Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

[mountaingal]

This discussion is to officially start on Wednesday, Feb. 7.

I'm done reading this story, and am now reading some of the preliminary text (i got an edition that included explanation of the history and sociology of the Ibo people).

Some questions I think we could explore in our discussion:

What impression of traditional African society are you left with after reading this novel?

What do you think the author is saying about the influence of Christianity on the village and characters in the story?

What are some of the similarities between Ibo culture and Jamaican culture? What are some of the significant dissimilarities?

How do you find the roles of women in the book - weak or strong?

[evanovitch]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

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....

[julie*mango]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

So where's the discussion???

I'd like to talk about the role of women and femininity.

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

Hi, Skelly - been wukkin out mi case dem lass couple days, so haven't had time for any indepth posting. Anyway, let me start the ball rolling.

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

My Summary

Things Fall Apart is the story of an Ibo man, Okonkwo, his family and his village during the last decade of the 1800s. In a bigger sense, the book is the story of how life used to be for the Ibo people before the coming of the white man and Christianity. The book goes into great detail about the religious and family customs that bound the people in Okonkwo's village, Umuofia. Birth, marriage, the settling of disputes within families, among neighbours and among towns, death and the relationship of the gods and humans in all of this.

In the book, we see Okonkwo struggling to make something of himself and his family, to avoid weaknesses that he saw and disapproved of in his father - who was considered lazy and unambitious. Through hardwork and a stern approach to life, Okonkwo manages to build a prosperous life - he is blessed with a bountiful yam farm, three wives, numerous children, and great standing within the community. He is also known as a champion wrestler and a fierce warrior - at a relatively young age he had already achieved the distinction of cutting off the head of an enemy and drinking wine from the skull.

However, Okonkwo's singlemindedness and quick temper causes him to make mistakes against his family, his community and his gods - whose main concern is to ensure peace, dispel evil and avoid desecration of the land. One of the more serious errors that afflicts Okonkwo - one of his old guns misfires during a festival and kills a boy. Causing violent death (outside of war) was a grave offence and usually punished by death. But because it was accidental, Okonkwo is merely banished for seven years, which he spends - him, his wives, his children - with his maternal relatives in another village.

In that period, change comes to Umuofia - in the form of Christian missionaries. They begin to convert Okwonko's former neighbours, and, devastatingly for Okonkwo, his son Nwoye (whom Okwonko had always put down for being weak like his grandfather). During his exile, Okonkwo hears news of how the missionaries have ridiculed the people's religions and customs as being false, saying the Christian god was the only true god. In fact, the Christians seemed to prove their case by building their church and thriving on what was the village's "evil grounds", a place of bad spirits. In addition, the Christians seem to be automatically setting up an alternate legal system based on their own religion, and with disregard for the existing dispute resolution/moral authority in Umuofia.

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

continued

Okonkwo becomes determined to restore the old ways to his village. When his seven years are up, he returns to Umuofia, and tries to regain his former status. But things have changed. They have "fallen apart". With the Christians have come not just a new religion and legal code, but commerce, and people's wealth are being fuelled not just by yams any more. MOre and more people are becoming Christians to learn to read and write. A colonial administration of white men had been established.

One day a select group of men, led by Okonkwo, decided to cleanse the village of the evil presence represented to them by Christianity. These men, as was their custom, dressed in masks representing ancestors and gods. In this garb, they wrought fear and respect in villagers. Their presence alone was a reassertion of the power of the old ways.

However, a converted Christian, one of the more fanatic ones, decided to unmask one of the men - in a way to prove the primitiveness and ineffectuality of the old ways. This was going too far. Led by Okonkwo, the men/gods burnt down the Christian church.


The colonial District Commissioner sent men in to make the arrest. Okonkwo sees this as a kind of declaration of war. He was among the group of men awaiting arrest when the commissioner's men came. Okonkwo, in resisting arrest, cuts off the head of one of the commissioner's men. But Okwonko's group did not follow his lead and rush into a fight. There was commotion, but no fight. Things had fallen apart.

Okwonko escapes. When the district commissioner himself comes to find him, Okonkwo's neighbour says, I'll take you to him, but you have to get him yourself. The neighbour takes the DC to the tree where Okonkwo hangs, having committed suicide. The neigbhour, none of Okonkwo's people, will touch the body, because his death is an offence againt their old ways.

Struck by this, the DC decides he will record this incident in a book he's writing, provisionally titled, "The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger."

[niceniss]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

"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?

[Q3210]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

yu done know seh our roots, Perkins love quote those very words.

[julie*mango]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

Excellent summary MG.

With regards to women in society, they were just regarded as child bearing property. Okonkwo had three simply because he could afford to. It was a display of his wealth which he earned because he was determined not to be like his father who he considered to be effeminate because he was viewed as weak which is a quality associated with femininity.

