Cultural Analysis Of The Novel Things Fall Apart (Achebe, 1994) (Essay Sample)

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Introduction
The novel Things Fall Apart (Achebe, 1994) is a meeting point of two diverse cultures: the African (Igbo) and the European (British). These cultures come into contact in different areas namely religion, administration, commerce and language. The title of this novel comes from Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’ which predicts end of an era that ushers in a radically different one (El-Dessouky, 2010). In the novel, cultural conflict takes place at two levels namely the internal cultural conflict which occurs within the Igbo community and external cultural conflict which occurs between the African and the British cultures. This essay analyzes these cultural exchanges as depicted in Things fall apart (TFA).
The novel, TFA, is set in Umuofia, a fictional village, just before the unexpected arrival of the white missionaries. The villagers are undecided, as a community and individuals, on how to respond to the imminent cultural changes that the foreigners would bring on their social institutions as well as their political establishments (Lebdai, 2009). The African culture is presented through the main character of the novel, Okonkwo, who is depicted as an accomplished wrestler, a successful farmer, a family man with three wives and a number of children, a leader holding three titles of honor, and a member of the revered and feared masked spirits, the Egwugwu. The European culture is embodied in the missionaries especially Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith and the British colonial administration represented by the District Commissioner and the court messengers. Mr. Kiaga, the interpreter who later assumes the role of a local missionary also plays a leading role in promoting the new culture.
Internal conflict
The internal cultural conflicts in the village prepare a fertile ground for the external forces to make incursions and establish itself in Umoufia (El-Dessouky, 2010). Umuofian is a predominantly patriarchal culture that highly esteems hard work. While men such as Okonkwo who create vast wealth are greatly honored, poor men are greatly despised. Men without titles of honor such as Osugo were called women. Okonkwo calls Osugo a woman (meaning one without a title) when he contradicts him in one of the clan meetings – Osugo protests at this reference. It is this kind of men who, probably due to their disillusionment, become the first converts to Christianity. Achebe describes them thus
None of his converts was a man whose word was heeded in the assembly of the people. None of them was a man of title. They were mostly the kind of people who were called efulefu, worthless empty men.
Controversial cultural practices in the Igbo culture also offered a fault line for the invasion of Umofia by Christianity. Throwing away twins into the evil forest is one these practices. After Okonkwo had been banished from his clan for inadvertently killing a kinsman, his friend Obierika, ponders over this custom as well as the custom that demands that twins be thrown away. As he remembers the twin children that he had thrown away, Obierika wonders, “What crime had they committed?” When the white missionaries come to Mbanta, Okonkwo’s motherland, to which he had been banished, Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son decides to join the missionaries. The novel explains that the new religion seemed to provide an answer to the “persistent questions that haunted his young soul – the questions of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed.” Another convert, Nneka, Amadi’s wife, had suffered from this custom when her twins from four childbirths were all thrown away and now her family was becoming highly critical of her for this. The twins thrown after the coming of Christianity were rescued by the missionaries and this encouraged the outcasts or the osu to join the church. The conversion of the outcasts caused a stir but the local missionary Mr. Kiaga stood his ground and the church got firmly established and flourished in this community.
At the individual level, the patriarchal nature of the Igbo society meant that women were overshadowed at home and away. Okonkwo, who is one of the leaders of Umuofia, ruled his house with an iron fist and his wives and children lived in perpetual fear. The novel records several instances of wife beating executed by Okonkwo. Nwoye also received his share of beatings from the father and this could be a major reason for his deserting home to join the missionaries. He was later (after the death of his father) to come back and convert his mothers to the new way. It is arguable that the African culture that disfavored women greatly contributed to their readiness in joining the new religion (Lebdai, 2009).
External Conflicts
Political leaders of Umuofia before the coming of the white man were elders, men of high titles, the masked spirits, and the chief priests. These men of status presided over cultural events as well as interpersonal and inter-clan conflicts. They were also consulted in cases of calamities and before a clan went to war. It is this system of government that the coming of the white man threatened. It was not just the low-born and outcasts that joined Christianity but even men of titles broke ranks with the clan and joined the new religion. Ogbuefi Ugonna was such a man. He had taken two titles yet he threw away his titles to join Christians.
The white man built a court in Umofia from which the District commissioner adjudicated on disputes with the help of the court messengers (locally called Kotma). With the new administration came new laws and those found guilty of them were imprisoned, fined or hanged. The offences included throwing away twins, molesting Christians, murder and other crimes. Among the prisoners mentioned in the text were the revered men of titles who were grieved by the undignified punishment of fetching firewood and cutting grass at the court. The tone of the cultural exchange in this instance is captured by the song the prisoners sang as quoted below:
Kotma of the ash buttocks
He is fit to be a slave
The white man has no sense
He is fit to be a slave
The elders of Umuofia also found fault with the new dispensation’s way of doing things, especially their adjudication on land matters. Okonkwo and his friend and neighbor, Obierika, argued that the government erred in giving Nnama’s family a disputed piece of land that had led to the killing of Oduche by Aneto and the latter’s subsequent hanging by the new government. Okonkwo poses, “Does the white man understand our custom about land?” Obierika reminds him that the white man does not even understand their language. Nevertheless, the new order of things puts them at the highest points of administration.
The British rulers significantly change the order of things at Umuofia. The system of men of titles and elders is replaced by the District Commissioner and the court messengers. The D.C, for instance, explains to the six elders who had been arrested for destroying property belonging to Enoch and the Christian church that the governance of the clan was now in the hands of the Queen of England. Her local representatives were to protect the clan from any external harm and ensure that law and order was maintained. After the ordeal in the white man’s prison, Okonkwo nostalgically remembers the days of old when Umuofia protected itself from external aggression such as this, “he could remember when men were men.”
On the religious front, the Igbo had a system of gods, spirits and oracles. As El-Dessouky (2010) notes, the Igbo’s was a polytheistic religion. The Supreme god was called Chukwu who was the creator of the world. The other gods had different jurisdictions, for example, we note Unoka praying to the effect that he offered a sacrifice of a cock to Ani the god of the land every year at the onset of the planting season. Other deities included Amadioha, the god of lightning, Anyanwu, the god of the sun and Igwe, the god of the sky. The Egwugwu represented a form of ancestor worship. In describing the appearance of the masked spirits at Ezeudu’s funeral, Achebe describes the Egwugwu thus: “Now and again, the ancestral spirit or egwugwu appeared from the underworld, speaking in a tremulous, unearthly voice and completely covered in raffia.”
There is a measured interest of the Igbo in the new religion. To the British missionaries like Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith, the Igbo’s system of many gods is a senseless one. Mr. Brown tells Akunna, “Your gods are not alive and cannot do any harm…They are pieces of wood and stone.” Heightened religious exchange is, however, triggered by the actions of the extremist converts notably Okoli of Mbanta and Enoch of Umuofia. Both of them were overzealous with the new religion to the extent of killing the royal python which was an emanation of the god of water. The sacred python was highly revered and was addressed as “Our Father”. Its killing at Mbanta leads to the outlawing of the Christians from the community resources such as water and markets. In Umuofia, it is Enoch’s latest actions that led to the climactic conflict between the two cultures. Apart from killing and eating the royal python,...