Things Fall Apart

When I started reading, I felt as though I’d woken up in a country where I didn’t speak the language and couldn’t even find a map or a road sign to tell me where I was. There’s no indication when the events described are taking place, or even where they’re happening. I assumed it was somewhere in Africa, because the author is Nigerian. As it turned out, that’s the case.

But I think the confusion is essential. We’re plunged into the world of the main character, Okonkwo, and asked to go along with it and accept it. It may not make sense to 21st century white European eyes, but it is Okonkwo’s world, with its own laws and beliefs and traditions. To those who live there, everything is very well-ordered. It is their civilisation.

So when, in the second half of the book, an outsider arrives - on a bicycle, giving us the first indication of when this all might be happening – and begins to disturb that order, the reader sees him as the same threat that Okonkwo’s people do. Because they’ve been so immersed in Okonkwo’s way of life, they don’t see everything that happens thereafter as the triumph of civilisation over savagery – as the outsider does - but as the deliberate destruction of one culture by another, for no other reason than that the invading culture sees itself as better.

Things Fall Apart is a view of the world from African eyes. And the final paragraph – and especially the final sentence - pack an enormous emotional punch, one I’m still thinking about days later.