the chronotope of the road is a certain point of intersection of

meetings and partings within one spatial and temporal spot. Martin Leer in his article Postcolonial

Invisible Cities: Kamila Shamsie and Ben Okri suggests that “roads link every-day and the

fantastic” (Leer 168). The evidence of the road chronotope is more obvious in the case of The Palm-

Wine Drinkard, for Tutuola considers road as connecting the different orders of existence. Thus, the

Drinkard and his wife travel between the living and the dead and all states in-between (cf. Leer

168). “After we had spent 15 days in that town, then we told the king that we wanted to continue

our journey to the Deads’ Town” (Tutuola 95).

It appears that we could hardly separate the chronotopes of meeting and parting from the

chronotope of memory. The chronotope of memory which states that “the human mind goes back in

space and time to recall the past, or forward to anticipate the future” (Olufunwa 50) is clearly seen

throughout the novels. In Things Fall Apart the worship of ancestors keeps the clans together and

the memory “telescopes space and time, the normal spatial and temporal markers which measure

these notions in reality being either absent or radically altered in memory, and as a consequences,

particular events become much more marked in their significance” (Olufunwa 62). When the

missionaries come, Okonkwo’s uncle Uchendu knows that the new culture will destroy memory and

the present of the clans: “An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his

father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter’s dog

that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan” (Achebe 150).

The memory of the tapster pushes the Drinkard to cover a vast spatial and temporal distance. “So

one day, I thought what I could do, then I thought within myself that I should find him (palm-wine
 Silakova 17

tapster) wherever he might be and tell him to follow me to my father’s town and begin to tap palm-

wine for me as usual” (Tutuola 98-99). An equally significant aspect of the chronotope of memory

is the appearance of time and space in reality. The recall of the past in both novels creates a position

of space and time that exists simultaneously alongside currently experienced reality.

In the article Achebe’s spatial temporalities: literary chronotopes in ‘Things fall apart’ and

‘Arrow of God’ Harry Olufunwa concludes:

Meetings, encounters and confrontations in the novel all take place within the context of an

era whose own outstanding chronotope is that of the threshold. The chronotope of the

threshold, like all other chronotopes, is an intersection within an intersection. Within the

framework of the meeting of space and time, the threshold signifies the critical intersection of

the two notions in a particularly resonant way. It represents the point at which change –

whether as improvement or as catastrophe – is at its most imminent (Olufunwa 56 - 57).

The chronotope of the threshold is vividly depicted in Things Fall Apart by particular locations (the

obi, the ilo or the Evil Forest) or by the specific period, namely the New Yam festival that “was

held every year before the harvest began to honour the earth goddess and the ancestral spirits of the

clan” (Achebe 31). In other words, it was the Ibo New Year that was celebrated as a cyclical new

beginning, where a welcoming of the new was understood as a reiteration of the old. “As a reminder

of the past, a celebration of the present and an expression of hope in the future, the New Yam

festival marks a significant intersection of the already interwoven stages of time in the cyclical

matrix” (Olufunwa 57).

The threshold chronotope in The Palm-Wine Drinkard is represented by the Drinkard’s arrival in

the Deads’ Town which turns out to be a failure. “As soon as the dead man who was asking us

questions saw us moving he ran to us and said that he had told us to go back to my town because

alives could not come and visit any dead man in the Deads’ Town, so he told us to walk backward

or with our back and we did so” (Tutuola 97). Some literary critics like Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie

underscore the recurrence of Drinkard’s journey…“made up of Departure, Initiation and Return”

 Silakova 18

(Ogundipe-Leslie 147). “Now we started our journey from the Deads’ Town directly to my home

town which I had left for many years” (Tutuola 101). Unlike Things Fall Apart, the recurrence in

Tutuola’s novel doesn’t imply the repetition of the past in the present or in the implied future, for

the past can’t be repeated. “Then he told me that he could not follow me back to my town again,

because a dead man could not live with alives and their characteristics would not be the same”

(Tutuola 100).

Conclusion

As will readily be observed, the time/space discourse is too profound to be easily dismissed. In

this way Baktin’s chronotope is “the means of measuring how …fictional time, space, and character

are constructed in relation to one another. Consequently, every entry into the sphere of meanings is

accomplished only through the gates of the chronotope” (Vice 201). The Palm-Wine Drinkard and

Things Fall Apart demonstrate that the chronotope coined by the Russian scholar is not universal,

but transcultural, for “chronotope may also be used as a means for studying the relation between

any text and its times, and thus can be a fundamental tool for a broader social and historical

analysis” (Holquist 113). Consequently, a chronotopic approach reveals the main conflict in both

novels that is bounded up with the concept of change. From the very beginning of the novel Things

Fall Apart we observe that Okonkwo changes himself in order not to resemble his father Unoka.

“Unoka was a loafer…Okonkwo won fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages” (Achebe 3).

Furthermore, we see the change when the British missionaries appear in Umuofia, bringing other

culture, religion and beliefs with them. We also can mention the change of places, when Okonkwo,

being in exile, leaves Umuofia or his son Nwoye leaves his family to join the missionaries. Both

cultural and traditional changes do happen in the same spatiotemporal dimension. It means that

space and time don’t replace each other, but are two components of a single whole. Indeed, time,

space and the characters are interconnected, more than that the characters are the representatives of

the spatiotemporal dimension. “Unoka, Okonkwo, and Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nwoye are

representations of past, present and future” (Olufunwa 63).

 Silakova 19

The inseparability of time and space is also illustrated is The Palm-Wine Drinkard. In fact the

change of spatial setting makes this novel truly African. Each new spatial scene goes along with the

current time and is controllable by magic creatures. “It stands as a clear enough indication that the

Drinkard’s adventure is not merely a journey into the eternal African Bush, but equally a journey

into the racial imagination, into sub-conscious, into that Spirit World that everywhere co-exists and

even overlaps with the world of waking ‘reality’” (qtd. in Lindfors 283). Though the role of the past

in Tutuola’s novel isn’t expressed directly as in Things Fall Apart, it is never remote from the

present. What is more, the present is a sequence of past moments.

Being a “product of a missionary-based education” Achebe has developed his concept of cyclical

time that is close to that one of Bakhtin: “time’s forward impulse is limited by the cycle” (qtd. in

Olufunwa 51). In committing suicide, Okonkwo undertakes “an ironic retour to the space inhabited

by his father” (qtd. in Olufunwa 63). Unlike Achebe, Tutuola exemplifies the linear concept of

time, where events go along with the reality with the continuing influence of the past (memory) on

the present. The repetition of the past in the present and in the implied future in Things Fall Apart

and the linear present as the consequence of the past in the novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard let us

conclude that time and space could can’t be perceived by both Africans and Europeans in the same

way. But Bakhtin’s chronotopic analysis discovers that a particular location in space and a specific

period of time are of great importance for the plot development of African novels. This in turn

means that chronotope is a “term that brings together not just two concepts, but four: a time, plus its

value; and a space, plus its value” (Holquist 155). In this way, the chronotopic concept can be seen

as having an important role in the understanding of African consciousness, as it brings together not

only time, space and their value, but it insists on their simultaneity and inseparability as well.
 Silakova 20

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