Chinua Achebe and Things Fall Apart – Fifty years later

Oseloka Obaze and Chike Momah*

Saturday, November 3,  2007

On Friday 16 November 2007, along with our spouses, we will be privileged to join a select group of friends, admirers and family of Professor Chinua Achebe, when he receives The Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club in New York City.  The Medal of Honor for Literature, one of America’s most prestigious and distinctive literature honors is given for a body of work of literary excellence. Achebe will be the 39^th recipient of the medal since it was instituted in 1968. It is noteworthy, that Achebe will also be the first black African and second black writer to receive this honor. 

Having already received over thirty honorary degrees from every nook and corner of the world for his immense literary work and contribution to modern literature, this latest tribute, surely, will be another well-deserved feather in his cap. Last June, Achebe was awarded the 2007 Man Booker International Prize. Indeed, the award, which is not for a single book, but also “for a body of work”, came twenty years after his book, Anthills of the Savannah, was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 1987.  He beat out some fourteen other peer contenders, including 2007 Noble Laureate, Doris Lessing, to win the 2007 award.

On wining the Man Booker International Prize last June, Achebe reacted thus: “It was 50 years ago this year that I began writing my first novel, Things Fall Apart. It is wonderful to hear that my peers have looked at the body of work I have put together in the last 50 years and judged it deserving of this important recognition. I am grateful.”  Not being one to grandstand or gloat, Chinua Achebe had merely stated the obvious. Nonetheless, as these well-deserved awards pile up, we are compelled to look anew, at Chinua Achebe’s seminal first book and perhaps, his greatest – Things Fall Apart.  The novel, which is set in colonial Nigeria is widely acclaimed and studied worldwide. First published in 1958 and just about to enter its golden year, it will turn 50 in 2008 just as the legendary author reaches the venerable age of 78. Inevitably, we must also ask a hardheaded question that has become a vexatious refrain; why has the Nobel Prize for literature eluded Chinua Achebe? Why the unnatural indifference?

For the record, Chinua Achebe has over twenty published books and works under his belt. However, admirers and critics alike, consider Things Fall Apart, his first novel, which has sold almost 11 million copies and has been translated into 50 languages, among the most engrossing and finest novels ever written. Indeed, Achebe holds the record, bar none, as the most translated African author, dead or alive. As Achebe disclosed not too long ago, the work is being translated into Okonkwo’s native language, Igbo.  The book’s acclaim derives not just from the celebrated status of the author but, in part, because it has been acknowledged by Time magazine as one of the best 100 English language novels written between 1923 and date. Things Fall Apart, is thus in good company, and ranks with other seminal works of our time, like Gone with the Wind, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, The Grapes of Wrath, The Blind Assassin, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, An American Tragedy and Blood Meridian.

Understanding the value of a book like Things Fall Apart requires that we juxtapose it with prevailing realities. Also, as year 2007 grinds to a close, it is inevitable to look ahead and also contemplate 2008 and beyond. We must also grapple with the imponderables.  Naturally, matters for thought and of interest, must transcend the narrow confines of make-me-feel-good issues, since there are pressing global issues like environmental degradation, hunger, poverty, war, violence, illiteracy, disease and terrorism.  The fact that any of these could be a singular cause for conflict and the possibility of a catastrophic clash of civilization must give us pause. But we must also contemplate why we encounter these problems. This is more so, in the aftermath of the events of September 11 2001, when we were made starkly aware of the consequences of minimally understood or ignored cultures, religions, thinking and political imperatives.

Our globalized world is a potpourri of contending cultures, ideas and ethnicities. Since ideas rule the world and ideas bind and collate likeminded civilizations and alliances, no culture, idea or ethnic group can claim exclusive and distinctive superiority above others. Hence, variegated and even disparate cultures must of necessity co-exist. More importantly, however, the broad understanding of ideas, peoples and cultures, and the willingness to do so, may inherently be the beginning of our collective aversion of conflicts.  We must, therefore, study, understand and acknowledge the salience of seemingly far-fetched and alien notions, norms and mores, which we may consider to be of no relevance to our wellbeing.  We must strive to understand divergent cultures, even those that are remote and primordial. 

