Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart
In A Nutshell

Originally written in English and published in 1958, Things Fall Apart was one of the first novels by an African author to garner worldwide acclaim. Though mostly fictional, Nigerian author Chinua Achebe claims that the book documents Africa’s spiritual history – the civilized and rich life the Igbo lived before the arrival of Europeans and the ruinous social and cultural consequences that the arrival of European missionaries brought. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart as a sharp criticism of imperialism, or the European colonization of countries outside of the European continent (especially Africa and the Americas). The novel also critiques Joseph Conrad’s famous novel, Heart of Darkness, which documented the African natives from an imperialist’s (or white colonizer’s) point of view. Achebe followed Things Fall Apart with two other novels, No Longer At Ease and Arrow of God, both of which also depict the African experience with Europeans.

Why Should I Care?

So, unless you’re from Nigeria, you might not be able to relate to the Igbo culture. We bet your dad hasn’t murdered your adoptive brother, and we’re guessing that your country hasn’t just been colonized and your culture shattered. But if you think you can’t relate to this book, think again. Do you mean to tell us that you’ve never been afraid of becoming like one of your parents? Even an eensy bit scared?

One of the most fascinating parts of Things Fall Apart comes from watching Okonkwo's ongoing battle against being like his father. Okonkwo doesn’t respect anything about his father, which is a bit extreme. Most people, though, do see qualities in their parents that scare them. You know, like the kid with the alcoholic dad who decides never to touch a drink, or the one that has a hideously penny-pinching mom who grows up vowing to never shop at a discount store or use coupons while grocery shopping.

It’s common for people to fear being like their parents, and overcompensate by behaving in the completely opposite way. Okonkwo, however, is an example of what happens to a person who concerns himself more with avoiding his father's traits than with living his own, independent life.

Things Fall Apart Themes

Gender
Respect and Reputation
Sin
Fear
Customs and traditions
Fate and free will

Things Fall Apart Characters

Okonkow
Unoka
obierika
knwoye
Ekwifi
Ezinma
Ikemefuna

THE HEART OF DARKNESS (Josaph Conrad)

Historical Context

• Joseph Conrad captained a steamboat up the Congo in 1890. He wrote Heart of Darkness in 1899. At the time Conrad went up the Congo, the region he travelled in was The Congo Free State, a million square miles in central Africa that was the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium. It was established in 1884 and remained his personal kingdom until 1908.
• Two figures were especially important in the exploration and annexation of Africa by the European powers: David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley.
• Livingstone was a famous missionary/explorer. He put lots of Africa on the map in the 1840's-70's. He disappeared for many years in the heart of Africa in 1865. A journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, in 1871, went on a mission to find him. When he found him he uttered the famous greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."
• Stanley became a famous explorer. He crossed Africa in 1877, east to west, 7000 miles. Wrote lots of books about Africa.
• In 1878, at the height of Stanley's fame, King Leopold II hired Stanley to create his African kingdom. For five years, Stanley was in the Congo making "treaties with the natives,"--that is, creating a slave-state of forced labor based on the gun and the whip.
• In 1884, the U.S. was the first country to recognize Leopold's claim to the million miles, which was called the International Association of the Congo.
• In 1884-5, the European powers held a conference to divide up Africa--the so called "Scramble for Africa." The Conference ended by recognizing Leopold's claim. He changed the name to "The Congo Free State" (nice irony).
• The Europeans justified their exploitation of Africa with the rhetoric of bringing European Civilization to the Dark Continent--the Light of Christianity and the value of work, with a Capital W. The dominant views were nicely summed up and expressed in Rudyard Kipling's The White Man's Burden which was written the same year as Heart of Darkness. Europeans and Americans had a sacred duty to bring enlightnment and progress, civilization and economic development to the Land of Darkness.
• In this historical moment, Conrad writes Heart of Darkness. As you read the novel, you'll see how Conrad appropriates for his own ends a lot of the language and understanding of Africa which was dominant in Europe at the time. Notice Marlow's aunts view of Marlow's misssion in the Congo and especially Kurtz's words, which are indirectly quoted at various moments in the story.

