Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe

I've been trying to gather my thoughts on this book. It was a difficult read, because it is about a culture seperated far in time and place from what I'm accustomed to. In his descriptions of daily village life, wife and child abuse is portrayed as absolutely normal, daily life is heavily laced with rituals, and I had to keep flipping to the back of the book where the glossary was to figure out what some of the words meant. The story itself was slightly dated, I believe it was supposed to be set somewhere in the Victorian period when white Christian missionaries first started swarming all over the "heathen" masses.

The protagonist Okonkwo, is a farmer who holds a prominent place in the village, having overcome his familial obstaces thru hard work and winning at the popular wrestling matches. The first half of the book establishs exactly how that happens and talks about normal day to day village life. The second half of the book then goes on to discuss how he loses his "power" by the accidental killing of another man. This occurs because he doesn't heed a warning not to do something, because he feels it wouldn't be manly to shirk his duties. Because it was an accident he is banished from his village for seven years. And it is during this time that the missionaries come to his village. When he finally returns home, it is to find that life is forever changed, and he ends up committing suicide.

The writing style was simple, yet descriptive. It gave me an insight into a simpler world that no longer exists, and I'm not sorry to have taken the journey. I've requested another of Achebe's books from the library, to see what his later, less popularized novels are like. My Good Reading Guide says they are darker, and more political, so there is a chance of dustbunnyhood.