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Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
by Chinua Achebe
Keely's review
bookshelves: contemporary-fiction, novel, reviewed, africa
Feb 17, 12
bookshelves: contemporary-fiction, novel, reviewed, africa
Read in October, 2004
Like the bloom of critically-successful Native American novels of the late seventies, this book does not come from an alien culture. It does not represent an original or alternative storytelling tradition. This is literature that has already been colonized. It has already moved from the oral to the written. Achebe wrote it in English, and gave it the form of the quintessential Western novel.
I don't mean to say that it fails to represent the African cultural experience, but in Achebe's book, it is a culture already colonized, already subjugated; the waters have been muddied. Normally, when I read a book about another culture, it is full of surprising details which show the differences between that culture and mine.
Whether a Japanese Novel, a Mayan myth, or a Hindu epic, there are always parts which show an alternate way of thought, and of life. I know that the many cultures of Africa are no less complex: they have their own vast histories, empires, and philosophies. Sadly, they kept no written histories that we know, and archaeological efforts have been foiled by harsh terrain and political unrest, so we have only scant details of those numerous great traditions.
But I did not find in Achebe's work any hints of a great, unique culture. Everything in the story was recognizable, more familiar in style than great foreign works, more familiar than other African stories I have heard, more familiar even than the works of other Western cultures, such as Greek Drama, the politics of Tacitus, or Medieval dream analysis.
The book takes a recognizably tragic form, with the inevitable fall of the centrally-flawed man as featured by the Greeks and Shakespeare. It is a tale of personal disintegration representing the loss of culture, and of purpose. It is an existential mode seen in Arthur Miller, Joseph Heller, and J.D. Salinger.
Achebe shows his hand a bit with the title, taken from one of the most famous poems in the English canon. Achebe reminds us that he is the consummate western man of letters, educated in the style of the West, and the story he tells should be familiar to us. Ever since Socrates drank the hemlock, the west has had a complex relationship with its remarkable minds. They are held up one moment, and destroyed the next.
Likewise, the experience of Achebe and Africa is not new--it is the same exertion of religious and moral dominance that was forced upon Ireland and America. The same dominant force of any power that sought to extend itself, and to absorb its new subjects.
Like James Joyce, Achebe writes of the struggles both of his culture and of himself as an artist. His existentialism is remarkable for its completeness. There is no character who is wholly sympathetic, nor wholly vile. There is no culture or point of view which is either elevated or vilified.
Achebe is extremely fair, presenting the flaws of all men, and of the organizations under which they live, be they Western or African in origin. Like Heller or Miller, his representation of mankind is almost unfailingly negative. Small moments of beauty, joy, or innocence are always mitigated. They exist only in the inflated egos of the characters, or the moralizing ideals of the culture.
Unlike Miller, he does not give us the chance to sympathize. There are not those quiet moments of introspection that make 'Death of a Salesman' so personally tragic. Unlike Heller, Achebe does not contrast the overwhelming weight of loss with sardonic and wry humor. This is not the hyperbole of Belinda's lock, nor the mad passion of Hamlet.
Achebe's characters are not able to find their own meaning in hopelessness, nor do they struggle to find it and fail, they cannot even laugh at themselves. They persist only through naivete and escapism, and since the reader sees through them, we see that this world has only despondence and delusion.
The constant reminder of this disappointment makes the book difficult to connect with. Since all the hope we are given is almost immediately false, there is little dynamic possibility. Everything is already lost, we only wait on the characters to realize it.
It is difficult to court the reader's sympathy when there is nothing left to be hopeful for. With no counterpoint to despondence--not even a false one--it is hard to create narrative depth, to reveal, or to surprise. Trying to write a climax through such a pervasive depression is like trying to raise a mountain in a valley.
No matter how hard they try, there is no visible path to success. Nothing is certain, and the odds against are often overwhelming. Achebe felt this doubly, as an author and a colonized citizen. He succeeds in presenting hopelessness, sometimes reaching Sysiphean Absurdism, but with too few grains to weigh in the scale against it, his tale presents only a part of the human experience.
Though we may know that others suffer, this is not the same as comprehending their suffering. The mother who says 'eat your peas, kids are starving in Africa' succeeds more through misdirection than by revealing the inequalities of politics and the human state.
Achebe presents suffering to us, but it is not sympathetic; we see it, but are not invited to feel it. His world loses depth and dimension, becomes scattered, and while this does show us the way that things may fall apart, particularly all things human, this work is more an exercise in nihilism than a representation of the human experience.
I don't mean to say that it fails to represent the African cultural experience, but in Achebe's book, it is a culture already colonized, already subjugated; the waters have been muddied. Normally, when I read a book about another culture, it is full of surprising details which show the differences between that culture and mine.
Whether a Japanese Novel, a Mayan myth, or a Hindu epic, there are always parts which show an alternate way of thought, and of life. I know that the many cultures of Africa are no less complex: they have their own vast histories, empires, and philosophies. Sadly, they kept no written histories that we know, and archaeological efforts have been foiled by harsh terrain and political unrest, so we have only scant details of those numerous great traditions.
But I did not find in Achebe's work any hints of a great, unique culture. Everything in the story was recognizable, more familiar in style than great foreign works, more familiar than other African stories I have heard, more familiar even than the works of other Western cultures, such as Greek Drama, the politics of Tacitus, or Medieval dream analysis.
