Father and Fatherland in Things Fall Apart

This paper assumes that Things Fall Apart, despite its three part division by Achebe, tells us two stories: one, the tragedy of an individual who breaks apart owing to forces from both within and without, a tragedy of character and a tragedy of fate at the same time; and the other, the story of a person who is the representative of his people whose death marks the inevitable ending of an era. While it is true that both these stories are closely and inextricably woven together, there is a moment of recognition at the end of chapter 17 which is taken here to be the boundary between the two stories. After this, Okonkwo ceases to think about his personal problems and the emphasis is shifted to his consciousness as the member of a threatened race. While his attitude to his father makes a rent in his personal life, his attachment to his fatherland makes him an authentic hero of the Ibo people. What is proposed here is to reveal the subtleties and nuances of this process of gradual evolution through a close study of Achebe’s text.

The ending of Things Fall Apart is superb in its ironic simplicity. When the District Commissioner comes to arrest Okonkwo, Obierika leads him to the small bush behind Okonkwo’s compound to show the dangling body of his friend, and tells him: “ That was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be buried like a dog” (178-9). This seems to be the ultimate judgment on Okonkwo. But its full effect is achieved only when it is juxtaposed with the thoughts of the Commissioner with which the novel ends. The whole incident is just material for the book he is planning to write.

The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. (179)

For the Commissioner, it is just something ‘interesting’ to read; the shift from ‘chapter’ to ‘paragraph’ underlines the shallowness and transitoriness of even that interest. All the pain and anguish of the human story is firmly excluded through ‘cutting out details’. His choice of the title, ‘after much thought’, is a heavily ironic comment on the kind of understanding a stranger can bring upon his subject. In short, the story which the Commissioner is going to write is a stringent parody of the West-oriented discourses of colonialism.

Okonkwo’s character is so subtly poised between binary opposites that the resultant figure is richly complex. The language plays a dual role here: while building up the heroic image of the protagonist on the solid foundation of his achievements, there is a constant attempt to subvert the meanings and make us suspicious of the solidity of the foundation. He was living in an age and place where the civic virtues of loyalty, courage and strength were the criteria of greatness. “ Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered” (5). He had established his reputation by throwing the great wrestler, Amalinze the Cat. He was ‘tall and huge’, but his steps were light and he ‘seemed to walk on springs’ (1). He had a slight stammer when he was angry. He had no patience with unsuccessful men. “ He had had no patience with his father”(2). The real seed of his undoing arises from this particular fact. All his attempts to prove his masculine prowess stem from this deep-rooted fear of any possible resemblance to be discovered between him and his father. A huge edifice built on repressed fear has to crumble one day, and the fate of Okonkwo is that of one who is foredoomed to failure.

The novel begins with a striking contrast between the father and the son. Unoka was a lazy spendthrift, tall but thin, whereas Okonkwo was rich, strong and hard working. In short, the father was a failure, and the son was a success. Here one must pause for a while and take a closer look at the way Achebe develops the picture of Unoka. He too has his qualities. He was very good on his flute; he enjoyed good food and happy times. But he was a debtor, he was a coward and he did not like wars. Achebe’s presentation of him as a failure is interesting. He always ‘succeeded’ in borrowing money and in ‘piling up’ his debts (3). Even though the tone is obviously ironic, there is an implicit suggestion of something positive. He too could be, in some sense, treated as a ‘success’ if the values of the society in which he was living had been different. His taste for good food and music, his aversion towards war, and his gentle nature could have made him a sophisticated art lover and a liberal humanist under different circumstances. He is, in many ways, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Falstaff, an ardent lover of the good things of life, a coward at warfront, a ‘comic’ hero who asserts the values of life as opposed to the ‘tragic’ heroes who affirm those of death. Unoka is also fated to be rejected by his Hal. Prince Hal, as he becomes the king, though he is said to embody Shakespeare’s ideal of kingship, elicits a discordant emotional response from the audience when he rejects Falstaff. It is often observed that Hal lacks the human capacity for affection. Similarly, in Okonkwo’s rejection of his father, he has thrown away the baby along with the bath water. In his enthusiasm to acquire positive manly qualities, he has failed to recognize the positive aspects of his father’s personality. The gap between gentleness and weakness is very thin. Okonkwo’s failure is that, in rejecting the idle and irresponsible coward of a father, he has also rejected the values of affection, fairness and discretion. This can also explain why he rules his family with a heavy hand.