Since Things Fall Apart has been overanalyzed, over-reviewed and over-serialized, the goal here is not to replicate what has already been written. It is also not our intent to reinvent the wheel, mindful that superior evaluations of Achebe’s works have been variously rendered by those who make a living from doing so.  Rather, our objective is to revisit tangentially, the politics and paradox behind the under appreciation of Achebe’s major works, despite their great acclaim, and their being acceptably far more influential and of value than works by some of his peers.

Comparatively, Things Fall Apart would rival many Greek tragedies, and as such is the summation of the interplay of two cultures and values. As a protagonist, and his anger and fears notwithstanding, Okonkwo fully understood the Igbo culture by which his people of Umuofia clan had to abide.  That culture did not lack courage, foresight, justice and empathy.  It was not lawless. But it was also not deficient in human foibles, crudity, tragedies, sanctions and harshness.  That balance of the good and the bad, guaranteed compliance with the rule of law and reprisals for those who ventured into the realm of impunity that violated time-honored norms.  It is through this labyrinthine excursion that Achebe would guide his readers, using the Igbo philosophy, culture and language to highlight a commonality of shared human qualities, while disabusing those who believed that African values and cultures were collectively reprovable, of their biased or uninformed notions.

If Chinua Achebe or Things Fall Apart ever needed any additional validation of their respective value as a writer and as an illuminating work of culture, history, politics and education, it was offered in a one liner by Time magazine: “A novel of great power that turns the world upside down”; which is to say that the book was revolutionary.  Regrettably, there are still pockets of Eurocentric schools, which still hold the view that novels like Things Fall Apart do not comply with their expected paradigms and as such must be consigned to a marginal genre. They are so inclined, because works by certain Africans are factual, first hand, but inevitably unapologetic about their role in reversing erroneous conceptualizations of Africa rendered by some Western writers. Whereas before the emergence of Chinua Achebe and his partners (African Writers Series), the grasp of Africa was predicated solely on novels such as Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson and  Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which depicted Africans consistently as barbaric and ignorant and unsympathetically painted negative portraits of valueless African traditional culture, this is no longer so.

Achebe has been vocally forthright in proclaiming his role and that of his fellow African writers; “The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of re-education and regeneration that must be done. In fact he should march right in front . . . I for one would not wish to be excused. I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past--with all its imperfections--was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.” Given his elder statesman status in his chosen career and in life in general, Chinua Achebe beat down the path that led to the repudiation of Eurocentric judgment of Africa as pedestrian, bereft of salutary history and culturally worthless.  Achebe may still be paying a price for spearheading that campaign.

Those who have interacted with Chinua Achebe will acknowledge that he is soft-spoken and self-effacing, despite the power and acuity of his written words, and his being a great conversationalist. He is also a very courageous person. But he is not one to stoke personal or public controversy for the sake of reaping personal reward. This demeanor, which seems to belie the mettle of the man, may have also translated into why he has consistently been passed over by the Nobel Prize awarding Swedish Academy.  

The beauty and enduring value of Things Fall Apart is that it is prescient and vastly political. Thanks to Achebe’s uncanny ability, the novel deals not just with the past, but with the here-and-now and looks decidedly into the future, predicting as it were things to come.  Also, the book is as cultural and traditional as it is political, sociological and historical.  Whereas its theme is the deleterious impact of imported and foisted ways of governance and religion (read colonialism) on the well-established, staid and republican Igbo tribe, it also confirms that whilst African culture and literature may have been influenced by Western culture, likewise, Western culture has in more ways than one, benefited from African cultures, if not directly, then because Africans like Achebe have dared to write about their own history and norms.

There is a tendency, frequently condescending, we might add, for some of those who are not Africans to evaluate works on Africa by Africans with myopic consideration and diminished value. Some also view such works merely as fictional art form and nothing more. In doing so, they conveniently gloss over the re-educative and regenerative role of such works. Glossed over also, is the fact that works like Achebe’s and those of his fellow African writers are stupendously introspective and based on tangible realities.  These writers also choose what they write about, and set out to do so in an unvarnished manner, hence promoting not just the value of their cultures but their native languages, even though they may write mainly in English. As such, their works cannot be marginally classified as “art for its own sake”.

