Things Fall Apart Novel Free Download

The novel follows the life of Okonkwo, an influential leader of the fictional Igbo ("Ibo" in the novel) clan of Umuofia, who is, among other things, a feared warrior and a local wrestling champion. The work is split into three parts, with the first describing his family, personal history, his violent exterior and tortured soul, and the customs and society of the Igbo. The second and third sections introduce the influence of European colonialism and Christian missionaries on Okonkwo, his family, and the wider Igbo community.

Shortly after Ikemefuna's death, things begin to go wrong for Okonkwo. He falls into a depression and has nightmares. During a gun salute at Ezeudu's funeral, Okonkwo's gun accidentally explodes and kills Ezeudu's son. He and his family are exiled to his motherland, the nearby village Mbanta, for seven years to appease the gods he has offended.

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At the same time, the thing that makes Things Fall Apart so much more interesting than that is that Achebe also producing a pointed critique of his own people, using Okonkwo as the figure for it: his insularity, his misogyny, and his quickness to resort to violence are the kinds of things that Achebe sees in his own time and place, and the tragedy of Okonkwo (the manner in which his world falls apart) is therefore as much a product of his own failings as it is something imposed on Africans from without. European colonialists are far from blameless, of course, but Achebe is careful to also think about what choices and attributes on the part of the Igbo people made it possible for those colonists to do the damage that they did.

Ask students to note places in the text that foreshadow this disruption, this replacement of one reality with another, as they read the novel. For example, Achebe's first reference to the character Ikemefuna as "ill-fated," at the end of Chapter 1, foreshadows the boy's death and Okonkwo's son Nwoye's troubled response in Chapter 7, which in turn foreshadows Nwoye's conversion to Christianity and joining the missionaries in Chapter 16. In Chapters 16 through 18, Achebe indicates the ways in which the Europeans separated Nigerians of different clans and ethnic backgrounds and turned them against their own people and villages through their appeal to the village outcasts and by "teaching young Christians to read and write." Another example of how Achebe foreshadows the alteration of indigenous society is the replacement by "the white man's court" of the clan's customs with their own laws, discussed in Chapter 20. Obierika explains: "He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."

Teens often feel like their lives are falling apart. Sometimes those feelings are overly dramatic. Sometimes those feelings are warranted. Regardless of perception, the connection to this story is real.

Among the greatest qualities of Things Fall Apart is the vigor of its revolt against the everyday amalgamations and condescension that treat Africa as an undifferentiated wasteland. Indeed, without ever stooping to polemic, Achebe sustains this quiet rebellion on nearly every page. One way is through an accumulation of anecdotal detail. In passage after passage he remarks on differences both subtle and dramatic between the customs and laws of various clans in his Igbo ethnic group, and less frequently with references to the world beyond. Briefly, sometimes, he even resorts to wicked humor, yet still manages to be pointed, as in a discussion of alien marriage rites. "But what is good in one place is bad in another place," a character remarks. "The world is large," replies Okonkwo. "I have even heard that in some tribes a man's children belong to his wife and her family." "That cannot be," comes the incredulous reply. "You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the children." Achebe's defiance of Western contempt is married to a subtle but unmistakable appeal to Africans not to submit to feelings of inferiority, and this achievement is all the more remarkable for the book's utter lack of mawkishness.One could fill a small library with books examining Africa's failings from the standpoint of economics, political science or even culture, which is usually taken to mean something that Africans lack. Things Fall Apart suggests a different answer. In a recent interview with the NPR program Studio 360, Achebe described the novel as "the story of colonial rule, one people imposing themselves on another people, who in this case happened to be the owners of the land. So you had a situation in which people come from somewhere else and say to the people they encounter, Everything you do is wrong. Your religion is wrong. You have no education. You have no culture. So it was that kind of situation, and it triggers by itself tremendous resistance." The complications from this wound and the manifestations of this struggle echo down through the entire fitful, shambolic and half-realized experience of a half-century of post-independence Africa, and as if by miracle, so much of the coming disaster is anticipated in Achebe's prose.The full weight of this tragedy dawns on the reader late in the book in a scene where Okonkwo and some of his fellow clansmen are summoned by the district commissioner in the nearest city after villagers have burned down the white man's church after its congregants profaned their clan's god. "An Umofia man does not refuse a call," Okonkwo says. "He may refuse to do what he is asked; he does not refuse to be asked." The men are persuaded that their grievances will be heard, only to be brought before a colonial tribunal, disarmed, humiliated and broken."We have brought a peaceful administration to you and your people so that you may be happy," the commissioner says, adding a moment later as he announces their punishment: "I have brought you here because you joined together to molest others, to burn people's houses and their place of worship. That must not happen in the dominion of our queen, the most powerful ruler in the world."For the self-righteous outsider, the entire encounter is about justice. For the natives, it is little more than a lesson in deceit and power. There are echoes here of the old lament often attributed to Native Americans: when the white man came, he had the Bible and we had the land. Now we have the Bible and he has the land.In the words of the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Nigeria's great musician of protest and one of Achebe's legion of spiritual descendants, these modern institutions the white man has brought, from the statehouse to the courthouse, all ostensibly in the name of progress, but really as a means of imposing and extending their control, were but new "instruments of magic," ill-fitting, alien ones that African leaders have eagerly appropriated nonetheless to "turn green into red" and "blue into white." Indeed, the apprenticeship of the arbitrary and unjust begins in the wake of the tribunal's judgment of Okonkwo, when the commissioner's African messengers go to his village to demand payment of the imposed fine, secretly fattening the penalty by fifty bags of cowry shells to pocket the difference themselves.What is most refreshing here is how deftly Achebe avoids the siren calls of neat moral conclusions that so often make literature of victimization unsatisfying. Tragedy and blame flow in two directions in his rare universe. "Does the white man understand our custom about land?" Okonkwo asks late in the novel. "How can he when he does not even speak our tongue?" comes the answer from a friend."But he says our customs are bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that hold us together and we have fallen apart." Submit a correctionReprints & permissions Howard W. FrenchHoward W. French is a professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. His latest book is Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War.

Underlying everything, there seems to be the idea that even if someone happens to be successful now, it is easy for them to fall. Honour and respect is important, but there appears to be an underlying feeling that it is important to obey the natural order of things. 006ab0faaa