UNIVERSALITY OF “THINGS FALL APART”
‘Art for art’s sake is just another piece of deodorised dog-shit’
- Chinua Achebe
Things fall apart maps the crumbling down of a flourishing society under the weight of ‘white men carrying their burden’. Achebe, who calls himself an ‘ancestor worshipper,’ tries to revive the ancient pride of the African culture by re-telling/living the past. It is his way of decolonizing the African mind, which has been carrying on with the extreme inferiority complex bred in them through the centuries of colonial oppression.
In ‘Novelist as Teacher’ Achebe sates that one of the primary purpose of his novel is to educate his reader about eh glory of their past, pre-colonial life. It is by this way that the centuries of historical distortion, which were deliberately introduced by the European masters into the history and culture of Africa in order to create an induced inferiority complex among the natives, can be set straight. The colonial masters kept on repeating that Africa had no history, no culture, no civilization and justified their colonization in the name of civilizing them. It is almost the universal narrative of colonialism in the all the parts of the once colonized world. Their carried on the plundering and exploitation of the colonized natives and called it the ‘white man’s burden’. Obviously, this assertion that Africa had no culture, no civilization or no past is a white lie and it was the part of the strategy to perpetuate their hold on the mind of the colonized people. In this kind of historical background, things fall apart is the narrative of a specific society- the Ibo people- with the sure aim of restoring their self-confidence and self-pride. Using a more appropriate term, it is aimed at ‘decolonizing’ the minds.
Nevertheless, things fall apart is more than a story of an individual, a society, a tribe or any specific geographical location. It can be seen as the story of all those individuals, societies or civilizations which go rigid in their outlook with the passage of time and fail to recognize the changing circumstances and could not come to terms with them. This, in turn, puts them out of tune with the contemporary reality and pulls them to their tragic catastrophes. This is true not only of Okonkwo and of the Ibo society of the late 19th century but also of any other society at any other time. We can take the example of various ancient civilizations like the Indian, Chinese, Greek and Egyptian civilizations. It is the story of human predicament and is universal in character. The selection of the title itself suggests the universal outlook of Achebe, the author. The title is taken from a poem- the second coming- by the famous Irish poet W.B. Yeats that talks about the cyclic movement of human history in terms of order and anarchy. Although the novel revolves around the story of a specific African tribe, its cosmic view encompasses all the human societies. Moreover, the political aim Achebe intends to achieve with this novel is also far reaching and almost universally acknowledged.
(by suman kumar jha)