In addressing the vexatious and attending challenges, Chinua Achebe once observed that “African peoples did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans; that their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty, that they had poetry and, above all, they had dignity. It is this dignity that many African peoples all but lost in the colonial period, and it is this dignity that they must now regain. The worst thing that can happen to any people is the loss of their dignity and self-respect. The writer’s duty is to help them regain it by showing them in human terms what happened to them, what they lost.” Such a historical and redemptive role must count for an enormous influence and value in contemporary literature.

Surely, Achebe’s works, in their totality, combine the cultural, socio-political, etymological, religious and secular components to promote an in-depth understanding of the social, civic, cultural, religious and judicial processes in the Igbo culture, and by extension, those of other African cultures. Thus, Chinua Achebe’s works offer to the uninformed and unaccustomed African observer, a better grasp of the distinctive, if not enduring and endearing qualities of Africa’s vast and diverse cultures. Fundamentally, Things Fall Apart is the bedrock on which all succeeding and contemporary work on African literature has been built. It is thus beyond debate, why Chinua Achebe has been described as “the father of modern African literature who made it an integral part of World literature.” 

Aside from Things Fall Apart, Achebe has ventured courageously into the realm of critiquing literary, governance and public enterprise processes with his essays and commentaries.  His prescient, blunt, brave and introspective 1984 book, The Trouble With Nigeria, is highly regarded.  The others, Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), Hopes and Impediments (1988), and Home and Exile (2000), are by no means less important. He is generally considered to be one of the unfettered consciences of Nigeria, even though we suspect that he would decline that label. But there is no question that he is a man who has forcefully, but in a soft tone, spoken out for the people’s inalienable and ordered rights, without doing so in a controversial or confrontational manner preferred by some of his literary peers.

When in 2004, he declined Nigeria’s second highest honor (Commander of the Federal Republic) as a conscientious protest to the state of affairs in Nigeria, he did so without fanfare. In a pithy letter dated Sunday, October 17, 2004 to President Olusegun Obasanjo, he said:

For some time now I have watched events in Nigeria with alarm and dismay. I have watched particularly the chaos in my own state of Anambra where a small clique of renegades, openly boasting its connections in high places, seems determined to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom. I am appalled by the brazenness of this clique and the silence, if not connivance, of the Presidency. Forty three years ago, at the first anniversary of Nigeria’s independence I was given the first Nigerian National Trophy for Literature. In 1979, I received two further honors – the Nigerian National Order of Merit and the Order of the Federal Republic – and in 1999 the first National Creativity Award. I accepted all these honors fully aware that Nigeria was not perfect; but I had a strong belief that we would outgrow our shortcomings under leaders committed to uniting our diverse peoples. Nigeria’s condition today under your watch is, however, too dangerous for silence. I must register my disappointment and protest by declining to accept the high honor awarded me in the 2004 Honors List.

Such is the character of the man. Some within the government of the day did not take kindly to such a rebuff. But many Nigerians applauded Achebe to no end. Sabella O. Abidde echoed the general sentiments in his blog, titled, “Chinua Achebe, Obasanjo and Nigerian National Honors”, published on http://www.nigeriavillagesquare1.com.  His words:  “Professor Chinua Achebe, like Chief Gani Fawehinmi, is not a mere mortal. Achebe is a national treasure. Achebe is an institution. He is the man from whom we draw our inspiration. He is one of the beacons that guide us when we are lost. And in our moments of melancholy and sadness…Chinua Achebe is the man who gives us hope, clarity and strength. He is our man!” This assessment compliments those by Leon Botstien, President of Bard College, who said that, “Chinua Achebe is one of the great intellectual and ethical figures of our time.” A person measured thus on account of his literary work and moral posture must be phenomenal. 

