Seminar 1 Summary

Taboo:  Cora touched on the many facets of Achebe’s understanding of the brilliance of the African Igbo people and their culture.  She begins with the oral tradition of the Igbo.  Through this lecture the question was pondered about the lack of memory retention ability that a literate culture instills into its people.  There is less need to remember information when it can be written then forgotten.  The Igbo didn’t facilitate literature thus having then, to recall important (often life saving) information through stories, songs, dances, and, religious rituals.  She analyses the proverb-song in Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart and translates it to reveal the significance of tradition to the Igbo.  Igbo live strongly by remembered tradition, and to break tradition is a serious taboo.  According to the song, if a King eats the first yams of harvest instead of sacrificing them to the God, he (male only, Igbo where patriarchal) would die dishonorably in the dust eaten by white ants.

 War:  Through her lectures, she emphasized the importance of Achebe’s ability to communicate, cross-culturally, the history of the Igbo people.  The Igbo have a tradition in disagreements between villages.  Instead of going to war, they will sacrifice one, instead of the many.  This happened to the unfortunate Ikemefuna, but in reality, this is a brilliant way of a flawed species to keep death to a minimum.

Psychological Colonialism:  One of the many drawbacks that the Igbo faced in the onslaught of colonization, was the damage done to their sense of self.  Once communication and the integration of Christian methodology was established (forced) on the Igbo, they realized just how heathenistic and feared they were thought to be by the British.  They not only had the physical presence of a new and slowly turning unwanted culture in their lives, they also had the beliefs and thoughts of this culture in their heads.  This caused untold damage to the Igbo’s consciousness, thus causing some of them to, not only question the British but their own ways as well.

Theme of Book: The story told by Ekwefi, (whom Onkonkwo tried to shoot) about the egotistical tortoise and the birds is the story of Onkonkwo’s life.  He tried to be too cunning and omnipotent and in the end got burned.  

THINGS FALL APART
By Chinua Achebe

HISTORIC BACKGROUND
· Colonialism and Post Colonialism, in the country of Nigeria, are the settings for the story, which takes place in circa 1890.
· At the end of 19th C. the European nations met in Berlin to divide the countries of Africa into spheres of influence:  colonies.
· The British who send in their missionaries and governing bureaucracy occupy Nigeria.
· Native culture, as pertained to marriage, wealth, governing, religion and history, was ignored.
· The establishment of missionary schools and district courts, patterned after British legal system, accomplished political and cultural colonization.
· Colonialism created a psychological hold that even today haunts African society.
· Education was a subtle form of control achieved by indoctrinating the Africans with British values

IGBO PEOPLE:
· Igbo people were a diverse population divided into hundreds of groups speaking dozen of dialects but were united in their social political organization and basic culture.
· The people had lived in this area, along the Congo River, for thousands of years.
· They had a well-developed agricultural society that was self-sustaining.
· Their skill in the production of iron tool implements gave them the resources to produce yams and other crops.
· This skill was not only utilitarian but also led to their artistic development as seen in the masks they designed.
· The Igbo governed themselves by representative, democratic meetings.
People were divided into age groups who had their certain responsibilities in the community.
· The community and the actions of the individual were all a basic
whole.  The actions of one affected the many.
· The Deity that the Igbo worshiped resembled the Deity of the Judeo/Christians religion in both of their creation stories.  The Deity was reached through prayers and offering to all the spirits represented by the natural surroundings such as trees and water.