The book takes a recognizably tragic form, with the inevitable fall of the centrally-flawed man as featured by the Greeks and Shakespeare. It is a tale of personal disintegration representing the loss of culture, and of purpose. It is an existential mode seen in Arthur Miller, Joseph Heller, and J.D. Salinger.
Achebe shows his hand a bit with the title, taken from one of the most famous poems in the English canon. Achebe reminds us that he is the consummate western man of letters, educated in the style of the West, and the story he tells should be familiar to us. Ever since Socrates drank the hemlock, the west has had a complex relationship with its remarkable minds. They are held up one moment, and destroyed the next.
Likewise, the experience of Achebe and Africa is not new--it is the same exertion of religious and moral dominance that was forced upon Ireland and America. The same dominant force of any power that sought to extend itself, and to absorb its new subjects.
Like James Joyce, Achebe writes of the struggles both of his culture and of himself as an artist. His existentialism is remarkable for its completeness. There is no character who is wholly sympathetic, nor wholly vile. There is no culture or point of view which is either elevated or vilified.
Achebe is extremely fair, presenting the flaws of all men, and of the organizations under which they live, be they Western or African in origin. Like Heller or Miller, his representation of mankind is almost unfailingly negative. Small moments of beauty, joy, or innocence are always mitigated. They exist only in the inflated egos of the characters, or the moralizing ideals of the culture.
Unlike Miller, he does not give us the chance to sympathize. There are not those quiet moments of introspection that make 'Death of a Salesman' so personally tragic. Unlike Heller, Achebe does not contrast the overwhelming weight of loss with sardonic and wry humor. This is not the hyperbole of Belinda's lock, nor the mad passion of Hamlet.
Achebe's characters are not able to find their own meaning in hopelessness, nor do they struggle to find it and fail, they cannot even laugh at themselves. They persist only through naivete and escapism, and since the reader sees through them, we see that this world has only despondence and delusion.
The constant reminder of this disappointment makes the book difficult to connect with. Since all the hope we are given is almost immediately false, there is little dynamic possibility. Everything is already lost, we only wait on the characters to realize it.
It is difficult to court the reader's sympathy when there is nothing left to be hopeful for. With no counterpoint to despondence--not even a false one--it is hard to create narrative depth, to reveal, or to surprise. Trying to write a climax through such a pervasive depression is like trying to raise a mountain in a valley.
No matter how hard they try, there is no visible path to success. Nothing is certain, and the odds against are often overwhelming. Achebe felt this doubly, as an author and a colonized citizen. He succeeds in presenting hopelessness, sometimes reaching Sysiphean Absurdism, but with too few grains to weigh in the scale against it, his tale presents only a part of the human experience.
Though we may know that others suffer, this is not the same as comprehending their suffering. The mother who says 'eat your peas, kids are starving in Africa' succeeds more through misdirection than by revealing the inequalities of politics and the human state.
Achebe presents suffering to us, but it is not sympathetic; we see it, but are not invited to feel it. His world loses depth and dimension, becomes scattered, and while this does show us the way that things may fall apart, particularly all things human, this work is more an exercise in nihilism than a representation of the human experience.
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I feel you do not make justice of Achebe's story by taking the stand that he borrowed from a western context of storytelling. What you fail to know is that even though Africans didn't write down stories, the art of storytelling in Africa is probably as ancient as human civilization. Having grown up in Africa and having had to sit around my illiterate grandmother's fireplace listening to her fables late into the night and now writing myself, the traditional way of telling a story is nothing new to the African culture. Rather it is the writing process, since in other to get the message through to a wide audience, writing has been harmonized to enable appreciation across cultural boundaries. Also your review tries to again take us into this unending notion of trying to push the western ideology as superior to all.
I never said the Western ideology is superior--and I don't think it is. There are many story-telling traditions, in the West, the East, in Africa, among the native Australians, and each of these traditions is just as valid as any others, whether in written or spoken form.The issue I bring up with Achebe is that while his work features African characters and settings, it is fundamentally already a Western work. It draws deliberately from Western traditions of poetry, the novel, Greek drama, and other threads familiar to Western readers, just as they were familiar to Achebe, who was educated in the Western tradition.
It is not an example of the ancient African storytelling tradition, but a deliberate response to the works of Conrad, Haggard, and Kipling. It is a work that is wholly invested in Western forms and ideas. It is not the preserved voice of the African people of the past, but a colonized voice already deeply enmeshed in Western thought and life.
I'm not saying the West is good, or that its ways or traditions or thoughts are superior, I am just saying that Achebe's work is not a purely African voice opposing the West because it is deeply interested in and indebted to the West, for good or ill.
...Achebe's work is not a purely African voice opposing the West because it is deeply interested in and indebted to the West, for good or ill.Keely, I have a problem with this distinction between "authentic" African voice, which presumably limits itself to the recounting of oral tradition, versus "non-authentic" African voice, which makes use of Western narrative norms.
First, the notion of "purity" is itself problematic--to say that Achebe's is not a purely African voice is, to some extent, to deny the fact that he is African, and that his writings reflect the African experience. While I assume that this was not your point, such is the implication from the words you use.
