Title: Things Fall Apart Author: Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a "strong man" of an Ibo village in Nigeria.  The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world.  The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries.

These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history and the mysterious compulsion of the soul.

Okonkwo 'was tall and huge and his bushy eyebrows and wide nose gave him a very severe look... he had no patience with unsuccessful men.'

Unoka, his father, was an unsuccessful man and growing up under his father's failures pushed Okonkwo to become an independently wealthy and powerful man in his community.  He worked hard and expected his family to follow his lead.  Through his strength of will and determination he quickly became someone respected by the clan.  He was given a boy from another tribe who ended up quite dear to him, not that he could ever admit it.

One day, another older, more respected man came to visit.

"Do not bear a hand in his death," the man warned.

Okonkwo is surprised and quickly learns that for some reason, after three years, the Oracle, a woman of vision and prophesy, has decided the boy should die.  The old man advises Okonkwo to stay home that day.  Unable to show even any weakness Okonkwo feels it's his duty to go to the killing ceremony of the boy who calls him 'father.'  Once there, the boy runs to him in fear, for comfort, but Okonkwo struck him down with his very own machete.

"What you have done will not please the Earth," the old man warned when he learns of Okonkwo's actions.

"The Earth cannot punish me for obeying it's messenger," Okonkwo argued, speaking of the Oracle.

But the death of the boy weighed heavily on his mind and his heart.

It isn't long before he learned that his second wife's only child was dying.  It was suspected by many that the girl was an 'ogbanje, one of the wicked children who, when they died, entered their mother's wombs to be born again.'  His second wife bore ten children, all but one had died before their third birthday.  Finally, Okonkwo called on a medicine man skilled with the ogbanje spirits.  But the girl remained sickly, albeit, alive.  The had even found her token that tied the evil spirit to it's malicious cycle and destroyed it.  Still, the child fell ill.  Okonkwo felt he had no choice but to interfere with the mother as she cared for her sick child.  He told her how to make a potion and together they prayed it would work.  He would never say it out loud, but the girl was secretly his favourite child.

It wasn't long before the priestess to the Oracle came, half possessed with prophesy calling for the sick girl.  Okonkwo and his wife strive to come up with excuses to why she can't come out.  Shrieking with madness the priestess insists and the girl is handed over.  His wife tried to follow the woman who has her child, terrified as to why she'd been summoned.  The family had already lost one child to her whims, they couldn't bear one more.  She follows the priestess all night only to find the woman placing the sleeping child back in her bed at early morning light.

Pleased that his daughter was safe but still mourning the loss of the boy, Okonkwo was not able to continue living his peaceful, prosperous life in the village for much longer. During a burial ceremony for an elder Okonkwo accidentally kills the dead man's youngest son.  It is forbidden to kill a fellow clansman and the offence results in the expulsion of Okonkwo and his family for seven years.  They must seek refuge in his mother's land among his mother's people.  They are warmly welcomed by his mother's people, but the exile has devastated the family.  They live their lives as best they can while Okonkwo strives to recreate his former glory.  He advises his daughters not to marry into this more unfamiliar tribe.

 'With two beautiful, grown up daughters his return [home] would attract considerable attention.'

It's during this time that the missionaries came to the community proclaiming in the name of the one true God and his son, Jesu Kristi.  Okonkwo scoff's at the message, convinced the white missionary is mad.

'But there was one  young lad who had been captivated... Okonkwo's first son... [though] he dared not go too near the missionaries for fear of his father.'

But the lure of the new religion was too strong and the boy chose to forsake his family for the new way.  

Okonkwo was eventually able to move home, though he finds his tribe changed.  The new religion had flourished and had attracted many different faces to the church.

His world, irrevocably changed, left Okonkwo in a state of disbelief.  People were being indoctrinated into thinking their ways, the ways of their fathers, were bad, evil, something to disown.  Okonkwo tries to rally the tribe against the missionaries, but not everyone was as bothered by the changes as he was.  His son chose to go to a new training school for teachers.  This news makes Okonkwo furious.

'Okonkwo was deeply grieved... He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart.'

The change that descended on him proved too much for him to bear as he clings, desperately, to the old, familiar ways.

Things Fall Apart is a rare glimpse into tribal African life; it's rules and complexities laid glaringly bare.  It shows you a world both before and after the reign of Empires showing what it was like to have your world changed overnight by forces directed at you from across strange seas.

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