American scholar, Robin Bates, relates some events in Chinua Achebe’s classical novel, Things Fall Apart, to issues surrounding reforms being carried out by President Barack Obama in the US
I’ve been teaching Chinua Achebe’s Nigerian masterpiece Things Fall Apart (as a follow-up to Heart of Darkness in
my 20th century English-Language Literature Survey) and am struck by
how much America today can learn from the novel. That’s because we have
our own version of one of its key conflicts, that between individual
drive and the community’s collective tradition.
In our case, Republicans like Paul Ryan
trumpet Ayn Randian individualism as they accuse Obama of collectivist
socialism, and the president counters with Americans’ need to help each
other. As he said in his inaugural, “The commitments we make to each
other — through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security — these things
do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a
nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country
great.”
Warrior Ibo culture in late 19th century
society is far more collectivist than the United States, but even they
have members who clearly fall into Ryan and Romney’s takers category.
One of these is the protagonist’s father, Unoka, who fits Romney’s 47
per cent designation and legitimately deserves to be castigated:
In his day he was lazy and improvident
and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow. If any money came
his way, and it seldom did, he immediately bought gourds of palm-wine,
called round his neighbours and made merry. He always said that whenever
he saw a dead man’s mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had
in one’s lifetime. Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed every
neighbour some money, from a few cowries to quite substantial amounts.
At one point Unoka goes to the village
priestess to complain about his poverty, and she proceeds to chew his
butt out for not working harder:
Okonkwo, impoverished and humiliated by
his father, determines that he will be the opposite: he will make
himself into a success. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor
even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun
even in his father’s lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous
future. It was slow and painful. But he threw himself into it like one
possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father’s
contemptible life and shameful death.
Against all odds, Okonkwo succeeds and
goes on to become a respected man. In the words of the Romney campaign,
he did build that. As a result, he is impatient with those who don’t
work as hard as he does. In one meeting, he humiliates a man by calling
him a woman and is called upon to apologise. He does so, but he’s not
really sorry:
Everybody at the kindred meeting took
sides with Osugo when Okonkwo called him a woman. The oldest man
present said sternly that those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them
by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble. Okonkwo said he
was sorry for what he had said, and the meeting continued.
So far, Okonkwo sounds like an American success story. But here’s what we can learn from Things Fall Apart.
There is something too reactionary about Okonkwo’s ambitions, and as a
result he starts getting into trouble. While individual initiative
should be celebrated, it must come from a clean space. Just as
Republicans like Ryan often talk about success as a way of berating the
47 per cent of Americans that they claim are moochers, so Okonkwo sees
success mostly as a way of contrasting himself with his father.
Because of this fear, there is something
never quite right about Okonkwo. He can’t enter fully or joyously into
festivals because he wants to be back at his farm working. He is a stern
father who alienates his son. As a result, things begin to go wrong.
His culture interprets this as his having a bad chi.
For instance, he forgets to observe the
sacred week of peace and beats one of his wives, drawing stern
reprimands from the village elders. Then his gun goes off accidentally
at a funeral, killing a son of the dead man, and he is banished for
seven years. His son rebels and becomes a Christian. Finally, at the
end, Okonkwo erupts in anger at the white colonialists, kills one of
their messengers, and chooses to hang himself rather than be taken off
and executed. It is the book’s final irony that his body is thrown into
the same “Evil Forest” where his disgraced father ended up, the man he
has spent his entire life distancing himself from.
Here’s Achebe’s lesson about individual
success: When we throw our accomplishments in the face of those who are
not successful, our chi is bad and our tribe suffers. On the other hand,
when we acknowledge that our palm kernels have been cracked for us by a
benevolent spirit, our chi smiles and all around us benefit.
So work hard, love life, and, when you are successful, be humble about it.
Can I hear an amen?
