NEW MAN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDIES (ISSN: 2348-1390)
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CLASH OF CULTURES IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S
THINGS FALL APART
PRASHANT V. TAKEY
M. PHIL. ENGLISH
PEOPLE‟S COLLEGE, NANDED.
Introduction:
European Imperialists have followed a set pattern to occupy the African, Asian and other
colonies. It was never a direct imposition of power. Their policy was to enter the colony as
tradesmen, learn about the history, religion, and social conditions prevailing in that country.
Then they introduced Christianity through missionaries. They assumed European culture,
philosophy, religion, scientific progress administration and overall European civilization at the
peak point of development. English education was introduced to show all this European wealth
to the people of that country. But this overtly evangelical act had a covert purpose of training
some people to work for them. Next step was to tempt people with various temptations and
convert them to their opinion or even to their religion. Once they have added a considerable
number of converts they started exercising power over them, and slowly and steadily
administering them. Once that amount of strength have been gained way was open for
exploitation of that country by imposing heavy taxes, usurping natural resources, enslaving
people etc. This pattern could be seen in Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart. Abiola Irele aptly
comments on the use of cultural clash by Achebe in his debut novel as: The immediate subject of
Chinua Achebe‟s novels is the tragic consequences of the African encounter with the Europe…..
His novels deal with the social and psychological conflicts created by the incursions of the white
man and his culture into the hitherto self-contained world of African society and the disarray in
the African consciousness that has followed. (10)
Clash of Cultures:
In Things Fall Apart Achebe vividly portrays this cultural politics and its ramifications. The
novel is divided into three parts, in the first part the richness of the traditional Igbo culture is
delineated in all its aspects. It is done through the story of Okonkwo, the protagonist and the
heroic leader of the warlike Umuofia clan. Yet what happens to Okonkwo is not of central
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importance, rather it is what happens to the clan. This clan consists of nine villages of which
Umuofia was the chief one. In first part there are vivid descriptions of the gods and oracles,
myths, beliefs, superstitions, laws and administration, festivities of the clan. It also tells the story
of Okonkwo‟s rise in the clan from the son of a failure to one of the lords of the clan. Till the end
of the first part in chapter thirteen we witness the glory of the Igbo world which was untouched
of any external influence. Okonkwo unintentionally kills a kinsman and is banished from his clan
in keeping with the law of the land. With this we come to second part and Okonkwo to the
village of Mbanta, his motherland. The second and third part shows the intrusion of the white
men into Igbo land and its ramifications. The spelling and meaning of the word Igbo/Ibo must be
understood to avoid miss-interpretation. The Anglicans spell it as „Ibo‟ and the natives or
Africans spell it as Igbo. According to Victor C Uchendu the word Igbo is used in three senses:
“Igbo territory, domestic speakers of the language and the language spoken by them.”(3) In the
present study it is spelled as „Igbo‟ except in citations from Achebe where it is spelled as „Ibo‟.
White men entered into the closed communal Igbo world sporadically. We hear the stories of
white men that have arrived in distant part of the Igbo land. Obierika tells the story of white
men‟s menace in the Abame market. A white man had arrived in Abame with his iron-horse
(bicycle). At first the people of Abame wondered to see this strange looking white man, they
suspected was he a man at all? They also feared his iron-horse so they tied it to a tree and killed
that man. After a few days, some white people accompanied by Igbo men from other clans
retaliated by shooting freely in the populated market of Abame. In his second visit to Okonkwo,
Obierika tells that the missionaries had come to Umuofia and they have built a Church there.