CHINUA ACHEBE:
· Educated in Anglican Missionary schools and college where he was indoctrinated with British values and thought.
· He became a radio announcer and than an author.  His first book, Things Fall Apart was published in 1958, just prior to Nigeria winning its freedom.
· He is considered the father of African literature.
· He wrote to reach the African educated and us in the West.
· He was not a pioneer, but an innovator.
· He believed that fiction creates its own tradition, cultural contents and reading communities.
· He wanted to present the truth from the native point of view.
· He seeks to address crisis of culture generated by the collapse of Colonial Rule.
· Achebe presents the Colonization experience from the African perspective.
· He is concerned with moral complexities and dualities.
· He conceives that the primary function and power of literature to be moral/ethical in nature.
· A good storyteller is not bound by narrow political/personal concerns or specific historical moments.
· A storyteller appeals to morality and humanity to give readers a fuller meaning to life.
· He writes in clear realistic Western Culture style.
· He wrote to help his society regain self-respect and to overcome inferiority complexes created by years of denigration.
· He wanted to correct stereotypes and show his African audience that “We are a complex society.”
· He affirmed the Igbo culture without romanticizing it.
· He wants to create mental revaluation: to educate and teach Africans.

AFRICAN WRITERS:
· Must make the choice of what language to write in:  English or African
  Choice is influenced by what political issue to pursue.
· English limits audience and natives are left behind.
· Publishers push English to promote sales of books.
· Achebe chose to use the master’s tool, English, to dismantle the
master’s house.  Achebe became the cross-country interpreter of his
native heritage. The novel is a privileged form of African Literature.
The poems and songs may be  lost to Western readers.
· Achebe asks, “Who are we?” and writes Things Fall Apart as a
reparation.
· He wanted to portray the diversity of peoples and did not believe in
universal themes unless you shared common values.
· African English recreates culture and history of the people and
reminds us this is a different culture.
· African Theatre reaches the illiterate with the verbal visual
presentation of the culture.\

THINGS FALL APART
· Central theme:  what happens to native values that define the cultural
community
· The novel, written in three parts, parallels Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness:
· Achebe writes the story in African English.
· He used Western genre to express oral Igbo tradition.
· He was writing to the West to express the native point of view.
· He wrote to show the truth of the native culture vs. the culture
portrayed by Europeans, specifically Joseph Conrad‘s depiction in The
Heart of Darkness.
· Achebe introduces the book with a poem which is a model used to give
voice to the natives.
· Poem written by Irish poet Yeats who has lived and suffered under the
rule of the British.  His poem is an allusion of what is to come as the
subjucated break away from subjection.
· Late in the book, Achebe introduces a song written in the Igbo
language.  The song’s story relates the downfall and death of a king for
breaking a taboo to the main character in the book and foretells the
ending to his doomed life.
· Achebe use of oral arts, stories, proverbs, and songs are uses of the
Igbo art forms to teach morals and how the oral stories change with
reality.
· Changes in the oral stories reflect the changes in reality.
· The Tortoise story teaches the moral of the book.
· The Things Fall Down reflects Achebe’s own morals.
· The main character Okonkwo cannot adjust to Post Colonial reality.
· He ends up alienated from his family, friends, community and God, hung
by the neck by his own hand and will.
· Obierka, the friend of Okonkwo, sees the good and the bad in things.
He understands the obligations to the community and culture but retains
his selfhood by choosing to act in a way that not only conforms but
leaves him as an individual who can make choices: choices that do not
destroy.
· ObierIka faces reality.
· Achebe’s portrays the use of oral arts in his stories, proverbs and
songs

THE STORY:  My Interpretation.
· Okonkwo’s defeat starts with his first success.  He is not going to be
like his lazy no-good father.  He will be different:  a rich, strong
leader.  His motivation to achievement is his hate for his father who
was a pauper and debtor when he died and was buried with outhonor.  The
father had failed in many ways- to feed his family, to acquire prestige
and to attain wealth.
· The son must always portray the man he wants and hopes to be.  He does
not admit or show his own emotions; whether they are happy or sad.
Emotion would be a sign of weakness.  So, he is not a true man, a great
warrior, or tribal member:  he is only half a man.  Part of him has been
submerged and hidden away.  He cannot tell a son that he loves him or
tell a wife he is pleased, or show fear when the priestess steals
Akimi.  He can only be a real person in his own eyes by being a warrior,
but it is too late.  His tribesmen do not, cannot, or will not fight the
incursion of the white man.  Okonkwo’s structured world collapses around
him.  He is left alone- to die a death of his own choosing.