Second, it's true that the prose narrative hewing to the Aristotelian tenets of tragedy is a western invention. But instead of thinking of western narrative like some sort of culturally-exported hegemonic signifier, like Coca Cola in the rain forest or McDonalds in the Serengetti, it's probably more accurate to think of narrative like you would think of any other technology--like mobile telephony in Brazil, or the automobile in India, which has a strong auto industry. You would not look at India's auto sector and think of it as evidence of India's cultural impurity and of its deep interest in the West. A more accurate interpretation is that they took a western invention and made it indelibly their own. Likewise with Achebe, who was using the technology (if you will) of the tragic prose narrative to tell a uniquely Igbo story, for--at least in part--an Igbo audience.
My more general problem with the "purity" critique is that it can be used to discredit any author attempting to tell the story of her non-western society simply by claiming that said narrative is not being told using the narrative means that are traditional to that society. With one statement you silence hundreds if not thousands of voices. I'm sure that that's not where you were going with this, but your argument is just one or two small logical steps from this point that I find it troubling.
The notion of 'purity' is problematic and fraught, and I'm not trying to suggest that Achebe should be a 'pure' writer, or that the Western influences he uses in any way weaken him. If a writer of African descent produces a great book in the Western tradition, then it's a great book.To extend your analogy: let's imagine we have an Indian car-maker who makes a great car. The car uses Western technology and traditions, there are no new Indian innovations, but the car is well made, runs well, and is easy to manufacture. This would be an impressive engineering feat for anyone, Indian or no.
If the Indian designer instead makes a car based on Western technology but which is inefficient and prone to breaking down, then that is not something laudable. The fact that he is Indian does not make a sub-par design any better.
When you say:
"to say that Achebe's is not a purely African voice is, to some extent, to deny the fact that he is African, and that his writings reflect the African experience."
It seems problematic to me because it defines Achebe fundamentally by his race and ethnicity. It presumes that anything written by someone from Africa must be 'an African book'--that it would not be possible for them to write any other way. This seems to be an extremely limited view of what they are capable of.
It's possible for a woman to make a statement that is anti-feminist, it's possible for a Black American to make a statement that is racist against other Black Americans, and for a person who grows up in wealth to rail against the bourgeoisie. Similarly, an African writer can choose to adopt the form and style of Western writing, and if they do, I would consider them to be writing in the Western tradition.
It's important for us to place less emphasis on an author's particular origins and identity and instead focus on the content of their work. In looking at Achebe's content, it's a response to Western literature using Western forms, structures, ideas, themes, and tones.
It seemed to me to be much more the offspring of Western literature than a continuation of or commentary on traditional African stories and modes. And that's not a problem--as I said before, if an African writer wants to work in the Western mode, that's perfectly fine. I just didn't find Achebe's work to be particularly impressive when compared to other, similar Western works.
I think it is a problem with a number of modern authors born in non-Western countries--that they are writing in Western forms, but the books they are writing are not particularly impressive. Yet they get acknowledgement and praise for being non-Western authors capable of writing a work that is palatable to the West.
Positive racism is still racism, and it's still condescending. Praising an Indian engineer for designing a crappy car simply because he is Indian presumes that Indians are less capable and should be judged on a sliding scale. It's the same when a Nobel Prize goes to a third world author who has written a book that would get no notice at all if the author were from the First World.
Certainly, this isn't always the case--there are great, talented writers out there of all nations and all races, who can write remarkable books in Western or non-Western styles. I just found that Achebe's work did not contain enough of the African tradition to make it enlightening or innovative, nor did it use the Western forms well enough to compare favorably to the other Western books that Achebe is referencing and responding to.
Well put Keely!I think it's even condescending, a person from non-western culture wrote a decent book in western form, let's shower him with praise. I find that offensive, but that's just me I guess.
Keely, I love your review until you came across as trying to claim you are an expert on African tradition. Perhaps you are African, but my experience of things fall apart as an African who was born and grew up in the continent, and read that book when I was 14, is different. It is even more so because I grew up in Cameroon and had never experienced any form of the Ibo culture, yet the beliefs of the people, the way they spoke and their respect for tradition, as portrayed by Achebe, was so similar to mine that I felt Achebe must have been God to write in that manner. It was there in the way he described the day, the night and the scents and aromas and the feverish hands of the drummers in the village ilo. It was there in the portrayal of a man as the head of his family, with women and children being his to do whatever he wanted with. It was poignant as it was compelling. It made me as an African realize the beauty and evil capable of my own society, long before the white man came with his religion.
Thus, because the story might not fit its western equivalent, which I don't understand how you could have arrived at this conclusion in the first place, it doesn't mean it does not satisfy the set of people whose culture Achebe explores. That it doesn't illuminate important elements of humanity common to cultures across the world.
Would you then be surprised if I were to tell you that I think Achebe's stories have a more potent effect on me than say F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, and all the other great American novels or even Shakespeare's writings?
I think we should be careful not to classify literature as if it was a flat surface on which we walk. Literature is dimensionless. It is an art form with varying landscapes, some not comparable. It is equally unreasonable and impossible to equate works of arts from different cultures, by using one as the sole standard for qualifying the rest.
In this case you knowingly allude that a Nobel prize in literature should be judged strictly against western standards. That is quite condescending, not short of proclaiming the self-importance of western literature over everything else. Literature is not a western invention, it is something embedded in all civilizations, just taking different forms.
