There is a feeling at the end of Chinua Achebe’s masterpiece Things Fall Apart (Heinemann, 1958).  It is real, yet elusive.  It has been building since the first page, only coming to its most harsh crescendo as the curtain closes on the last page.

After being squeezed between two suffocating rocks for 148 pages, one is hard-pressed to fully identify the emotion.  Is it rage?  Confusion?  Is it the vague sense that something is wrong with the world?  Is the killing of twins a wrong that deserves redress from outsiders with equally-troubling convictions?

Who can say?

Achebe’s classic has sold over two million copies.  I first read the book in college as a green anthropology student.  It was since brought back to my attention through a student and I decided to revisit it.  And it was worth the trip.

Short, yet gripping, Things Fall Apart is the story of Okwonko, a much-lauded, brooding man of the Umuofia clan of the Igbo tribe.  He is a well-known wrestler and warrior with ambitions in his tribe.  He has a large compound, prosperous yams, and many children.  He is molded into the ways of his tribe to the point where he follows the laws and customs to the letter, going so far as to condemn himself to exile for the good of his clan.

Over time, the white man comes to the villages in the Lower Niger bringing more than their skin.  Christianity and British-style government – strange customs indeed – arrive to upset the delicate balance between tribesman and tribesman, tribesman and stranger, and tribesman and gods.  Things Fall Apart carefully documents the life of the tribe, through Okonkwo, in all of its wisdom and harshness, setting them against the European colonization later in the book when we can no longer decide who should take credit and blame.

So much of misunderstanding is forged in the uneasy balance between what we are convinced is right, and what others know is true.  We often forget that when we come to another with a truth, it is often only as a guest in someone else’s home.  Achebe’s brutal reminder is that even a doomed hero such as Okwonko may not deserve his own fate, no matter how we judge him by our own standards.

Things Fall Apart is a slice of life.  A mere portrait in a gallery of such stories of tradition in the face of progress.  But it is worth a look.  I would ask, however, that as you take in the color and patterns of the delicate painting, do not be quick to judge it.  For, even as you turn the pages, you may find yourself streaked, smeared, and on trial.

-josh