During Okonkwo's exile he went to live in the village that his mother was from. The villagers there dealt with matters differently than Okonkwo was used to. They preferred discussion and reasoning versus violence which Okonkwo used as a measure of his manhood.

The difference in attitudes he showed his children are another indicator. His son Nwoye was regarded as weak by his father and Okonkwo's adopted son Ikemefuna was preferred because of his great manly attributes. Even though I still cannot understand why they killed him...someone please explain. Okonkwo's daughter Ezinma is his favorite, not because she is female but because of her personality which is like that of her father's. Okonkwo wished she was born a boy because of her masculine way of thinking.

[Pepper]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<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]

[Wahalla]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

The relationship with of Okonwo with his fatehr has a certain devastating effect and is at the central .. If memory serves me right, he viewed his fatehr as pleasure seeking enjoying palmwine and other pleasures.. Because he was pleasure seeking they were poor.. So get power and prestige one had to forgo pleasure. Okokwo feared that he was too much like his father so sort to subjugate these tendencies.. And viewed these tendencies as weakness.

His son was more like him than he cared to admit. So he saw in his son as his own weakness. He bullied his son from bith, without letting the son develop his own personality. (I beleiev the son had a stutter if memory serves me right) Yet by failing to let the son develop his own personality it became a self fullfilling opnion. So his treatment of his son was him trying to control his own genetic instints...

Okonwo was angry man but his anger was a defence personality mechnaism...A fear of poverty and shame of powerlessness.

The daughter who he let sit with him immitated his personality...

Okonkwo did not see his culture as important, but the culture made him important, he lacked teh flexibilty to change. He did not want to change why should he? His people saw the need to change. And that is subtle difference. Yams give power, but the new paradim gave yams less power.

Looking at Things fall apart from say a French perspective in WWII, most people just wanted to get along with the central power. Even his neighbours who were losing power, collaborated by inaction...

Thinking on this Achebe, may be saying enviroment has more to do with personality than genetics. That makes a number of assumptions of black nationalism mute. If enviroment is more important than genetics that there is no sense of unity or unity is transitory. Again saying the ease at which a complex society when an external.


If memory serves me correclty there was also an issue of the twins...

My memory may be faulty but I thought the demasking took place during a planned festival?

One other thing worthy of note is the fact that it was the poor and powerless who took to Christianty.. Chrisitainty as one of its central tentants suggest equality before god (so does islam).. But this shows the unoversiality of the themes.. Islam, Christinity, appeals to the untouchables in India not to the higher castes who have power and postion to protect like Okokwo... But the culture fixed people in place.. Okonkwo being the exception... Suggests that there was still the possibility of social mobility...

But what does I a Taino know of africa ????... I remeber the most was the sayings... One of them goes something like " A calf learns by watching his motehr eat grass".. This reinforces the issue of enviroment or learned behaviour.

As I said I aint smart so my views are simple and silly... I think alot on this book, but I read it more than a quater centuary ago....

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

Interesting insights, so far. thanks, guys.

I struggled a bit with the book as I read it - you know, the old shame about primitive ways. I had a hard time with the killing of twins at birth, the killing of Ikefumia (?) just because the gods had changed their minds and said he shouldn't live any more, the discarding of people in the evil grounds to die because of some offence they had caused to the gods or the community (if I'm not mistaken, Okwonko's dad was tied to a tree and left to die, and - an unexpected and meaningful touch to me - he asked to be able to take his flute with him). I wondered at Achebe's goal in writing these things so dispassionately, without apology.

i guess when you are living in a place where you are at the whim of so many capricious forces - whether of nature or other human beings - the more involved your theology and behaviour code, the safer and more secure you feel. to a great extent, the many rules and punishments seemed to exert some control over these mystifying and sometimes terrible forces. I did take some comfort, though, in the complexity of the whole arrangement.

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Skelly</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
With regards to women in society, they were just regarded as child bearing property. Okonkwo had three simply because he could afford to. It was a display of his wealth which he earned because he was determined not to be like his father who he considered to be effeminate because he was viewed as weak which is a quality associated with femininity.

During Okonkwo's exile he went to live in the village that his mother was from. The villagers there dealt with matters differently than Okonkwo was used to. They preferred discussion and reasoning versus violence which Okonkwo used as a measure of his manhood.

The difference in attitudes he showed his children are another indicator. His son Nwoye was regarded as weak by his father and Okonkwo's adopted son Ikemefuna was preferred because of his great manly attributes. Even though I still cannot understand why they killed him...someone please explain. Okonkwo's daughter Ezinma is his favorite, not because she is female but because of her personality which is like that of her father's. Okonkwo wished she was born a boy because of her masculine way of thinking.