Though the Umuofians were not happy with what was happening they permitted white men to
live there. The fear of Abame massacre and their chauvinistic belief in Igbo gods who will
potentially destroy the strangers prevented them from opposing the intruders. In Mbanta also a
missionary named Mr. Kaiga succeeded in acquiring a piece of land to build a church. The
missionaries won converts these converts were mostly the victims of harsh Igbo customs. In the
beginning the white men did not show extra zeal or excess of enthusiasm to occupy land. They
march slowly and steadily learning about these people and their customs, showing themselves as
philanthropic men who have come there for the welfare of the natives. To unravel this politics
the cultural clash approach is necessary in postcolonial reading of Achebe‟s fiction. As Anyadike
Chima and Ayoola Kehide observe : Fifty years of reading and writing about Things Fall Apart
have yielded several approaches to the novel. There is the culture clash approach which
emphasizes how a more technologically advanced invaded and exploited a weaker one under all
manners of false pretences:..
The missionary in Umuofia Mr. Brown learned a great deal about the clan through his meetings
with a village elder Akunna. This knowledge would be useful for dealing with the Igbo. The
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narrator expresses this as: In this way Mr. Brown learnt a good deal about the religion of the clan
and he came to the conclusion that a frontal attack on it would not succeed. And so he built a
school and a little hospital in Umuofia. He went from family to family egging people to sent their
children to his school. But at first they only sent their slaves or sometimes their lazy children.
Mr. Brown begged and argued and prophesied. (TFA 132) Brian Shaffer rightfully criticizes this
role of the missionaries in the Igbo land as: Things Fall Apart reveals the great extent to which
religious missionaries were part of a comprehensive strategy of colonization, in which the church
functioned as a beachhead for polotical and economic imperialism…… Paradoxically, the
“imagined process of „civilization‟ that the British believed they were giving to the savages” is
instead revealed in Things Fall Apart to lead to cultural disintegration and social chaos; the
breakdown of Igbo society. (81,82)
In addition to churches and schools they also started trading centers to attract more people to
them. Hitherto, crops were seen as seed or food but these trade centers opened the doors of
prosperity by paying price for them in the form of money. This was next step in solidifying their
stand in the Igbo land. The trading centers lured people thus: The white man had indeed brought
a lunatic religion, but he had also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel
became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia.(TFA 130)
After that much success in loosening the center that held the Igbo together it was now time to
break them by exacting power. This is how they started governing Umuofia: But apart from the
church, the white men had also brought a government. They had built a court where the District
Commissioner judged cases in ignorance. He had court messengers who brought men to him for
trial….These court messengers were greatly hated in Umuofia because they were foreigners and
also arrogant and high-handed. (TFA 127)
The Umuofians following the Egwugwu destroy the Church of Umuofia, for Enouch‟s crime of
unmasking an Egwugwu. Such evil had not happened in the history of Umuofia. The district
commissioner arrested them and tortured them. This humiliation of the native leaders shows their
loss of authority. They were released after paying heavy fine. They call for a meeting of the clan
to retaliate this assault to their cultural pride. The whole clan except the converts gathers on the
village „ilo‟. While the village elders and lords of the clan were discussing the measures of
resistance, the court messengers arrive there and ordered to close the meeting. Okonkwo takes
this opportunity and beheads the head messenger, thinking that the villagers would follow him as
usual. But the villagers let the other messengers flee. Okonkwo here people murmuring why he
has done that? He discerns total disintegration of the clan in such a cold reaction of his clansmen.
He cannot reconcile with such a situation and hangs himself to a tree in his backyard. With
Okonkwo‟s suicide disintegration in the traditional Igbo culture is complete.
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Conclusion:
In this way the cultural clash approach applied to Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart unravels the
cultural politics of the White men in Nigeria. It unmasks their evengelical disguise and shows the
true imperialist face behind it. It shows the disintegration suffered by the rich and varied culture
of the Igboland with the intruison of the colonisers.
References:
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart, Penguin Books Ltd. London. Modern classics edition, 2001.
Print.
Irele, Abiola. The Tragic Conflicts in the Novels of Chinua Achebe
Victor C Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1965. Print.
Anyadike Chima, Ayoola Kehinde. Blzing the Path: Fifty Years of Things Fall Apart, African
Books Collective, 2013. Print.
Shaffer, Brian W. Reading the Novel in English 1950-2000, John Willy & Sons, 2009. Print.
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