Subject: post colonial literature

Submitted by: Rida

Roll no # 16001
Submitted to: ma’am Anila
Topic: Things fall apart summary

Writer of the Novel

Chinua Achebe
Things fall apart
We meet Okonkwo at age 18 during a wrestling match – the moment
that he first becomes famous among the local villages. Okonkwo is
fighting against an undefeated wrestler called Amalinze the Cat, but in
the end, Okonkwo throws the Cat and wins the contest. This wrestling
match actually happened twenty years ago, and since then Okonkwo’s
reputation has grown and spread. Achebe describes Okonkwo as a
pretty intimidating guy. He’s physically huge, has an intense face,
and tends to use his fists to settle his arguments. And he’s impatient
with “unsuccessful” men – like his dad. Okonkwo despises his late
father, Unoka, for his laziness. Unoka died ten years ago, but essentially
was totally irresponsible and was always blowing his money on booze
(okay, gourds of palm-wine). He was a drink-and-be-merry kind of guy
who enjoyed playing the flute, feasting, and celebrating. As a youth,
Unoka was a musician and his happiest moments were after the annual
harvest, when the whole village would gather to feast and enjoy the
music. Later in life though, Unoka was a failure because he was too lazy
to work. Instead, he borrowed money from all his friends and could
barely afford to feed his family. He became the laughingstock of the
village.Flashing back to when Unoka was alive, we see a telling scene.
Okoye, Unoka’s neighbor, comes to visit Unoka and offers him a kola
nut, which is a ritual gift. Okoye goes through a long-winded, stylized
discourse which is a polite way of asking Unoka to pay back the loan of
200 cowries he borrowed from Okoye.Unoka laughs at Okoye and
points at his wall, on which he has marked down all his debts. He owes
a lot of people a lot of money. He snubs Okoye, saying he means to pay
off his big debts first (because he’s in major debt) and Okoye is forced to
leave empty-handed.

The flashback ends.

Unoka died in debt, which is why Okonkwo is ashamed of him.

Okonkwo, unlike his father, established himself as a rich successful yam
farmer with three wives and two tribal titles. He seems destined for great
things.At the end of the 1st chapter, we are left with a tantalizing snippet
of information – Okonkwo is somehow left in charge of an ill-fated boy
named Ikemefuna.
This 2nd chapter tells the story of how Okonkwo ends up with
Ikemefuna.Okonkwo lies in bed contemplating the meaning of the gong
sounded by the town crier late at night. The gong signals that the men
must gather in the morning, but Okonkwo fears that something bad has
happened. We learn that the people of Umuofia fear night’s darkness
but will allow their children to play in the moonlight. In the morning, the
whole village learns that last night’s gong was sounded for the death of
a daughter of the clan. She was killed at the market by a neighboring
clan and now Okonkwo wants to go to war to get revenge.The
neighboring clans, however, want to avoid war because they fear the
Umuofia. When Okonkwo arrives in the neighboring village of the
offending tribe, they offer a peaceful solution of a ritual sacrifice (not
killing, but giving up of) of a boy and a virgin girl to the Umuofia clan.
Okonkwo accepts the virgin girl and the boy – Ikemefuna – and returns
home. The Umuofia elders decide that the virgin girl should be given to
the man whose wife was just murdered. The boy’s fate goes undecided,
so Okonkwo takes him home in the meantime. Ikemefuna ends up living
in Okonkwo’s household for 3 years. We learn that Okonkwo rules his
family with an iron fist and his wives live in fear of him. He’s got a pretty
bad temper. Achebe does a bit of psychoanalysis on Okonkwo and
essentially his aggression stems from a deep-seeded, subconscious
fear of being a failure like his father. Okonkwo recalls how a childhood
friend called Okonkwo’s father agbala – meaning woman or a man
without a title.In an attempt to be completely unlike his father, Okonkwo
works hard tilling the fields until dark. His efforts keep his family
prosperous.At the end of the chapter, the narrative switches to
Ikemefuna’s point of view. Okonkwo hands the boy over to his first wife
and orders her to take care of him.

In chapter 3rd to create his own wealth and reputation, Okonkwo goes to
a wealthy man – Nwakibie – and makes polite offerings of palm-wine
and kola nut and asks for a favor. Essentially, Okonkwo makes a
sharecropping agreement with the wealthy man where he only gets one-
third of his harvest and Nwakibie gets the rest. Nwakibie is unexpectedly
generous to Okonkwo, giving him twice the number of seeds expected
because, unlike many young men, Okonkwo isn’t afraid of hard work.
The year turns out to be a disaster. There is a long period of drought,
killing the first batch of Okonkwo’s yams. After he plants the remainder,
there is endless flooding so the few yams that actually make it to harvest
are rotting.But Okonkwo survives the tragic year and vows that he can
survive anything due to his “inflexible will.”

In chapter 4th The narrator, however, assures the reader that Okonkwo
hasn’t been successful simply because he’s a lucky man; he’s worked
hard to rise from poverty to his current position. The clan respects
Okonkwo for his hard work and strong-will, which is why they selected
him to go to the offending village to declare war (that was when he
ended up taking Ikemefuna and the virgin girl instead). The clan assigns
Ikemefuna to Okonkwo’s care until they decide what to do with him.
When Ikemefuna moves in to Okonkwo’s house, he’s terrified and
refuses to eat until he’s taken home. Okonkwo won’t put up with the
boy’s hunger strike and stands over Ikemefuna with a threatening club,
forcing the boy to eat his meal.