Another, brave, insightful but less discussed work by Chinua Achebe, is An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” (1975).  This singular work highlighted the reasons why African authors like Chinua Achebe, must, and do feel the need to tell their own stories in their own way. Achebe was not unkind to Joseph Conrad; he merely unmasked the condescending, blatant and sometimes oblique racism that proliferate some books on Africa, which are written from a matter-of-fact Eurocentric perspective.  Though he did not generalize, Achebe had taken a position that called for inquiry and critical evaluation of the deleterious impact of Western literary works premised on contrived racist notions of Africa. His thinking on the matter is instructive: “In giving expression to the plight of their people, black writers have shown again and again how strongly this traumatic experience can possess the sensibility. They have found themselves drawn irresistibly to writing about the fate of black people in a world progressively recreated by white men in their own image, to their glory and for their profit, in which the Negro became the poor motherless child of the spirituals and of so many Nigerian folk tales.” (“The Black Writer’s Burden,” 1966).

Seemingly farfetched, it is still unclear, as to how Achebe’s outing of Conrad may have adversely affected his nomination and selection for the Nobel Prize, if at all. But it would amount to indulging in naiveté, to also presume that there is no connection whatsoever. Debunking Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” had the effect of collectivizing and repudiating every work belonging to that genre. Chinweizu, who incidentally, is the author of The Black World and the Nobel, in an unrelated work, asserts that “Negrophobia, for its part, induces a reflex movement away from things black, even from black beauty.”  Controversial as this point may seem, it will be impractical not to wonder, and defeatist not to ask, if it is possible that Negrophobia also afflicts literary works and authors who enfranchise Afrocentricism by the very focus of their work, as well as those non-Africans who evaluate such works. One can only rewrite or correct erroneous history by breaking down barriers and stereotypes; Chinua Achebe has done exactly that.

Expectedly, Chinua Achebe has won many literary and honorific awards, except for the Nobel, which certainly, he ought to have won by now. It is implausible and paradoxical that, aside from politics, such an under appreciation of his body of work can ever be justified. It is equally implausible that the Swedish Academy and the world at large can justifiably overlook the overwhelming influence Things Fall Apart has had on World and African literature. That would be analogous to losing sight of the Iroko tree because of the forest.  As an Igbo idiom queries; ebe ka mmili si baa na opi ugbogulu ~ from whence did water sip into the bonnet of the pumpkin?

Assuredly, Chinua Achebe is very passionate about causes close to his heart. But we know that he is not one to kowtow or resort to undue activism with the aim of influencing or engendering a more favorable consideration of his work. Given his sense of decorum, he would also frown if others did so on his behalf. Another obvious reality is that, unlike the three most recent Nobel Prize winners, Doris Lessing of Britain, Orhan Pamuk of Turkey and Harold Pinter of Britain, Achebe’s measured and reflective writings will likely continue to dwell on his native land, rather than being fixated on an array of topical but nonliterary global issues that elicit instant attention. Also, we do not see Achebe becoming a rabid activist. Perhaps, it is this commitment to pure rather than applied African literature that has been Achebe’s bane with the Nobel Prize. But, then, we will never know how many times, if any, he has been nominated and how close he may have come to wining one.

Ultimately, the forthcoming award of The Medal of Honor for Literature to Chinua Achebe coincides fittingly and fortuitously with the juncture marking the beginning of the 50^th Anniversary of Things Fall Apart and Chinua Achebe’s emergence as a world renowned author.  Yet, there is a vital plumage missing from his collection of literary honors. The year 2008, in our humble view, would therefore, be an equally befitting year in which our humanity recognizes fully, the totality of Chinua Achebe’s works and his literary, philosophical and conscientious contributions to mankind. 

Finally, being a legend is not a qualification that is assigned whimsically, nor for that matter, bandied around loosely. But many attentive observers agree that Chinua Achebe is a legend in a constellation of literary giants. One only needs to appreciate the global realities and contending cultural context and civilizations in which Chinua Achebe and his writings co-exist with others to understand why.

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*Mr. Obaze is a political analyst, writer, and literary critic.

Email: selonnes@aol.com.  

Chike Momah is an author and retired International Civil Servant.

Email: nnanne@sbcglobal.net.

They both reside in the United States

SEE ALSO: Chike Momah: Reflections on Chinua Achebe

Oseloka Obaze-- In lieu of  Book Review

Chinua Achebe: The unacknowledged Nobel laureate