loosed' in a Nigerian village by European colonizers, drowning the ceremonies of the indigenous society. The novel is set in the fictional village of Umuofia during the late nineteenth century, before the arrival of Europeans, and in the ensuing period of British imperial 'pacification' of southeast Nigeria from
1900 to 1920, including the Ahiara massacre of 1905 (fictionalized in chapter 15 as the Abame incident) and the destruction of Igbo opposition groups by the Bende- Onitsha Hinterland Expedition. The British asserted colonial authority over the Igbo through a combination of economic trade, missionary religion, and political control, and Achebe represents this process of colonization from the vantage point of villagers who are puzzled, intrigued, co- opted, enraged, divided against themselves, or killed. The imperial incursion seems all the more bewildering and violent because the novel has immersed the reader in this village society's finely calibrated cultural practices in religion and government, athletics and storytelling, agriculture and the family. Helping to rebut Western preconceptions about African primitivism, this rich portrait of a culture also advances Achebe's ambition to help his 'society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement' produced by the distortions of colonialism. He has said he wants his novels to teach his African 'readers that their past?with all its imperfections?was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them.' But while Things Fall Apart lays considerable blame for the destruction of Igbo village society at the door of the whites, Achebe carefully avoids rosily idealizing the precolonial Igbo world, and he has frankly acknowledged that 'internal problems' also made this African society vulnerable. Things Fall Apart is at once Okonkwo's tragedy and that of a complex tribal society, whose members speak a resonantly proverbial language that operates in the book as an image of all the beautiful and traditional structures transformed irrevocably by colonialism.
PRONOUNCING GLOSSARY
The following list uses common English syllables and stress accents to provide rough equivalents of selected words. Most of the names in Things Fall Apart are pronounced basically as they would be in English (for example, Okonkwo as oh-kon'-kwo), except that Igbo (like other African languages and Chinese) is a tonal language and therefore uses high or low tones for
individual syllables. Chielo: chee'-ay-loh Ikemefuna: ee-kay-may'-foo-na egwugu: eg-woog'-woo mbari: mbah'-ree Erulu: air-oo'-loo Ndulue: in'-doo-loo'-eh Ezeani: ez-ah'-nee Nwakibie: nwa'-kee-ee'-bee-yay Ezeugo: e'- zoo-goh Nwayieke: nwah'-ee-eh'-kay Idemili: ee-day-mee'-lee Umuofia: oo'-moo-off -yah Igbo: ee'-boh
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2624 / CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
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.
W. B. Yeats: 'The Second Coming1 Part One
CHAPTER ONE
Okonkwo1 was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino.2 He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.
The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end Okonkwo threw the Cat.
That was many years ago, twenty years or more, and during this time Okonkwo's fame had grown like a bush-fire in the harmattan.3 He was tall and huge, and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look. He breathed heavily, and it was said that, when he slept, his wives and children in their out-houses could hear him breathe. When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had had no patience with his father.
Unoka,4 for that was his father's name, had died ten years ago. In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow. If any money came his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm-wine, called round his neighbours and made merry. He always said that whenever he saw a dead man's mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one's lifetime. Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbour some money, from a few cowries5 to quite substantial amounts.
He was tall but very thin and had a slight stoop. He wore a haggard and mournful look except when he was drinking or playing on his flute. He was
1. Man [ofeo] born on Nkwo Day; the name also 4. Home is supreme. suggests stubborn male pride. 5. Glossy half-inch-long tan-and-white shells, col2. Four settlements. Umuofia means 'children of lected in strings and used as money. A bag of the forest' (literal trans.); but ofia ('forest') also twenty-four thousand cowries weighed about sixty means 'bush,' or land untouched by European pounds and, at the time of the story, was worth influence. approximately ..1 British. 3. A dusty wind from the Sahara.
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THINGS FALL APART, PART 1 / 2625
very good on his flute, and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace. Unoka would play with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace. Sometimes another village would ask Unoka's band and their dancing egxvugwu6 to come and stay with them and teach them their tunes. They would go to such hosts for as long as three or four markets,7 making music and feasting. Unoka loved the good fare and the good fellowship, and he loved this season of the year, when the rains had stopped and the sun rose every morning with dazzling beauty. And it was not too hot either, because the cold and dry harmattan wind was blowing down from the north. Some years the harmattan was very severe and a dense haze hung on the atmosphere. Old men and children would then sit round log fires, warming their bodies. Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites8 that returned with the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them. He would remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered around looking for a kite sailing leisurely against the blue sky. As soon as he found one he would sing with his whole being, welcoming it back from its long, long journey, and asking it if it had brought home any lengths of cloth.
That was years ago, when he was young. Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure. He was poor and his wife and