The Art of Narration in Heart of Darkness

• The Method of telling the story: the story within a story.
  • Conrad uses a frame-story, which is a narrative device that enhances the complexity of the story-telling. By using a frame-story one can have stories within stories commenting on each other in a variety of ways. For example, Rashomon. The central story is the story that goes on between the Priest, the Woodcutter and the Commoner at Rashomon gate. The stories told by the bandit, the wife, the husband and the woodcutter about what happened in the woods all function to illuminate the frame-story--the 3-way debate at Rashomon.
  • HD is a first-person narration within a first-person narration. The narrator of the frame-story is a nameless character who tells about Marlow's telling of the main story. The central narrator is Marlow. In the standard first person narration the readers are the direct audience. For example , in A Clockwork Orange, Alex addresses the readers: "Oh, my brothers." In HD, the audience for Marlow's tale is the guys on the boat on the Thames. Marlow is speaking to the characters in the story, not directly to the audience outside the story.
  • What are the advantages of this narrative technique? It creates an oral storyteller--A voice. It simulates the qualities of oral story-telling. Marlow, the oral story-teller, moves easily back and forward in time, creates suspense by mentioning things that have already happened, but which he's not telling everything about them just yet. He can make abrupt statements like: "This too has been one of the dark places of the earth.." What? He drops hints, stops the flow of action for digressions into reflection and commentary. At the moment of attack, when the steerman is dying at his feet, Marlow stops the story for a long reflection on Kurtz. Just as the boat is about to reach Kurtz, Marlow stops the narrative to attack his audience for their inability to understand the meaning of his story.
  • So this narrative technique of the oral story-teller is a very flexible technique. Lesiurely, loose, digressive, meandering, which allows for Marlow's critical commentary and reflection on what he encounters, and for the creation of anticipation and suspense as we slowly journey upriver to meet, at last, the "remarkable" Mr. Kurtz.
• Story Structure--The Journey.
  • The journey is a classic type of story. Take a trip, go through a series of adventures on the road. The Odyssey, Don Quixote, On the Road.
  • This is an archypical narrative form for exploring the movement from innocence to experience, ignorance to knowledge. Basic initiation story form in which characters are initiated into a complex reality that they didn't understand before making the journey.
  • The journey is a nice loose structure in which one can add or subtract incidents. The events can have a certain completness in and of themselves. Witness the events in Apocalypse Now.
• Symbols.
  • HD is a difficult story to read partly because of the digressive oral style, but mostly because the story is dense with symbolic meaning. Characters, events, details of description reverberate with symbolic suggestiveness. A Clockwork Orange is much easier reading, even with the Nadsat of Alex , for two reasons. The writing style is simple and direct and there are only a few symbols use in the story, such as the title.
  • What is a symbol? A symbol is a specific detail or details which has a specific meaning in the context, but suggests much more. Symbols are condensed, short-hand means of communicating rich meaning by suggestion instead of direct statement. For example, the title, Heart of Darkness, drips with multi-meanings. Or the French gunboat firing into the jungle. The Central Station; the Innner Station. The blasting going on at the Central Station. "The grove of death." The heads. Kurtz's painting and Report. Or the characters as symbols of moral types--ways of facing the Heart of Darkness.
  • Part of the pleasure of reading such a symbolically dense text is the pleasure of sleuthing, puzzling out the meaning of the symbols.
• Characters.
  • The Major Characters.
    • Marlow. Marlow is the central character who is changed by his journey into the heart of darkness and his encounter with Mr. Kurtz. How does he change? Notice that he does not tell a neutral story about his experiences. He casts a critical ironic eye upon his encounters. He makes moral judgments by the way he describes what he sees and hears. Pay attention to the comments he makes about his experience.
    • Kurtz. A voice. A remarkable man--an idealist, a painter and poet and orator. A writer of the "Report on the Suppression of Savage Customs." "All of Europe went into the making of Kurtz." Yet Mr. Kurtz was "hollow at the core." "The Horror! The Horror! What happened to Mr. Kurtz in the heart of darkness?
    • The Accountant. Keeps immaculate accounting records, while living a few hundred feet from "the grove of death."
    • The Russian Harlequin. A young adventurer in Africa, who was "thoughtlessly alive." A great admirer of Kurtz: "He enlarged my mind." What is his function in the novel?
  • Relationship among characters: What do they have in common?
    • Citizen in a toga; Fresleven; Kurtz; Marlow
    • Chief Accountant; Russian
    • Station Manager; Assistant Manager-bricklayer; El Dorado Exploring Expedition; the Pilgrims.
    • Natives on shore; Cannibals on the boat.
    • Marlow's Aunt; Warrior Woman; the Intended.
• Definitions: "Those who have the power to define are the Masters." (The links are to the paragraphs in Heart of Darkness in which the definitions appear.)
  .
  • Workers.[27]
  • Enemies.[30]
  • Criminals.[36]
  • Rebels.[117]

Key scenes for analysis and discussion.

[The links are to the paragraphs in HD.]

• Fresleven and the hens. [20]
• Marlow's discussion with his Aunt. [27]
• The French Gunboat.[30]
• At the Company Station. Building a railway; the Grove of Death; The Accountant. [35]
• At the Central Station. The manager; Kurtz's painting; Kurtz's words.[52]
• The Cannibals.[88]
• Kurtz's "Report on the Suppression of Savage Customs."[103]
• The Russian.[107]
• The Heads. "Hollow at the core."[115]
• Encounter with Kurtz.[120]
• "The Horror! The Horror!"[154]