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Why Things Fell Apart

Societies do not collapse on their own; there must be outside pressures as well as internal conflict before they collapse. Umofian society, the village in Things Fall Apart, is undone from within first, and then collapses under forces from without. It was totally disrupted by the coming of the European government, Christian missionaries, and so on. That was not a temporary disturbance; it was a once and for all alteration of their society.

The order is disrupted, however, with the appearance of the white man in Africa and with the introduction of his religion. The conflict of the novel, vested in Okonkwo, derives from the series of crushing blows which are leveled at traditional values by an alien and more powerful culture causing, in the end, the traditional society to fall apart. Okonkwo is unable to adapt to the changes that accompany colonialism. In the end, in frustration, he kills an African employed by the British, and then commits suicide, a sin against the tradition to which he had long clung.

Okonkwo is a visual representation of the standards of success in Ibo life. He is prosperous, he is one of the egwugwus; no one compared him to his weak father; he has everything he wants at first. But things start to change when Ikemefuma was killed. Up until that point, following the traditions of his society has only improved Okonkwo’s situation. When the choice comes to kill Ikemefuma, the shortcomings in tradition start coming through.

Okonkwo can be seen as testing the limits of his society’s integrity and exposing its real failure to provide for humane and compassionate feelings. He adheres so strictly to the rules that his example points out to others the flaws in the system. If the system was complete, then Okonkwo’s stubborn, inflexible observation of the rules would not have led to his downfall. Okonkwo’s death was inevitable because through his inflexibility he was the clog in the wheel of progress. If the novel is first a story of the...