Akash: "I think it's even condescending, a person from non-western culture wrote a decent book in western form, let's shower him with praise. I find that offensive, but that's just me I guess."Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm all for non-Western authors writing in both Western and non-Western forms, but it's important that we don't judge them any less rigorously than we would Western authors, or we get stuff like The Education of Little Tree, which got a huge amount of praise for representing Native American life until it was discovered that it was written by a White racist whose knowledge of Native culture came from movies.
Cf said: "Perhaps you are African, but my experience of things fall apart as an African who was born and grew up in the continent, and read that book when I was 14, is different."
Hello, Cf. No, I am not an expert in African tradition. It is quite possible that there are parts of this book that I have missed, or that I do not understand because my understanding of African cultures and traditions is certainly not exhaustive. However, no one has yet demonstrated to me what I might have missed.
"yet the beliefs of the people, the way they spoke and their respect for tradition, as portrayed by Achene, was so similar to mine that I felt Achebe must have been God to write in that manner."
Well, I actually felt the same way. The way the characters, traditions, and culture were represented also felt very familiar to me. It did not feel alien or unusual, like other African stories and myths I have read, it felt very similar to stories from Greece or Scandinavia.
This was part of why I did not feel Achebe's voice was speaking in the form of an African tradition: because the culture and modes of behavior felt to me, a Westerner, entirely familiar. Everything I saw there had a Western origin or counterpart I could point to--many of these details were purposefully connected to Western stories, such as the title.
The book certainly does explore ideas and elements of culture which are common across the world, as you point out, but that means the book is presenting a cosmopolitan viewpoint, not an African one.
"In this case you knowingly allude that a Nobel prize in literature should be judged strictly against western standards. That is quite condescending, not short of proclaiming the self-importance of western literature as everything else."
I don't believe that Western books are any better, and I never said that non-Western books should be judged by Western standards.
If a non-Western writer wants to write a book in the Western tradition, then that's great, and they should be judged against Western books. If they want to write a book that combines Western and non-Western traditions, that's also great, and it should be judged in comparison with both Western and non-Western books. If they want to write a book in a non-Western style, that's equally as good, and the book should be judged against other, similar books of that non-Western tradition.
None of these types of books or different literary traditions are better or worse, and if they are good books, they are all equally deserving of praise and recognition. However, because the Nobel committee is made up of people knowledgeable in the Western tradition, they would have trouble judging a non-Western book, because they would not be as familiar with the style and modes involved, so these books would be less likely to win the prize, even if they deserved to win.
Kelly,I think you are reasoning along the lines of many westerners who seem to think they understand the rest of the world. From your comment, I gather that you expect that Africans would have a culture that is completely alien to yours, as far as possible and that you are probably offended by the realization that you are not too different from them.
That is why Achebe wrote things fall apart in the first place, to dispel the dehumanization of Africans by European authors. You seem to be disappointed he succeeded in doing this quite well.
Don't you think it is strange that you think that the Greek civilization should be the same as the Scandinavian, but not the African? There is a deep-rooted problem in your way of reasoning. I have gone as far as to tell why I as an African found the book interesting. The traditional people Achebe portrays are exactly the traditional people of the Ibo land and to a large extent most of Africa, and if you were expecting savages going around butchering people for no cause, then sorry. Or a society devoid of any form of civilization, people who were basically lost, then you really have to examine yourself and why you stereotype a whole set of people based on stories written mostly by non-Africans. Stories written to satisfy their own stunted believes and imaginations.
Achebe counters this very well at the end of Things Fall Apart when he talks about the imperialist guy planning to write a book about the pacification of the people of the Lower Niger, how in that book Okonkwo's story would probably be a mere line. That is exactly how you are trying to reduce the African man's experience and civilization, down to nothing, disagreeing because you see a lot of similarities to yours.
No, before the white man came, the people had their culture and worked in effective communities as evident in all cultures around the world. They fell in and out of love. They had family problems. People aspired to be great and so on, on the scale of what they knew.
"I gather that you expect that Africans would have a culture that is completely alien to yours, as far as possible or probably offended to see that you are not too different from them."There are always fundamental similarities between cultures, and I understand that, but in reading Greek or Scandinavian or African stories, there are also elements that are strange and inexplicable, things that are surprising and unusual, even when a Western reader is reading about another Western culture.
I did not experience any surprising details like this in Achebe's work. All of the details were so recognizable and familiar that there were no surprising moments, not signs of some other culture. Achebe's work was, in fact, much less strange and complex than the Greek dramas, Scandinavian Epics, or African myths that I have read. Achebe's book didn't read like an interior view or another culture.
Certainly, I could be wrong, there could be things I am missing, but no one has been able to point them out to me, so far. This, combined with the deliberate use of the Western mode on Achebe's part caused me to read this book as a generic story that was not imparting a view of a different culture. Or, if it was, then that culture was already so thoroughly Westernized and colonized that nothing unique remained.
Yet I know this isn't true, because I have read other African works which keep that unique tradition alive.
"Don't you think it is strange that you think that the Greek civilization should be the same as the Scandinavian, but not the African?"
While having fundamental similarities, I have found that Greek and Scandinavian (and African) cultural stories are very different from one another. Since Achebe's did not feel different, like those stories did, I did not see a large, interesting culture behind it, as I have in other stories.
". . . if you were expecting savages going around butchering people for no cause, then sorry. Or a society devoid of any form of civilization, people who were basically lost, then you really have to examine yourself and why you stereotype a whole set of people based on stories written mostly by non-Africans."
