Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe’s 1958 Novel

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe's 1958 novel, tells the story of how the combined impact of colonialism and mission-focused Christianity undermined traditional Igbo (Ee-bo) society in eastern Nigeria and replaced it with a hybrid culture. Achebe evidently knew and understood both Igbo life and the Christian mission. I wondered how one mind could know both so well and did some digging to find out.
Achebe's parents were Christian converts but they remained respectful of Odinani, the religious tradition of their ancestors. Achebe’s grandfather remained within that tradition and his mother and sister told him old Igbo stories. Village life, going on all around him, included celebrations of traditional festivals, and young Chinua was allowed to join in. In these ways, Achebe grew up on the cusp of transition. He experienced the life of a traditional African village and the teaching of the Protestant Church Mission Society. Of course, it was the Mission Society that started him on an education that made it possible for him to write an English-language novel.
 

Things Fall Apart: Three generations at a time of change

Things Fall Apart hinges around three generations at a time of change. In each, there’s a son in reaction against his father. Okonkwo is the main character. His father, Unoka, is a gifted musician but a failure at his main task of farming. In reaction against Unoka’s sensitive nature, Okonkwo excels in matters of strength, suppressing any tendency towards feeling or reflectiveness. However, Okonkwo’s son, Nwoye, inherits his grandfather's sensitivity. In the first half of the novel, Achebe transports us to Umuofia, a traditional Igbo village. In the second half, the Christian mission arrives. And Nwoye stands on the cusp.
 

A sacrificial offering to avert tribal warfare

A neighbouring village sends a sacrificial offering to avert tribal warfare. This happens in the wake of a serious offence, and is a hinge event in the story. The sacrifice comes in the shape of Ikemefuna, a young boy. When Okonkwo receives Ikemefuna temporarily into his household, a close bond develops between Nwoye and the newcomer. It follows that, when the time for the sacrifice comes, Nwoye is deeply distressed. To Okonkwo's disgust, Nwoye will become a Christian convert. His impulse towards Christianity is an impulse towards compassion.
 

Things Fall Apart: A Tale of Losses and Gains

Things Fall Apart is a tale of losses and gains. In it, members of the colonial administration make no attempt to understand tribal traditions and aren’t above tricking village elders and betraying their trust. However, the teaching of the Christian mission and the compassion that comes with it attracts a villager like Nwoye. It feels like a gain. But what is lost? And does changing one thing have to change everything?  Achebe goes on to explore these issues in the subsequent books of his African Trilogy. A G Rivett takes up the same themes in his Isle Fincara Trilogy.
 

A young doctor working in north-eastern Nigeria

As a young doctor working in north-eastern Nigeria, A G Rivett lived in a rural area. Nearby there were tribal villages with mud huts, like those of the Koma people [https://lastplaces.com/en/travel-is-knowledge/the-komas-the-lost-tribe/] who live in the mountains of Nigeria and Cameroon. Rivett remembers the directness and honesty of the villagers and how this contrasted with the corruption of urban life nearby. This impressed him deeply and the memory would feed into his fiction.
Years later in the Scottish Highlands, he encountered an ancient Celtic tradition that fused Christian and pagan sources in an intelligent and sustaining whole. This was the Céile Dé, a tradition that arose centuries ago from Druids who had embraced the story of Christ. Rivett combined his memories of rural Nigeria with what he learned from the Céili Dé in creating the world of The Seaborne, first book of his Isle Fincara Trilogy. 
 

The impulse to compassion

The impulse to compassion pre-dates Christianity. It’s there in Buddhism and the later prophets of the Hebrew scriptures; it finds full expression in the Gospels. By contrast, tribal societies were characteristically bound by ritual imperatives. Although individuals might feel compassion towards a sacrificial victim, the group prioritises the requirements of the rite.  The later prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, sought to change this aspect of tribal consciousness. They proclaimed a God who does not require ritual sacrifice, but, “the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart.” (Psalm 51) It’s a good example of how a shift in consciousness can change how people think about God, and how that can change behaviour.
 

The Herald review of The Priest’s Wife is relevant

The Herald review of The Priest’s Wife, second book of Rivett’s Isle Fincara Trilogy, is relevant. It describes: “A positive portrayal of a Christian community clinging to its pagan origins, contrasting it sharply with a bureaucratic, patriarchal church intent on standardising and regulating worship across the world.”
However in The Seaborne, the situation is different. Its characters aren’t clinging to their pagan origins, because these origins aren’t under attack. In The Seaborne, Rivett imagines a Christian community at ease in retaining many of its pagan traditions; particularly those that honour the natural world and its cycles. In this he draws on the synthesis he experienced among the Céili Dé.  But in The Priest’s Wife  Father Aidan is commissioned to wean the Islanders away from their old stories. He meets with resistance. Then, in The Shareg, final book of the Trilogy and due to be launched in 2026, the tensions come to a head.