Book #81

Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe

This one was homework, in a way; I'm teaching Senior English for the first time, and since it is supposed to encapsulate World Lit and British Lit -- y'know, pretty much everything that's been written, anywhere, ever -- one of the required novels is Chinua Achebe's book about Africa, which I've never read, even though it was recommended to me several years ago -- umm, I think by a professor at SJSU, but it might have been before that. It also might have come from the book room at San Pasqual, since this was part of the canon there, too.

I won't be teaching this book. Not because it was bad; it wasn't. Achebe is a good writer, and managed to sweep me up into the story; considering the book's beginning, that's pretty impressive. Because apart from some generally interesting parts, the first part of the book is largely given over to yams. A lot of yams. Because not only are yams the staple of the Ibo tribe's diet -- the pro-colonialization Ibo being the focus of the novel -- but also the general determinant of wealth and success, and also manliness: women grow the other foods, like cassava and melons and leafy greens. Yams are a man's crop. And the main character, Okonkwo, is a man's man -- so he grows him a lotta yams. And I didn't particularly care about the world of yams, and I know my students wouldn't, either. Not even the farmers.

No, the reason I won't be teaching this book is because it is, first of all, very clearly against colonialism, particularly the invasion of Africa by Christian missionaries, and secondly, because it is damned depressing. Okonkwo's clan is eventually torn apart not by their own, erm, savage uncivilized behavior, but by the assault on their culture by white men, led by Christians. They have no particular problems with their world when it is run by their ancestral traditional rules, even the weird ones, like the need to mutilate the body of an infant who dies young -- because it may be an evil spirit who will continue to usurp the children of a certain woman, ensuring that child after child will die in infancy, and mutilating the body of one of its changeling victims may convince it to leave the woman alone -- or the abandonment of twins, another evil sign, or the rather silly-seeming superstitions concerning their gods. All of that stuff, though it seems ridiculous to modern ears, it works for the Ibo. Their wars are considered particularly brutal when twelve men are killed on one side, and only two on the other. When Okonkwo accidentally kills a man, he is exiled for seven years, and it would have been forever if he had done it one purpose, because the killing of a clansman is the ultimate crime. But he doesn't give up hope: he goes voluntarily into exile, takes care of his family, lasts out the seven years, and then triumphantly moves back to his home -- only to find that it has changed, because the white men have built a church.

Suffice it to say that the Christians eventually win, and Okonkwo, and the Ibo, lose. And if I read this with my class, I feel quite sure that they would see the Africans as simply weird beyond all comprehension or sympathy, and they'd probably be on the side of the exploiters, the invaders, the Christians. And since I have vocal, devout Christian students, I wouldn't be able to argue the other side -- which is most definitely the side I'm on. So, forget it. I'm glad I read it, because it helped answer some things I've never really understood about the ability of Christianity to conquer so many other cultures, but I won't be teaching it.