</div></div>

Skelly, you're right, it does seem that traditionally, Ibo men think women are weak and softer traits in men are disparaged as being womanly. I also cringed at the part where one of the men (was it Okonkwo or another man) beat his wife during the week of peace and although he was censured for it, i got the feeling that it was becauseof when he chose to do it, if im did beat har the week before or the week after, it would have been okay.

But then, paradoxically, we see the value of women through the issue of the "bride price" - where a man must pay a woman's family for taking her away to marriage. and there are community laws, too, that assert that a woman can leave her husband if he's too abusive. I think Achebe through those in to balance the perceptions. Also through the character of Ezinma, as you and Wahalla have pointed out, her personality is more "manly" than her brother Nwoye's, and gives her favour in Okonkwo's eyes, but she's still a girl, and can be put with a man/husband who can treat her like Okonkwo treats his wives.

In any case, name me the society which doesn't see women as lesser than men (yes, is dat cause feminism fi rise in the so-called enlightened West). Maybe it's cause of our biology.

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

I think Achebe uses Ezinma's mother (cyaan memba har name and mi no ha di book in front of me, was it Ekinwe?) and Ezinma to illustrate the traditional beliefs around marriage and birth.

Ekinwe was previously married, I think, and left her husband because he abused her. She became Okonkwo's wife when she slept with him. Once she became his wife, she got her own house in his compound.

Ekinwe's numerous miscarriages before borning Ezinma are seen by the community as the sign of a "bad baby" - (lord, oonu help mi out with the traditional name nuh?). This baby essentially harasses a mother by continuously borning and dying, revisiting her womb repeatedly. I can't remember what the cure is for that - jeez, did it involve proactively killing a child? was that what they wanted for Ezinma?

Anyway, when Ezinma reached ten years old, her mother was glad cause it seemed that this time the "bad baby" was here to stay. And of course, we saw that every little sickness Ezinma endured struck fear into her poor mummy's heart. that story of how the priestess came for Ezinma to take her to the gods was gripping. Would she live or die? And i was incredibly moved at Ezinma's mother braving the displeasure of the gods by following the priestess, carrying Ezinma on her back, around to all the ancestral villages - and even more touched that unknown to Ekinwe, Okonkwo had followed her.

This, I think, was the closest example of an expression of love for his wife that I saw Okonkwo show.

[mountaingal]

Re: Things Fall Apart Book Discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Wahalla</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The relationship with of Okonwo with his fatehr has a certain devastating effect and is at the central .. If memory serves me right, he viewed his fatehr as pleasure seeking enjoying palmwine and other pleasures.. Because he was pleasure seeking they were poor.. So get power and prestige one had to forgo pleasure. Okokwo feared that he was too much like his father so sort to subjugate these tendencies.. And viewed these tendencies as weakness.

His son was more like him than he cared to admit. So he saw in his son as his own weakness. He bullied his son from bith, without letting the son develop his own personality. (I beleiev the son had a stutter if memory serves me right) Yet by failing to let the son develop his own personality it became a self fullfilling opnion. So his treatment of his son was him trying to control his own genetic instints...

Okonwo was angry man but his anger was a defence personality mechnaism...A fear of poverty and shame of powerlessness.

The daughter who he let sit with him immitated his personality...
</div></div>

interesting pov, wahalla. i did wonder at Achebe's motives in makinig Okonkwo so mean to his son. I don't think I saw in Okonkwo any evidence that he had to fight against a tendency for pleasure seeking - in fact, he seemed rather dour from the get go. but your analysis does give some glimmer of an insight into why he was so unforgiving of his father's personality and lack of achievement, and why he feared these in his son.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Looking at Things fall apart from say a French perspective in WWII, most people just wanted to get along with the central power. Even his neighbours who were losing power, collaborated by inaction...

Thinking on this Achebe, may be saying enviroment has more to do with personality than genetics. That makes a number of assumptions of black nationalism mute. If enviroment is more important than genetics that there is no sense of unity or unity is transitory. </div></div>

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 class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
One other thing worthy of note is the fact that it was the poor and powerless who took to Christianty.. Chrisitainty as one of its central tentants suggest equality before god (so does islam).. But this shows the unoversiality of the themes.. Islam, Christinity, appeals to the untouchables in India not to the higher castes who have power and postion to protect like Okokwo... But the culture fixed people in place.. Okonkwo being the exception... Suggests that there was still the possibility of social mobility...
</div></div>

yes, it did seem that Christianity offered salve to the disenfranchised in Umuofia (I wouldn't say the poor and powerless - more like people whose destinies seemed to conflict with their society's, usually because of what some god had said).

But the Christianity that came to the village, while initially seeming to grant equality before God, became infused with its own hierarchy because of its attachment to the colonial administration, IMO.