No, I wasn't expecting any of those things. Don't create pretend arguments and opinions out of thin air. If you want to discuss this, then respond to what I have actually said, don't make things up to try to make your arguments seem better by comparison.
African culture is just as strong and unique as any other i the world. The history of Africa is long and storied, full of great empires, heroic figures, philosophies, ethics, and remarkable stories. It is unfortunate that most of this history is lost to us because it was not written down, but it should be clear to any student of history that the empires of Africa were just as grand and sophisticated as those of Europe or Asia.
I don't just mean the Egyptians or the Ethiopians, either. There are numerous references and archaeological evidence for vast, structured, peaceful empires in every country in Africa. Our current computer languages are based on African divination traditions, which produced the first fractal equations, which were adopted by the Muslims and then the Italians. Africa is just as vibrant and important as any other place in the world, even if its history is not as well-documented.
My problem with Achebe's work is that I didn't get that Africa from him--that great Africa of the myths and histories I have read. The story he told was less complex and less unique than other, similar stories I've read from Europe, or Asia, or the mid-East, or from the Native Australian or American populations, or from other African stories I know. It just seemed too generic and Westernized.
And it's fine if a non-Western author wants to write a Western story--there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do it just as well as anyone else. The problem was that I didn't think Achebe's Western style compared well to other Western works, and I didn't find his portrayal of the culture to be very complex or insightful compared to the richness and depth of African cultures that I am familiar with from their history, stories, and myths.
Keely wrote: ""No, I wasn't expecting any of those things. Don't create pretend arguments and opinions out of thin air. If you want to discuss this, then respond to what I have actually said, don't make things up to try to make your arguments seem better by comparison."There are ..."
It is fundamentally important to understand how an African feels in most cases when their history is watered down to nothing... as none-existent. And your comments without clarification could be misconstrued as such.
I get asked all sorts of strange questions, usually pointing towards the possibility of me having come from some savage background. People are amazed when I succeed, when I show some remarkable intelligence.
Stereotypes are rife about the African continent, no good ever comes out of there and if it does, people treat it as an exception to the rule. That is why I could not understand exactly what you wanted to read about in Achebe's works.
But in effect, he presents work on another time in African history relating to the fall of an African way of life following the introduction of Christianity, by using the image of a strong man who believed in his culture and people. There may be similar tales about other civilizations, but this is an African experience.
I mean let's leave out the issue of storytelling aesthetics and focus on the story itself. There are no two Oknonkwos I have come across in literature.
Even so, Achebe writes in a certain way that clearly demonstrates to you the way the Ibo people engaged in dialogue, their use of proverbs, the way they govern without having a king as is the case in most cultures, including others African.
Humans by nature crave for the same things and to have expected a mythical tale above all other myths to cement this an African master piece falls along the lines of expecting the unexpected from the unexpected to surpass everything else before it is considered great.
Many of the so called great American novels are simple narratives about simple people and their lives in their societies. There are no myths there. They are the stories about ordinary people. For example John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is nothing but a story about a Simpleton. It won him the Nobel Prize in Literature. That book comes nowhere close to diving into the cultural richness of a people as Achebe shows in Things Fall Apart.
"I get asked all sorts of strange questions, usually pointing towards the possibility of me having come from some savage background. People are amazed when I succeed, when I show some remarkable intelligence."I'm sorry. That must be awful. I know there are a lot of prejudiced, uneducated people out there, and it's sad that they don't realize that Africa has just as much culture, history, and sophistication and every other continent, and that its people are wonderful, beautiful, and brilliant. I find the many mentions of African cultures in ancient European texts fascinating and it saddens me that there isn't more archaeological work being done there to expose that history.
We know that there are huge, magnificent ruins in the jungles of empires which rivaled any other on Earth--that's where the Romans got their salt, after all, which was worth more than gold--but due to inaccessibility and the massive conflicts and border disputes fueled by multinational companies fighting over natural resources, getting in to study them is all but impossible. I can only hope that someday, we will dig up those artifacts and reveal the history of a culture unknown for centuries or millenia--as we did when we uncovered the lost tablets of the Gilgamesh story.
In terms of Achebe's work, I was expecting more. I wasn't expecting the myth to end all myths, but I was expecting more depth and cultural uniqueness. When I read something from another culture, it is always full of surprising details that hint at something much grander and stranger than what's on the surface.
I'd argue that those details exist even in American stories--there have been many times that I, a born American, experienced culture shock when reading a story about another period or place in America. For example, in Of Mice and Men the idea that a man would wear a glove full of Vaseline is an odd cultural signifier that suggests certain things about male and female relationships and how men view themselves and their masculinity.
And I just didn't get those moments in this book. That feeling I've gotten from other African stories, or tales of India, or Japanese epics, or any story of another culture. Achebe's story just felt so familiar to me, so easy to parse, that it didn't feel like an alternative point-of-view. It felt less foreign to me than many stories I've read about the American South. That's why it seemed like a modern, Western story to me.
I understand the message about the old African culture falling before the overwhelming influence of foreign powers, and it is a powerful concept for a story. Yet I never got a sense of what that African culture was, or what it meant. Okonkwo was such an empty character, to me. Perhaps I just didn't know what I was supposed to be looking for.
