Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart (German Okonkwo or Das Alte falls or Everything falls apart ) is the first novel by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe . It was published in 1958 and became a milestone and at the same time a classic in African literature . To this day it is the most widely read book by an African author. Using the example of an Igbo village, the novel portrays in a tragic way how an African society that functions according to traditional, patriarchal rules crumbles through the penetration of Christian missionaries and colonial rule. A year after its publication, the volume was already published in a German translation under the title Okonkwo or Das Alte falls ; the English title of the novel, Things Fall Apart (literally "(The) things fall apart"), is a quote from William Butler Yeats ' poem The Second Coming (1919).
action
The plot of the novel is set in the early transition phase to colonization in a village in the Igbo region. At the beginning of the action, the area is still completely untouched by colonial influences. The main character is Okonkwo, a wealthy and respected man who has already earned several local honorary degrees and heads a large polygamous household with three women. He has worked hard to achieve this position from an early age. Yet he feels insecure in his position; since his father, a melancholy musician, died deeply in debt and hardly respected, he lives in constant fear of being like him. This makes him an inconsistent character who expresses his self-doubts in impatience, irascibility and unnecessarily violent harshness towards his wives, his children and other people. Okonkwo exercises - masked, appearing as the ghost of a deceased ancestor (egwugwu) - together with other masked persons, the jurisdiction in the village.
With great concern he follows the development of his eldest son Nwoye, who is twelve years old at the beginning of the novel and who seems effeminate and melancholy to him. Okonkwo is happy about the influence that fifteen-year-old Ikemefuna has on his son. Ikemefuna came to the village to compensate for a murder victim and Okonkwo took him into his household. When the oracle ordered the death of Ikemefuna a few years later, Okonkwo, contrary to the advice of his friends, took part in this retaliation and even carried out the fatal blow to prove his mental strength to himself and others. He can then get over this act only with difficulty, although he always justifies it to himself and his friends. Nwoye, who only suspects that Ikemefuna is dead, finally withdraws from his father, albeit not openly.
The relationship with his favorite daughter Ezinma, a few years younger than Nwoye and the only survivor of ten children of his second wife Ekwefi, is less complicated. She is more like a character Okonkwo would have wished for in his children, and he regrets that she is not a boy. There is a bond of wordless consent to her even beyond her puberty.
As an only child, Ezinma also has a special position towards other adults, starting with her mother, who cares for her anxiously and starts to see her as an adult at an early age. “My daughter” is what her friend Chielo calls her, who pursues the usual female activities and at the same time exercises the office of priestess (the oracle speaks through her mouth). In this capacity, she kidnaps Ezinma one night and walks with the girl on her back through the entire settlement area of the clan , secretly followed by the terrified mother.
It remains in the dark whether Ezinma should also enter the service of the gods, because shortly afterwards a tragic coincidence throws all plans upside down: At a funeral, a shot from Okonkwo's rifle accidentally goes off and kills a young man. As atonement, Okonkwo and his family are banished for seven years. He spends these years with his mother's clan, warmly received, but embittered until the last day about being prevented from pursuing his ambitious plans for so long without his own intervention.
At first he does not take the mission station of the whites seriously; their belief in a single God, who loves all people equally and who has a son without a wife, seems to him, like most, ridiculous and illogical. The village's outsiders, including Nwoye, are the first to convert. The white school arouses greater interest when it turns out that the knowledge acquired there can make good money. This phase of colonization appears like a competition between forces that are not necessarily unequal, which dynamizes the local social structures. The colonialists are treated with caution from their first appearance, however, as news of a massacre by the whites in a nearby village that had led to the end of that village had already reached the village.
When Okonkwo was able to return to his own village after seven years, the real balance of power became clearer. After the local missionary Brown, who had tried to gain understanding for the religion and traditions of the natives, returned to the British homeland, his successor Smith showed himself to be more uncompromising. When a convert finally tears the mask off one of the EGwugwu's heads and takes refuge in the church, some of the villagers, led by the EGwugwu , tear down the church, but deliberately spare the missionary and his followers. A negotiation date between village councils and representatives of the colonial administration, which was set as a result of this event, turns out to be a trap. The elders, including Okonkwo, are captured by the bailiffs and held and humiliated until the village community pays a fine, which the bailiff arbitrarily increased. The following village meeting is dissolved by the same bailiffs. Okonkwo kills one of them. From the reaction of the others he realizes that he is in a losing position, that nobody dares to fight the new regime anymore. He hangs himself behind his house.
