4.1 THINGS FALL APART
(1958) Reading Guide
HUM 211 Fall 2007 Course Pack
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Things Fall Apart Reading Guide
Part I, Chs. 1-13 (pp. 3-88) |
Part II, Chs. 14-19 (pp. 91-118) |
Part III, Chs. 20-25 (pp. 121-148)
| Works Cited
References to page numbers below are from the edition used in
HUM 211 Cultures
& Literatures of Africa:
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. [First published 1958.]
Expanded edition with notes.1996. London: Heinemann, 2000.
Part I, Chs. 1-13 (pp. 3-88)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
Photo of
Band playing for Mmau Masquerade, Amuda village, featuring Isu Ochi instruments:
an udu (pot drum), two small membrane drums, a
small ogene (iron bell) and a whistle.
Part II, Chs. 14-19 (pp. 91-118)
Achebe was
asked in one interview: "How do you respond to
critics reading Okonkwo as a hero in terms of Aristotle's
concept of tragedy?"
Achebe replied: "No. I don't think I was responding
to that particular format. This is not, of course, to say
that there is no relationship between these. If we are to
believe what we are hearing these days the Greeks did not
drop from the sky. They evolved in a certain place which
was very close to Africa ... I think a lot of what
Aristotle says makes sense" (Rowell 97; see also n. 15 in
Begam).
Read the description of Western tragedy and the tragic hero below, based on Aristotle's definition, then consider these questions: In what ways do you see the plot of Things Fall Apart and the character of its protagonist Okonkwo as adhering to the conventions of Western tragedy and the tragic hero? In what ways do they depart from the Aristotelian model?
Tragedy may be defined as dramatic narrative in which serious and important actions turn out disastrously for the protagonist or tragic hero. The classical Western tragic hero is the main character of great importance to his state or culture and is conventionally of noble birth and high social station, the ruler or an important leader in his society. The moral health of the state is identified with, and dependent on, that of its ruler, and so the tragic heros story is also that of his state. Such heroes are mixed characters, neither thoroughly good or thoroughly evil, yet "better" or "greater" than the rest of us are in the sense that they are of higher than ordinary moral worth and social significance. The plot of tragedy traces the tragic fall of the hero, when a disastrous change of fortune, or reversal, catapults him (classical tragic heroes are often male) from the heights of happiness to the depths of misery. This fall usually comes as a consequence of a tragic flaw in the heros character and/or an error of judgment, although the fall may also be a product of the heros pre-ordained destiny or fate. The gods may have prophesized this fall, and the heros tragic flaw, sometimes in the form of a ruling passion (classically, hubris or overweening pride and self-confidence), may cause the hero to disregard divine law and/or try in vain to escape his fate. The tragic hero may experience a supreme moment of recognition of the truth of his situation and/or of his identity. The tragic hero is supposed to move us to pity, because, since he is not an evil man, his misfortune is greater than he deserves; but his story may also move us to fear or terror, because we recognize similar possibilities of flaw in our fallible natures or of errors of judgment in our own lesser lives. In the Poetics, ancient Greek theorist Aristotle also asserts that these feelings of pity and fear are purged or purified through katharsis: tragic representations of suffering and defeat leave an audience feeling, not depressed, but relieved and even elevated.
Part III, Chs. 20-25 (pp. 121-148)
Now that you've finished reading Things
Fall Apart . . .
How and why did things fall apart?
Identify what you interpret to be major theme(s) and/or messages of Things
Fall Apart.
Simon Gikandi suggests that the narrator's
and "Achebe's sympathies...are not with the heroic character (...Okonkwo),
but the witness or storyteller (Obierika) who refuses to endorse Okonkwo's
commitment to the central doctrines of his culture or the European
colonizer's arrogant use of power" (xiii). Do you agree?
Why or why not?
Bruce King comments in Introduction to Nigerian Literature:
"Achebe was the first Nigerian writer to successfully transmute the
conventions of the novel, a European art form, into African
literature. Achebe makes Western literary forms serve African
values. For example, King notes, in an Achebe novel "European
character study is subordinated to the portrayal of communal life;
European economy of form is replaced by an aesthetic appropriate to the
rhythms of traditional tribal life." Do you agree?
Read the quotation of literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin
below, and consider for what different purpose(s) Achebe has
"appropriated"* the white mans
education, language, and literary forms in order to make them his
"own."
