Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

[niceniss]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Pepper</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Donnika</div><div class="ubbcode-body">"things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. mere anarchy is loosed upon the land"

I've never read the book. Where could I pick up a copy? </div></div>

Donnika,

This book has been around for a while. You can easily get it at the library, book store, or on Amazon.

I read it a while back for a class. I'll thumb through and refresh.

Oh, it was a great book BTW. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70409-waytogo.gif[/img] </div></div>Thanks

I know an Ibo guy. I'll try the library then try getting his feedback(he seems very traditional and he often speaks of his people-Ibo)

[Wahalla]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> not sure i follow or agree with you here, wahahalla. are you saying that it is genetics that underlie notions of nation/nationalism, and that once environment overrides notions of blood belonging, then unity ceases? i'm going to think more on that and maybe come back to it.
</div></div>

I beleive that the point here is we all have individual needs that at time puts us in direct opposition to our peers of ethnicity, religion.. I am saying our overriding needs remove us from simple ideas of unity.. "We are all African" does not nessesarily mean we have the same interests.... Considering the time and back ground of the writing of this book that was a singular inciteful point.

On the twin thing. My take on this was there are rictuals and traditions that we all adhere to. Oknowo society was stable and had become singularly complex. What is often repeated by those I refer to the Black Nationalists is an idea that African society is superior and it was perfect we were taken from it (Well as a Taino it doesnt apply to me... We Taino's loved a bit of long pork and flattened our heads like the huns)... But Achebe by this is pointing out it is far from perfect there are acts equally as horrifying as the middle passage.. the treatment of twins...

MG you were uncomfortable with what you considered primitive ? How and why? Achebe was being honest at the flaws and that is the power of the book.. This is what we were, not an idealised but gutsy. Think on this there was justice and mercy in Okwowos banishment.. And he accepted his responibility and took his punishment.. Think any one powerful would ???? Then there is the cruelty...

You do realise that when it was published there was the usual calls much like the ones that were made by the Lucrsa Borgia's recent cartoon ?

So it sets up the reason for the success of the Christianity and the relative ease at which colonialism is imposed.. Something other that requires both an individual and a societal acceptance. For this to happen some sector has to dissastified The faults of society that reacts at its center against a barbaric act, while there is the individual reaction exemplified by Okonwos son a rebellion against his father.

Frankly I read this as a thirteen year old third form MC in a class of boys.. It was the first year it was introduced as the literature book of the term.... And it makes me question so many on here who come out with we are not being taught of Africa....

This is a monumental book of liberation and honesty.... It is about the changing of society from fuedalism to colonialism. And it was written at a time when Colonialism was about to change back to independence. It offered a warning and the leaders did not read or notice the obvious analogy.

It demonstrates the multilayers of tension that runsthrough all of us.. and our relationship with father mothers sons and authority...

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> <div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> not sure i follow or agree with you here, wahahalla. are you saying that it is genetics that underlie notions of nation/nationalism, and that once environment overrides notions of blood belonging, then unity ceases? i'm going to think more on that and maybe come back to it.
</div></div>

I beleive that the point here is we all have individual needs that at time puts us in direct opposition to our peers of ethnicity, religion.. I am saying our overriding needs remove us from simple ideas of unity.. "We are all African" does not nessesarily mean we have the same interests.... Considering the time and back ground of the writing of this book that was a singular inciteful point. </div></div>

i agree that individual desires often crash into larger social issues - this is the essential conflict from which civilizations and their codes spring, innit? what is a society, after all, but a system of mediating, accommodating and assigning primacy and place to individual desires in relation to community/communal goals and survival? at some point, even the individual himself has to subdue his desires to retain the benefit of the protection (in all its forms) of the larger society. this is what unity is, because unity/community offers a kind of protection unfeasible for an individual.

IMO, what Achebe is illustrating in this story is the evolution of unity/society. the unity within Umuofia was based on common fear of the unknown forces, an awareness of the village's relative weakness/strength vis a vis other villages and agreed upoon social, legal and religious codes. the introdcution and imposition of a stronger social and religioius code (stronger because of weapons, stronger because it exploited the weaknesses of Umuofia's existing code) causes things to fall apart, but the premise - hinted at but not explored by Achebe - is that a new form of unity will evolve, and that this unity will accommodate individual desires in a new way. I believe that human beings are way too pragmatic to dismiss the concept of unity, they just find new grounds on which to unite.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">On the twin thing. My take on this was there are rictuals and traditions that we all adhere to. Oknowo society was stable and had become singularly complex. What is often repeated by those I refer to the Black Nationalists is an idea that African society is superior and it was perfect we were taken from it (Well as a Taino it doesnt apply to me... We Taino's loved a bit of long pork and flattened our heads like the huns)... But Achebe by this is pointing out it is far from perfect there are acts equally as horrifying as the middle passage.. the treatment of twins...</div></div>
the intro to the book tries to justify the killing of twins as related to an Igbo fear/distaste for excess. I disagree that Achebe was trying to compare cultural horrors, or trying to rationalize the middle passage. As the great slayer of Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness, I doubt Achebe would be interested in balancing the horrors of European trade in AFricans by writing about Igbo killing of twin babies.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">MG you were uncomfortable with what you considered primitive ? How and why? Achebe was being honest at the flaws and that is the power of the book.. This is what we were, not an idealised but gutsy. Think on this there was justice and mercy in Okwowos banishment.. And he accepted his responibility and took his punishment.. Think any one powerful would ???? Then there is the cruelty... </div></div>

