Things Fall Apart

As the center of something is chipped away and destroyed, the thing, whether it be a living organism, an inanimate object or a society, is deprived of its structure and as a result, falls apart. Everything falls apart eventually, nothing lasts forever, but what would provoke Chinua Achebe to title his book just this? Things Fall Apart. In the story, not only the life of a man falls apart, but as it does, the society he inhabits and the religion he practices are ripped from their very origins as well.

With the intrusion of a second party into the simple existence of an African tribe, the center cannot hold and it falls apart. Okonkwo, the main character, however, had his life falling apart years before the more apparent disturbance. In fact, by the time anyone noticed the corrosion of his life, it was already in such a shambles that the life he had lived, no longer existed.

When the reader first meets Okonkwo, he is introduced as a strong, powerful man. This is only on the first few pages of the book that he is displayed in such a sense and by the middle of the first chapter, Chinua Achebe has revealed Okonkwo for what he really is; a nervous man afraid of failure and love. It is here that Okonkwo’s life begins to fall apart, as he runs through his days nervously, avoiding displays of affection, replacing human feelings of happiness, grief and love for that of anger and irritation. When he visibly messes up his life and inadvertently kills a man, the center of his fragile existence is chipped at a bit more. He is banished for seven years, to his motherland, and forced to start over.

During these seven years, he attempts to rebuild and forget but with every time he reconstructs a bit of his center, his core, something else happens, for instance his son converting to Christianity, to deconstruct that small bit of an anchor he had sought so hard to put back together.

As Okonkwo’s life deconstructs and falls to pieces, the tribal religion he so devoutly follows is being pushed and prodded to the brink of extinction as well. In the beginning of the book, the religion is strong and holds firm amongst the clan. It has it’s flaws, like all religions do, but for the most part it is a steady system of belief that all of Umuofia’s inhabitants look up to for guidance on how to live their lives. Enter the Christian missionaries, who view the religion as savage and wrong. Achieving converts through behind-the-back attacks at first and then threats, the clan becomes weakened and divided throughout the course of the book. The center of everything, the hub of the wheel, is nearly gone, rotted and chiseled away at, a threadlike rope for all those who depend on it to hold onto.

As Christianity began to divide the clan, the clan itself began to disintegrate. In the beginning, it was just as firm and strong as the religion. It had rules and government, with a fairly defined social class. The culture of the people was highly developed and for the most part, they lived a happy, simple existence. When the Christians came and the converts left the clan’s religion, the rest of the leftover clan was faced with a hard reality. They could not kill the Christians at this point because so many were of their own kin and that was against the rules of their society and religion. As the thread that still held their lives together was chipped at more, the tension grew.

They were like an old house, on the edge of destruction, teetering on the edge of a cliff, just waiting to fall down. And fall they did, because on the day that Okonkwo killed first a messenger, and then himself, total, if only temporary, anarchy befell the clan. Instead of rushing to the aid of one of their leaders, the men of the clan descended into chaos and turmoil, the center was finally gone and things had fallen apart.

Within the plot of Things Fall Apart, many things do indeed fall apart. There are the major things - a society, a man’s life, a religion -and the minor things. Today, the phrase "United we stand, divided we fall", is popular on coins and money. It’s not something that seems to mean much to the naked eye, as it’s seen almost every day, almost every time we look in our wallets. However, taking a minute to analyze the saying, and the how relevant it is to the phrase Things Fall Apart appears. It says to us to not divide ourselves, let we find ourselves on the ground in pieces.

Everything - life, objects, society, is delicate and when the center is gone, they fall apart.