For the colonial official who, at the request of Okonkwo's friend Obierika (customs forbid the burial of a suicide by residents of the same village), orders his body to be cut off, this becomes the material for a little anecdote in the book he one day write and with which he is wants to join the long list of whites who feel called to explain to other whites how Africans are and how to deal with them.
Language and form
The first part of the novel is characterized by great attention to detail in the description of rituals, customs, manners and manners. This gives it a calm, steady narrative rhythm. Many terms from the Igbo language flow into the English text. The second part is told at an accelerated pace, as if the changes in colonial influences were accelerating the processes in the village. Through narratives told in the story or allusions to such by the characters, reference is made to the local oral literature .
Historical classification
Achebe's novel was written in the post-war phase of Nigeria and two years before independence, a period in which the anti-colonial and national forces in Nigeria were strengthening and the return to local African traditions fed this development.
Classification in literary history
In many ways, Achebe's novel was a response to a 16th century tradition of European literature to describe and evaluate Africa, its history and cultures. Achebe's novel was the first literary work by an African to describe the intrusion of colonial rule into a functioning society. He avoided idealizing the pre-colonial Igbo and instead presented it with its rich traditions, its complex moral codes, but also with its contradictions. Okonkwo as the central hero of the novel was both the embodiment and beliefs of Igbo society and at the same time as understood their defenders against colonial influence.
reception
Contemporary reception
Contemporary scholars, ethnologists and religious scholars, as well as officials in the Nigerian colonial administration, also made public comments on the book. They reacted sensitively to the portrayal of Europeans and even accused Achebe of having incorrectly portrayed or not understood certain specifics of his own culture. Since its publication, Things Fall Apart has experienced a rich literary critical occupation that continues to this day, but has changed significantly over the decades. In the phase of decolonization, Achebe's novel made the world aware of Africa, the mechanisms of colonial rule and, last but not least, African literature itself. The careful structure and sensitive presentation of a development towards the tragic end moved readers all over the world. While books by other African authors such as Cyprian Ekwensi or Amos Tutuola had hardly been noticed in the western world, Things Fall Apart led to the first serious literary debate about Africa. Early responses in the 1950s and 1960s focused on issues of cultural conflict, authenticity in language, its form and worldview. Later one dealt with the universality of the novel and comparisons in form and style with novel classics of Western literature, such as the Aristotelian tragedy of the 19th century. Finally, the oral forms that had found their way into the novel or gender-ideological aspects were discussed later.
Postcolonial literary criticism
Achebe's novel became not only the most widely read fictional novel by an African author, but also the most studied book from the pen of African authors. Its prominent position and the novel's lasting impact on readers and critics made the book an icon of post-colonial literature.
The African bestseller
Since the novel was first published, it has been translated into more than 45 languages, and over ten million copies of the book have been sold worldwide. For the developing African literature, Things Fall Apart became an influential role model that developed a great impact. A broad literary movement based itself on Achebe's example, to enhance the traditional African cultures literarily and to deal with the cultural and political conflicts that had their roots in the colonial era. In 2018, the BBC listed Things Fall apart as one of the 100 Most Influential Stories in World Literature. The novel ranks fifth on the list and is the only work by an African author in the top ten.
Significance for African literature
Things Fall Apart made Achebe the founder and father of African literature, although his novel was by no means the first from the pen of an African author. With this novel, his publisher, William Heinemann Ltd in London , opened the most famous series for African literature, the African Writers Series , whose publisher Achebe became in 1962 and which he was responsible for until his road accident in 1990. Achebe's first work is still compulsory reading for students in many African countries. To this day, Things Fall Apart is the most widely read literary work by an African author worldwide, but also within Africa.
expenditure
- Okonkwo or The Old Falls . edition suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1983/2002, ISBN 3-518-11138-8 (German first edition in the translation by Richard Moering at Goverts, Stuttgart 1959)
- Everything falls apart . New edition, translated by Uda Strätling and Reinhild Böhnke . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-000540-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c David Whittaker, Mpalive-Hangson Msiska: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. London and New York 2007, p. Xii.
- ↑ a b c d e David Whittaker, Mpalive-Hangson Msiska: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. London and New York 2007, p. Xi.
- ↑ Chinua Achebe - Advocate of Education. In: Al Imfeld: Vision and Weapon. African authors - subjects - traditions. Zurich 1981, pp. 143-145.
- ↑ 22 May 2018: The 100 stories that shaped the world. Accessed April 27, 2019 .
- ↑ David Whittaker, Mpalive-Hangson Msiska: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. London and New York 2007, p. 5.
- ↑ a b Chinua Achebe - advocate of education. In: Al Imfeld: Vision and Weapon. African authors - subjects - traditions. Zurich 1981, pp. 145–146.