i'm a minority in a society with elements determined to deny my humanity based on the colour of my skin - forgive me for lapses of giving in to their mindgame. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/blush.gif[/img] i realize that Achebe was being honest, and i respect his courage as an author to write about traditional Igbo society with all its cruelty, yet all its complexity, and its moments of grace - e.g., Okonkwo's respect for his daughter's tallahwahness, the elevation of courtesy to ritual (i loved the elaborately polite scene when Okonkwo was saying goodbye to his mother's clan when he had done served his exile.)

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">So it sets up the reason for the success of the Christianity and the relative ease at which colonialism is imposed.. Something other that requires both an individual and a societal acceptance. For this to happen some sector has to dissastified The faults of society that reacts at its center against a barbaric act, while there is the individual reaction exemplified by Okonwos son a rebellion against his father.</div></div>
hmmmm. the society of the colonials have their own acts of barbarity - contained even in their very religion (though it's not factored into the story). i'm resisting this idea that the fault line in Umuofia society is its so-called barbarism. i think it is more the hierarchal nature, combined with defencelessness against a power with stronger weapons.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">This is a monumental book of liberation and honesty.... It is about the changing of society from fuedalism to colonialism. And it was written at a time when Colonialism was about to change back to independence. It offered a warning and the leaders did not read or notice the obvious analogy.

It demonstrates the multilayers of tension that runsthrough all of us.. and our relationship with father mothers sons and authority... </div></div>
agree.

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">what is it that the author is referring to , overall, with the title Things Fall Apart ....is it a lament , statement of fact,ievitable realisation with echo of nostalgia for era past etc etc.... </div></div>

the lack of sentimentality in this work makes me think, vannie, that for Achebe, he's making a statement of fact. I doubt he is lamenting the old traditional ways or being nostalgic for it - his eyes are too wide open to its excess.

[Wahalla]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: mountaingal</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">what is it that the author is referring to , overall, with the title Things Fall Apart ....is it a lament , statement of fact,ievitable realisation with echo of nostalgia for era past etc etc.... </div></div>

the lack of sentimentality in this work makes me think, vannie, that for Achebe, he's making a statement of fact. I doubt he is lamenting the old traditional ways or being nostalgic for it - his eyes are too wide open to its excess.
</div></div>

That lack of sentimentality was against the spirit of the times... A warning shot... I dont think there was a single drop of nostalgia.. It was more this is how it might have been it was not perfect...

Yes I did think it was a very personal account.. Like he took a family myth and deconstructed it... As if he was a grand son of Okonwo and he a myth of cruelty was created by his father about his grandfather....

I also he beleived he did not beleive the advent of colonialism was a civilising effect. He was being honest.. And honest is brutal... Too often in Africa sentimentality was used to advocate change and Achebe was not sentimental.. Honest...

When we did this book some one suggested that there was something gay about Achebe.... (Hey bear in mind I did it in a class of hard nose youn teenagers who loved to make an argument about hte colour of the sky not being blue!)

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body">When we did this book some one suggested that there was something gay about Achebe.... </div></div>
goodness! what made them think that, i wonder...

i think i recounted on here before that when I went to hear Achebe read in 1983, he prefaced one of his readings by saying a lot of people romanticize death - in the sense of dying for a cause - but he felt that his people were way more pragmatic, and if possible, would prefer someone else to die for the cause.

had i read Things Fall Apart then, I may have asked him about how he squared that with Okonkwo's suicide.

thanks for the insights into the zeitgeist into which Achebe delivered his book. that mood still persists, i think, the feeling to look at African history through rose-coloured glasses. i went once to a conference on African influences on Black American dance, and one presenter started to talk about how the descendants of slaves were deployed in battle against AFricans, but another one cut him off, in the interest of preserving the notion of "unity". so, the audience was deprived of an illustration of the first presenter's point, which i think was to show how new world Africans (descendants) could easily reconnect with their roots despite the intervening history - ironically, in my view, an example of "unity".

[Wahalla]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

You know I am dissapointed on the response to this .. This probably the greatest book that came out of Africa.... Ever.... And so few people commented on it... Guess its not to too many people taste.. or too few people read it..

[Blackstar*]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

I'm just coming out of lurkdom to say I read this book many years ago and have since mislaid my copy, otherwise I would be participating in the discussion. In any case I am enjoying reading everyone's insight on this great book.

[Blackstar*]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

Bumping in honor of Mr Achebe (and a [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wink.gif[/img] at Wahalla).