Having embarked on the Shakespeare analogy to emphasize the positive qualities of Unoka, it will be tempting to venture further into Henry IV to find a counterpart for Okonkwo. Okonkwo’s situation is somewhat like that of Hotspur. Like Hotspur, Okonkwo has also made his reputation through heroic deeds. Neither can spare any time for women and for the softness of love. Even when they feel affection, they do not show it openly. Theirs is the world of action, and the language that is most congenial for them is that of fists. Just as Hotspur is often shown as basking in imagined glory, Okonkwo also spends much of his time in Mbanta, planning his glorious return to Umuofia. When Unoka tells Okonkwo: “ A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone” (21), it is roughly the reverse counterpart of Hotspur’s dreams of greater glory when he wins the war alone: “ It lends a lustre and more great opinion, / A larger dare to our great enterprise, / Than if the Earl were here” (Henry IV, Part I, IV, 1). One shall not push the analogy too far, but enough has been said to make it clear that the figure of Hotspur is lurking behind Achebe’s conception of Okonkwo.

Okonkwo’s final act of suicide is a failure and a victory at the same time. It is a failure, because he has realized the impossibility of success, that his own people will not stand by him and go to war in order to vindicate their honour. The fear of failure and the consequent despair he has been keeping at bay for a long time begin to possess him, and he gives up. It is also a victory, because he is an extraordinary person who refuses to yield to the pressures of the changing times, a unique person who refuses to make the inevitable compromise and surrender, and when his own honour becomes incompatible with survival, he puts an end to his life in a heroic way. Both readings are made equally possible by Achebe’s careful balancing of opposing qualities.

There is certainly one sense in which Okonkwo becomes a failure. Despite his best efforts to be as different as possible from his father, he ends up, much like his father, a failure, though of a different kind, and his act of suicide deprives him of the last rites and a proper burial. Like his father, he too ends up in the Evil Forest. One can almost feel the heavy hand of fate tampering with his life. It is an accident which causes him to go on a seven years’ exile to his mother’s land. Even though it is not luck which brings him his achievements, it is certainly a piece of bad luck which shatters the equilibrium of his settled existence in Umuofia. His tragedy, thus viewed, is the tragedy of fate.

But that is not the whole story. Even though there is a sinister aura of fate presiding over Okonkwo’s life, Achebe makes it clear that much of the responsibility for his hero’s failure lies in his own mental build-up. His hamartia, it seems, is a peculiar kind of partial vision with which he approaches life, a vision that cannot or will not recognize or include certain aspects of human existence. It arises from his attitude to his father. That there is something lacking in it is first suggested through the contrast with his father, and becomes explicit with the first mention of the ‘ill-fated lad’ called Ikemefuna (6). The boy is ‘ill-fated’ in the obvious sense of being not responsible for nor deserving the punishment of death meted out to him. In addition to that, he is also the bringer of ill-fate on Okonkwo in an oblique way. Okonkwo’s first and greatest sin is the role he plays in the murder of this innocent boy. It will not be an exaggeration to suggest that it is this blatant violation of an important human value that paves the way to Okonkwo’s destruction.

Ikemefuna was punished because his father had murdered a girl from Umuofia. It might even be justice to demand instead the life of the murderer’s son. In executing the boy, the community of Umuofia was following their tradition of demanding ‘an eye for an eye’. But when Okonkwo claimed that he took part in it out of loyalty to the age-old tradition of Umuofia, he was certainly deluding himself. In simple terms, he had no right to tamper with the boy’s fate. Okonkwo owed his success in life and status in society to the Ibo tradition where the failure of the father did not pose any disadvantage to the son. Then how could he permit the sins of the father to visit Ikemefuna? By taking part in his execution, he has foregone the claim to be judged solely according to his own merits. Further, the reason he gives for doing what he did was another piece of self-deception. He did it out of a weakness, that is, the fear of being thought a coward, an agbala, a woman, like his father. Above all, the boy had called him father, and what he did was, in effect, tantamount to killing his own son. Thus we can trace a kind of justice working itself out when he loses his son Nwoye to Christianity, for in a system where rewards and punishments depend on the nature of the action, it can be seen as the delayed but deserving punishment for Okonkwo. Using the same logic, it can also be argued that the real reason for his exile was the sin he committed against Ikemefuna even though the immediate reason was the accidental killing of a boy.

