Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
by Chinua Achebe
Umuofia is a village in Africa where Okonkwo lives with his three wives and several children. He is a strong man who is respected in the community. He has strong traditional beliefs and has firm convictions about what constitutes being a man and doing what a man would do. He frowns on any action he deems to be feminine when performed by another man.
Okonkwo works hard to raise his sons to be like him and takes in a boy from another village as a trophy prize from a conflict they had, and admires the boy, bringing him up like his own son. Okonkwo participates in all of the rituals of his village and holds fast to their ways.
But Okonkwo also makes mistakes and he takes the consequences of those mistakes seriously, maintaining all of the customs that are expected of him.
When a band of missionaries sets up residence in his and surrounding villages, Okonkwo has to deal with these strangers and the new religion they bring to his people. His own son becomes a convert and Okonkwo banishes him from the family. A series of events erupts which force Okonkwo to make the ultimate sacrifice. Though he sees what is going to become of his village he can ultimately do nothing to stop it, and things do fall apart for him. His life of living rightly unravels.
This was a good book. Not exactly to my taste, but I loved reading from a different cultural point of view. I can imagine the frustration Okonkwo felt having strangers come into his home and disrupt his way of life, forcing their beliefs and their government onto him. This story certainly has relevance to our current times. I give Things Fall Apart 4 stars. The story was good, with a strong buildup of tension with all of the ways Okonkwo's ideas being challenged. He wasn't perfect, but he had good intentions. The setting was vivid, but became repetitive for me. Otherwise, an enjoyable, and poignant, read.
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