I wanted a taste of that culture that came before, that thing which was white-washed by the West, but for whatever reason, I didn't find it. I couldn't make out the shape of the thing that was resisting. I want to believe that the African culture was just as powerful, just as vibrant, just as great as the culture that was trying to destroy it. I know from other African stories that it was, but I didn't see that in this book.
As I say in my review, all I found was despondence and naivete and hopelessness, and those are not the elements that make up a culture. I don't think Africa is savage and foolish--the very notion of labeling an entire continent, thousands upon thousands of different peoples with words like that is true savagery, true foolishness. But the characters in this book did seem savage and foolish to me, which was very disappointing.
Again, I could be wrong, I may be missing something--I hope I am--but I don't know what that thing might be. Thank you for trying to help me understand. I think I should rewrite my review to express the great history and importance of Africa and the greatness of her many nations and peoples, because it is not my intention, in critiquing Achebe, to lessen his people or their history in any way.
I had an English teacher who loved colonial litterature such as Kipling, Achebe and those Native American novels.The ancient Greeks certainly had stranger stories than Things Fall Apart. And I found them more memorable too.
Like Keely, maybe I'm simply missing something. I read it when I was a kid after all.
Scandinavia was long ago assimilated by the post-Roman culture we call European.
Part of Africa used to be part of that same culture. But then Islam happened.
That's the reason why "the Greek civilization should be the same as the Scandinavian, but not the African".
The notion that there's such a thing as an African culture, while not as infuriating as the notion that there's such a thing as an American culture, is simply mind-boggling.
It's not just that there are several African cultures: some have more in common with non-African cultures than other African cultures.
China has a culture. Europe/America/Australia has a culture. Continents do not.
It's true that we cannot typify a continent, but then, when we talk about the Western tradition, that is part of a single culture which shares social, religious, literary, and scientific inspirations, and that is a culture which includes several continents, such as Europe, North America, and Australia. Of course, there are also other, non-Western traditions on those continents, such as the Native peoples of Australia and the Americas, or all of the various pre-Christian cultures of Europe--so we can't really typify the continents as being somehow wholly 'Western'."The ancient Greeks certainly had stranger stories than Things Fall Apart. And I found them more memorable too."
That is one of my main problems with this book: I found Greek Drama (for example) to be much stranger and more alien than Things Fall Apart. The works of a culture from which my culture is directly descended felt more foreign than this work of an African author. That is why I came away with the impression that this book was very Western, because all its themes, structures, and allusions were more immediately familiar and recognizable than many books I've read by Western authors.
"I had an English teacher who loved colonial litterature such as Kipling, Achebe and those Native American novels."
One of my Professors was a Native American author who taught a class on pop Native books and talked about how they were mostly generic novels in the Western style with a few bits of Native lore here and there, and really didn't say much about what was unique to Native culture or stories.
My professors were almost stereotypically English so we didn't get the critical commentary.We mostly got books celebrating the status quo.
Why would South America be any less "Western"? If you include most of Western Europe in a cultural zone, there's no way South America isn't going to be part of it (excepting as always some patches were less militarily successful cultures have survived).
First you routinely call a single country "America" and now this! If you don't mind me saying so, Gringos are weird sometimes.
I did go back and forth a while in my mind over whether to put South America into the same category. The argument could certainly be made for it, since much of the culture is received from the West, but in the end I did not think it was as homogenous as the United States, Australia, and Europe (well, Northern Europe, at least).In America and Australia, the native populations were both nearly wiped out and replaced with a new population of mostly Europeans. South American countries, on the other hand, have tended to retain much of their pre-European populations, who then interbred with settlers from Europe, Africa, India, and Asia. So in South America, there is more carryover from the pre-Western culture to the current culture.
Certainly, South American nations and people have many Western traditions, beliefs, and inspirations, but I was less willing to throw them into one basket. I mean, the largest Muslim population in the world lives in Indonesia, but I'm not going to put them flatly into the 'Western' category just on that basis, because much of the underlying culture is still pre-Western.
I'm not sure what your definition of "Western" is since you include Islam.I'm not crazy about this word myself but usually it means something else, isn't it?
Religously, Africa has largely been Abrahamized as well.
Obviously we can't sensibly look at religion alone or the only major non-Abrahamic cultures would be Indian and Chinese.
There's a couple of problems with the notion according to which South America has a large enough native population to make it culturally different.
Most obviously, you neglect the significant non-European immigration to North America (I don't know about Australia). If you want to look at the issue from a genealogical perspective (you said "interbred"), the transatlantic slave trade in particular introduced a lot of diversity to North America.
I guess one could make the case that South America is more diverse, but not by much once you take into account all non-European populations.
More fundamentally, you seem to assume it's legitimate to look at Europe as relatively homogenous or at least equally homogenous as European culture is in the America. But while Europe obviously has a measure of cultural unity, there are local remnants of older cultures which have not necessarily been transplanted in America as well as differences introduced by recent immigration.
There are for instance a lot more people speaking Native American languages in Southern America than in Northern America. That's true. But then again it seems there are more people speaking Magyar (a language totally different from most European languages) than any Native American language.
All this hairsplitting about minorities obscures the salient fact: if you look at the hegemonic culture, the Strait of Gibraltar is wider than the Atlantic Ocean (although that may be less true than it was 200 years ago), the Rio Grande or the Panama Canal.
Sure, you can relate a subset of Europe more to North America than South America.