It is true that Okonkwo dominated his three wives and eight children but it is equally true that he was himself dominated, as mentioned earlier, by a terrible fear, ‘the fear of failure and of weakness’, a fear which lay within himself: “ It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (10). So he hated everything his father loved. “ One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness” (11). As a result, even though he achieved material success through hard work, he had, without his knowing it, left a lacuna at the very core of his being. Apart from a somewhat comradely relationship with the other members of his own sex, he never learnt how to relate himself meaningfully to other human beings, especially women. He gives elaborate care and attention to his crops but he does not even suspect that human beings too need loving care. The tragic thing is that he has never experienced a meaningful relationship with another person, and the worst of it is that he could not even imagine that such things did exist. For example, look at his reaction to the strange story about the death of Ogbuefi Ndulue and his wife. The husband died in the morning and the wife followed suit the same day.

‘It was always said that Ndulue and Ozoemena had one mind,’ said Obierika. ‘I remember when I was a young boy there was a song about them. He could not do anything without telling her.’

‘I did not know that,’ said Okonkwo. ‘ I thought he was a strong man in his youth.’

‘ He was indeed,’ said Ofoedu.

Okonkwo shook his head doubtfully.

‘He led Umuofia to war in those days,’ said Obierika. (60)

Perhaps this passage can be seen as an epiphany which reveals to the reader how certain combinations of qualities have become mutually incompatible in Okonkwo’s consciousness.

Okonkwo’s failure as a human being is Achebe’s triumph as a novelist, and it is sufficient testimony for his effective art of characterization. Okonkwo is definitely not a round character; he remains essentially the same throughout the novel. His impatience, his aggressiveness, and his unwillingness to face things squarely follow him to his grave, or to be more precise, to his very end, for he will have no grave. Even though the readers learn more and more about his character, he does not seem to be learning anything at all from life. For example, whenever his father, or any father for that matter is mentioned, he becomes uneasy and will push the thought into the back of his mind. When he notices that Nwoye is rather soft, not manly enough, he refuses to accept the possibility that this trait in his son may have been inherited from his father and through his own self. When he exclaims with disbelief that among certain tribes a child belongs to the mother and not to the father, we become aware of the rigidity of his convictions. He will never learn to be flexible, and so he remains the same. The opportunity to learn comes in the second part of the novel when he stays in his mother’s land. Uchendu, the oldest surviving member of his mother’s family, is a wise man and he perceives the cause behind Okonkwo’s despair. He explains to Okonkwo that even though a man belongs to his fatherland and not to his motherland, they say ‘Nneka” – “Mother is Supreme” – because:

It’s true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother’s hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say that mother is supreme. (116-17)

But it is doubtful whether Okonkwo has learnt anything at all from this speech. When the next crisis occurs in his life, that is, when Nwoye leaves his family and joins the church, Okonkwo is furious. He wonders how he could have begotten such a degenerate and effeminate son. For a while, he toys with the idea that Nwoye is perhaps not his son. “ But Nwoye resembled his grandfather, Unoka, who was Okonkwo’s father. He pushed the thought out of his mind” (133). And at last, he gives up his son and accepts the situation. Chapter 17 ends like this:

He sighed heavily, and as if in sympathy the smoldering fog also sighed. And immediately Okonkwo’s eyes were opened and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living fire begets cold, impotent ash. He sighed again, deeply. (134)

Between the two sighs, one heavy and the other deep, we are told that he understood the whole thing clearly. It is a movement from the ‘heaviness’ of despair to a kind of ‘deep’ understanding. And what he has understood is: ‘Living fire begets cold, impotent ash’. He is ‘living fire’ and then there is no wonder that his son is impotent. This is the fatalistic acceptance of his unlucky lot in life as a matter of course, like the laws of nature. But was this all that Uchendu tried to teach him? And more importantly, how deep is his new understanding? He continues to grind his teeth in disgust; he is as violent and impatient as he has always been.

But it is extremely important to note here that a radical change has occurred in his attitude. The personal sense of his misfortune has given way to a general sense of dejection, much greater and wider than the personal one and closely associated with the future of his clan. Part II ends with a thanksgiving speech by one of the oldest members of the clan wherein he says: “But I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to speak with one voice” (146). Obierika discerns the situation very clearly, for he says that the white man has ‘put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart’ (152). And as for Okonkwo: “Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women” (157). Hereafter, the story of Okonkwo assumes a truly tragic stature. What follows is the heroic story of a truly great individual waging a relentless and tragic battle against the forces of anarchy. It is a losing battle, but nonetheless heroic, and his inevitable tragic end lifts him into the rank of a national hero of the Ibo people.

The artistic greatness of Things Fall Apart resides in its ability to combine the universal with the regional, the general with the particular, and hence it exerts an influence on people like us in India, though years and miles separate us from the world of Achebe.

NOTE:

The page numbers refer to the Everyman’s Library edition of 1992.