"Language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone elses. It becomes "ones own" only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other peoples mouths, in other peoples contexts, serving other peoples intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own."--Mikhail Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel" in The Dialogic Imagination
Consider, too, critic Susan Gallagher's account below wherein Achebe discusses why he chose not to write or translate Things Fall Apart into "Union Igbo." What does Achebe use the "weapon" of the English language to accomplish in Things Fall Apart?
"In response to the now infamous declaration of Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o that African writers should write in African languages, Achebe commented [in a talk at West Chester Univ.]: 'The British did not push language into my face while I was growing up.' He chose to learn English and eventually to write in English as a means of 'infiltrating the ranks of the enemy and destroying him from within.'....'It doesn't matter what language you write in, as long as what you write is good,' Achebe stated....Yet Achebe fully recognizes that English is symbolically and politically connected with the despoiler of traditional culture with intolerance and bigotry. 'Language is a weapon, and we use it,' he argued. 'There's no point in fighting a language'" (qtd. in Gallagher ).
"When someone asked if Things Fall Apart had ever been translated into Igbo, Achebe's mother tongue, he shook his head and explained that Igbo exists in numerous dialects, differing from village to village. Formal, standardized, written Igbo -- like many other African languages -- came into being as a result of the Christian missionaries' desire to translate the Bible into indigenous tongues. Unfortunately, when the Christian Missionary Society tackled Igbo,...they brought together six Igbo converts, each from a different location, each speaking a different dialect." The resulting 'Union Igbo' bore little relationship to any of the six dialects--"a strange hodge-podge with no linguistic elegance, natural rhythm or oral authenticity"--yet the missionaries authorized it as the official written form of the Igbo languages. Achebe would not consent to have his novel translated into this "linguistic travesty" Union Igbo. "Consequently, one of the world's great novels, which has been translated into more than 30 languages, is unable to appear in the language of the very culture that it celebrates and mourns. This irony seems an apt symbol for the complex ways Western Christianity has both blessed and marred the cultures of Africa" (Gallagher ).
Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. 1988. New York : Anchor-Doubleday, 1990. [COCC Library: PR9387.9.A3 H6 1990]
Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." The Massachusetts Review 18.4 (Winter 1977): 782-94.
Rpt. Achebe, Chinua. Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays.1988. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1990. 1-20.
Rpt. Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criticism. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. 251-262.
Rpt. Novels for Students, Vol. 2. Rpt. Gale Literature Resource Center. 2003. Central Oregon Community College, Bend, OR. 23 May 2003.
Cora's Online Reserve (password restricted): http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci_articles/achebe/achebeonconrad.htmAchebe, Chinua. Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. London: Heinemann, 1975.
NOTE: Morning Yet on Creation Day is currently out of print, but five of its important essays are reprinted in Hopes and Impediments, which is still in print: “The Novelist as Teacher” (1965), “Language and the Destiny of Man” (1972) “Named for Victoria, Queen of England” (1973), “Thoughts on the African Novel” (1973), and “Colonialist Criticism” (1974).
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. [First published 1958.] Expanded edition with notes. 1996. London: Heinemann, 2000.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Eds. Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson. Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 1981.
Begam, Richard. "Achebe's Sense of an Ending: History and Tragedy in Things Fall Apart." Studies in the Novel 29.3(Fall 1997): 396(16pp). Rpt. Infotrac 2000 Expanded Academic ASAP: Article A20503127; and EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite (2004): Article No. 9712126215.
Brians, Paul (Dept. of English, Washington State University, Pullman, WA: brians@wsu.edu). "Things Fall Apart Study Guide." 2002. 11 August 2004 <http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/anglophone/achebe.html>.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. [First published: 1899, 3-part serial, Blackwood's Magazine; 1902, rev. Blackwood.]
NOTE: Conrad's Heart of Darkness, esteemed a classic of Western literature, is widely reprinted and frequently appears in anthologies of English and Western world literature. Cora Agatucci's study guide for Conrad's Heart of Darkness, referencing one anthology in which the novel appears, may be accessed at: http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/eng109/HeartSG.htm
Gallagher, Susan VanZanten. "Linguistic Power: Encounter with Chinua Achebe." The Christian Century 12 March 1997, 260(2pp). Infotrac 2000 Expanded Academic ASAP: Article A19241297.
Rowell, Charles H. "An Interview with Chinua Achebe." Callaloo 13.1 (1990).
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African
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