But you wouldn't do much more than to restate the obvious: British settlement colonies share unique cultural traits. Instead of confusing the issue, this formulation points at the main way by which cultures are created and spread: through imperialism.
Which is why I used the admittedly awkward phrase "post-Roman culture" earlier.
"I'm not sure what your definition of "Western" is since you include Islam."It does quickly get messy. Islam is an Abrahamic religion, and during the Dark Ages in Europe, the Islamic nations kept alive the traditions of the Greeks and Romans, along with the sciences. Southern Europe then began the Crusades, which were not merely about war, but a huge period of cultural end economic interaction, when Europe was able to rediscover aspects of its own history which had been safeguarded by Islam.
In that sense, much of Islam is Western--not only in origin, but of their own innovation. Of course, they also have other roots, but as Said pointed out, it is foolish to think of a power which has been in continual cultural interaction with Europe for millenia as being 'foreign' or 'obscure'.
"the transatlantic slave trade in particular introduced a lot of diversity to North America"
True, but the fundamental difference is that Africans brought over in the slave trade were stripped of their culture. Not only were they told not to practice their cultural traditions, they were also separated and reorganized into groups which contained members of many different tribes. Then, they were forcibly bred en masse with Irish 'indentured servants', which further altered them, culturally.
Conversely, the native populations of South America would have tended to remain in the same areas even after European settlement, which would allow them to more easily retain their own unique cultural values. There are still South African towns where the people perform religious ceremonies and festivals that predate the European settlers. The shuffling of families and tribes of African slaves, not to mention transplanting them in a foreign land would do more to disrupt those kinds of local practices.
"you seem to assume it's legitimate to look at Europe as relatively homogenous or at least equally homogenous as European culture is in the America."
I specified 'Northern Europe' because its population is more homogeneously comparable to America and Australia. Certainly Europe is full of many traditions and cultures, with wide variability. Indeed, whether we chose to define Islam as 'Western' could have a lot to do with how we define South America.
Spain and Portugal were, at several points, under the rulership of Islamic powers. They became Islamic states, and there was a great deal of interbreeding and cultural exchange over centuries--so Gibraltar has been narrow at some periods than others. Even France was occupied by Islamic forces at various points--as demonstrated by their national epic, The Song of Roland, in which many of the French hero's panoply--including his horse, sword, and horn--bear Islamic names.
After the Renaissance, when Portugal and Spain regained their independence, they became the founders of the South American nations, meaning the European influence in South America is one strongly influenced by Islam.
Northern Europe, in contrast, did not have the same back-and-forth cultural clashes with Islam. England and the Scandinavian countries tended to remain independent, except for Finland, of course, which has always been a crossroads, and retains a similarly unique linguistic and cultural heritage as the Magyar--and for the same reason.
"Sure, you can relate a subset of Europe more to North America than South America.
But you wouldn't do much more than to restate the obvious: British settlement colonies share unique cultural traits."
I'd say that obvious fact is of great importance. These cultures share those traits because they come from the same origin, and when two groups have a similar origin and share the majority of traits that make them a culture, that would suggest that those two groups make up a single culture.
I mean, when we talk about literary movements, we're talking about a piece of culture which has propagated through time and space. Thus, 'Western Culture' is a collection of shared cultural traits which are passed on and repeated. We could talk about 'post-Roman', but that emphatically includes Islam--Plato is as much the basis for their culture as it is for the English--just ask Ibn Khaldun.
I guess what I'm trying to construct here is the largest definition I can muster for some kind of continuous, coherent Western culture--something which we might safely and generally call 'Western'. England and it's colonies, with Milton, Shakespeare, and Chaucer at the center is a pretty safe start.
Based on who has been influenced by that, and who has influenced that culture equally, in return, we can tie in Scandinavia, France, and Germany. But when we start to move out further, to Spain and Russia, it's more difficult to define them as being as centrally, wholly Western, since they are also 'Oriental', in the original sense.
So yeah, it's a conversation that quickly becomes fraught, but just because a term isn't perfect doesn't mean we can't use it. There is a general understanding of what we mean by 'Western', and we can iron out details if they come up.
It seems to me you're trying to construct two different things, legitmate on their own but which should not be confused.On the one hand you have post-British culture including the British isles and their sucessful settlement colonies. That's obviously a functional cultural area. I fail to see what would justify the inclusion of Scandinavia or the Netherlands but I could come up with some tenuous arguments and I agree it wouldn't be out and out ludicrous.
If you were to include France or Germany however, there wouldn't be any reasonable basis other than economic indices to exclude many other European countries (and even using economic indices you'd have to include a handful more).
On the other hand you have a broader "Western" culture including the whole of Europe, Latin America and Russia. You could also conceivably include the core of the Islamic area in it (in which case, significant parts of Asia and Africa would be "Western"). But in any case you would lose the centrality of England, Milton, Shakespeare, and Chaucer.
Confusing the two notions amounts to Anglo supremacism which is the usual motive (as opposed to your argument about the marginalized remnants of Native American culture) for painting Latin Americans as Others.
On the matter of Islam, I think you're using overly revisionist (or "politically correct") historical arguments. You're mistaken about the Roland epic for instance but that's probably not the place to discuss it (maybe you've reviewed it?). What you said about Africa was similarly tainted by the way.