The chapter 5th opens with three days before the Feast of the New
Yam, and all of the villagers are excited. In the three years Ikemefuna
has stayed with Okonkwo’s family, he has greatly influenced Nwoye.
Okonkwo feels guilty about killing Ikemefuna, which he ought to,
according to us. Okonkwo doesn’t eat anything for two days and just
drinks palm-wine. Ezedu’s funeral is a big deal because he was one of
the head honchos of the Umuofia. Even the ancestral spirits,
the egwugwu, come to pay their respects and lament.During the final
salute, when the drums sound loudly and guns and cannons are fired,
an accident occurs. Ezedu’s sixteen-year-old son falls dead from a
gunshot through the heart. He and his brothers had been performing a
final dance to honor their father. The offending gun is Okonkwo’s. The
Umuofia consider killing a clansman a horrible crime, one that offends
the earth goddess. But, since the boy’s death was clearly an accident
(considered female because it was unintentional), Okonkwo only
receives the punishment of exile from the Umuofia villages for seven
years. Okonkwo must spend his seven years of banishment in his
motherland (literally, the land from which his mother comes), a village
called Mbanta. Uchendu, Okonkwo’s maternal uncle, welcomes
Okonkwo and his family to Mbanta. Uchendu is the oldest member of
the family and remembers Okonkwo as a boy when he returned to
Mbanta for his mother’s funeral. After the absent of okonkwo the people
of Mbanta and the Christians are able to live together in peace because
the missionaries stay in the Evil Forest and mostly mind their own
business. However, as the group of converts grows in size and strength,
confrontations between the Christians and villagers start to occur. There
are also rumors that the white people are not only spreading their
religion, but their government as well. This means courts to prosecute
Igbo for killing converts and missionaries. Okonkwo wants to react with
violence, but the elders gloss over the crime. In the end, they decide on
the milder punishment of ostracizing the Christians. Okonkwo, though
frustrated by the perceived weakness of the Mbanta people, holds his
tongue. As his term of exile draws to a close, Okonkwo bitterly regrets
his seven years of banishment, seeing them as a lost opportunity to
improve his standing in his fatherland of Umuofia. Knowing that his time
in Mbanta is coming to an end, Okonkwo sends money to Obierika to
build some temporary huts for him in Umuofia in preparation for his
return. “Seven years was a long time to be away from one’s clan.”
Okonkwo realizes that he’s probably lost his high position in his
fatherland; someone else probably took his place as one of the nine
masked spirits and he’s probably no longer in a position to lead his clan
into war against the Christians. Obierika points out that throwing the
white people out wouldn’t be easy because so many men of Umuofia
have joined the ranks of the Christians. Since the religion is intertwined
with the government, the converts by default must support the
government. The Christians have compromised the unity of the clan and
has made them fall apart. In Obierika’s own words, “He [the white men]
has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen
apart.” This is the first (and only) reference to the title of the book.
Although Okonkwo strongly believes that the white men should be
forced out of Umuofia, not everyone in town agrees. The white men
have brought trading stores, goods, and money to the area, which many
of the villagers appreciate. after the church was burned, Okonkwo and
five other Umuofia leaders are invited to speak to District Commissioner
to discuss the confrontation. Though they arrive armed – at Okonkwo’s
suggestion – they fall prey to an ambush. In a move of shameful trickery,
the District Commissioner has them all arrested and imprisoned. The
District Commissioner sets out to show the men who’s boss. In the
District Commissioner’s own words: “We have a court of law where we
judge cases and administer justice just as it is done in my own country
under a great queen. I have brought you here because you joined
together to molest others, to burn people’s houses and their place of
worship. That must not happen in the dominion of our queen, the most
powerful ruler in the world.” All of a sudden, the men of Umuofia are
subject to England’s system of justice and queen. Upon their release,
Okonkwo and the other five men go silently home. The District
Commissioner and his guards arrive at Okonkwo’s compound,
demanding to see Okonkwo. A small group of men is sitting there, but
not Okonkwo. In a small opening in the compound, the District
Commissioner sees Okonkwo dangling from a tree. He has committed
suicide. Obierika asks them to help them take down the body. Since it is
an abomination for a man to take his own life, his corpse is now
considered evil and only strangers may touch it. The Umuofia will pay
the missionaries to take down and bury Okonkwo’s body; then they will
perform the proper rituals to consecrate the polluted land. Looking at
Okonkwo’s body, Obierika loses his composure and blurts out, “That
man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill
himself; and now he will be buried like a dog…”The District
Commissioner agrees to help them bury Okonkwo and sets his men to
the task. As the Commissioner leaves, he thinks about Okonkwo’s
actions and wants to include them in a new book he is writing. At first he
thinks he can devote a whole chapter to Okonkwo, but quickly decides
to cut it to a mere paragraph. (Interesting that Achebe wrote a whole
book about Okonkwo…)Things Fall Apart ends with the revelation of the
title of the District Commissioner’s book: The Pacification of the
Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.