And there's a definite Greek supremacist flavor to your outlook. This is probably not the place to discuss this in detail but here's how I see it:
Rome and the Greeks had long fought Persia. Sure, there always has been lots of cultural back and flow (Judaism being a case in point) but Persia was also in direct contact with other cultural areas and most notably India. That's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to include Persia in the same cultural area as Rome.
Early on, Persian areas became the core of the Islamic world. The Muslims carried on the Persian war with Rome and wrecked what was left of the Empire (Egypt had already been lost to Persia), creating the conditions for what we call the Middle Ages and a culture which would be European instead of Mediterranean.
Greek supremacists may differ but I do not believe Plato (as opposed to more practical thinkers) ever was very important in the Islamic mainstream. Certainly the Neoplatonist influence had waned by the time Western Christians got very interested in this stuff. I'm not sure what you mean to do by calling on Ibn Khaldun.
Sure, the Persian/Islamic takeover of Egypt and other Mediterranean cultural centers meant that Europe would get some of its Hellenic texts from Muslims. But they also got Persian and Indian material from Muslims. Our numerical system isn't Hellenic for instance.
"If you were to include France or Germany however, there wouldn't be any reasonable basis other than economic indices to exclude many other European countries."I'm constructing a Literary 'West' here, so I'm not looking at economics, but back-and-forth influences of writers, philosophers, and ideas. It's about the descent and influence of literary traditions between nations and cultures.
This is why I tie in Germany and France more closely, because of the interaction of literary influences back and forth between them and England. The reason I put Scandinavia closer was that it has had a great deal of cultural interaction with the other Northern and Central European powers, but unlike France, Spain, and Italy, did not have much Islamic influence.
"Persia was also in direct contact with other cultural areas and most notably India. That's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to include Persia in the same cultural area as Rome."
The Persian Empire was right across the Aegean from the Greeks during the height of their history. Alexander marched through it, as did Xenophon. There was a great deal of cultural transfer, particularly due to the intensity of sea trade on the Mediterranean. Dionysus was a god of Persian origin, as was the Mithraic cult of the Roman military. In her analysis of Rome, Edith Hamilton makes a convincing argument that Rome was run in the Persian way, not the Greek way--from the cult of personality and holy emperor to the bloodsports, Rome took a great deal of their culture from Persia.
In his introduction to Fagle's Homer, Bernard Knox examines the ways in which the Gilgamesh legend was brought to the Levant and influenced the form and style of the Greek epic. It's true that Persia was large and cosmopolitan, having transfer with India and other nations--but that didn't reduce its influence on the Mediterranean. Indeed, the very conception of the 'lone ascetic' of the Semitic tradition has been argued to have its origins in Indian mystics from Persia.
I'm not going to claim that Persia is 'Western', but it is certainly one of the inspirations from which much of Western culture and literature were originally drawn.
" You're mistaken about the Roland epic for instance but that's probably not the place to discuss it (maybe you've reviewed it?)."
Yes, the review is here, and no, I am not mistaken about the use of Arabic terms in the tale.
"I do not believe Plato (as opposed to more practical thinkers) ever was very important in the Islamic mainstream."
Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek thinkers had a central role in the development of Islamic thought and philosophy and were often discussed and referenced by Islamic writers.
"I'm not sure what you mean to do by calling on Ibn Khaldun."
His economic explorations in The Muqaddimah are an extension built upon earlier Greek ideas:
"[Ibn Khaldun] had also restructured and built upon foundations laid down before him, such as Plato's account of specialization, Aristotle's analysis of money, and Tahir Ibn al-Husayn's treatment of government's role. Still, it was Ibn Khaldun who founded the original ideas in numerous areas of economic thought. (source)
"Certainly the Neoplatonist influence had waned by the time Western Christians got very interested in this stuff."
Fibonacci was studying the in North Africa under Islamic teachers before 1200 AD. More than a century later, Ibn Khaldun was still writing about Plato.
"Sure, the Persian/Islamic takeover of Egypt and other Mediterranean cultural centers meant that Europe would get some of its Hellenic texts from Muslims."
The majority of Classical texts used in the Renaissance in Europe came from Arabic sources--usually containing extensive Arabic commentaries. Here's an overview of the history of the transmissions in the classics. While it might be true that much of Islam eventually rejected the Greeks and grew insular, this did not occur until after Islamic and European interaction lead to the beginning of the Renaissance in Southern Europe.
Just sth off topic, most major cultures & civilizations in the world have intensive interactions w/ each other even in premodern times, so if one takes them all into account then it would be impossibly to define "world civilizations". India was once under Muslim rule, while Buddhism (from India) is the dominant religion for millennium throughout east Asia & much of SE Asia, & historically east Asian arts, philosophy & music have been greatly influenced by Gandharan & Persian ones which were in turn influenced by the Greeks thanks to Alexander the great, but these do not necessarily make India a part of the Islamic or Greek civilization, or China a part of the Indian or Persian or western civilization.
Yes, but then it becomes a Ship of Theseus problem: where does one end and the other start? Culture is traced by influential ideas moving through history, and if those ideas travel between cultures, then that's a cultural connection, and it can be difficult to find a historical methodology that separates them satisfactorily into more than a set of vague guidelines.
Honestly, I think Achebe's point could have been made more eloquently with the three title words set into a painting meant to represent what he was doing with this novel.
The rest of it? Mere preaching, with endings the audience already knows, and a journey that doesn't present us with any new scenery.