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(Citations are from the Picador edition, entitled The African Trilogy.)
Gerald Moore has stated in Seven African Writers that Achebe's goal in writing Things Fall Apart was to recapture ''the life of his tribe before the first touch of the white man sent it reeling from its delicate equilibrium'' (58). This is central to an understanding of the novel. Right from the tribes' first encounter with the whites, the reader observes it being unchangeably altered.
It is the coming of the missionaries which brings the disruption. After thousands of years of unviolated and untouched tribal existence, Okonkwo returns after just seven years of exile to find his village almost unrecognisable. Similarly, his fellow clan members seem unwilling to recognise him. Instead, ''the new religion and government and trading stores were very much in the people's eyes and minds ... they talked and thought about little else, and certainly not about Okonkwo's return'' (149). The Europeans have been active in Nigeria for just seven years and already the pre-colonial Nigeria has been lost. This presents a clear picture of the sheer rapidity of the colonial project. It seems inevitable that much indigenous tradition and heritage will be swept away, resulting in feelings of profound cultural dislocation, and loss of identity.
Yet despite these hardships, the reader cannot escape the feeling the Achebe is not as narrow-minded and bitter as he first appears. He clearly does not object to the discovery of and learning about new religions and cultures. He presents a strong argument in favour of discussion as a path towards understanding. In Things Fall Apart, the missionary Mr Brown and Akunna, one of the tribal elders, often spend long hours in discussion, and although ''Neither of them succeeded in converting the other ... they learnt more about their different beliefs'' (147). This demonstrates a mutual relationship, in which both parties are equally eager to learn when approached on equal terms.
It is not Achebe's intention to demonstrate any superiority an idealistic pre-colonial Nigerian existence might hold over life in Europe. What he seeks to achieve is an ''illumination of the complicated truth of African existence (and) a concrete insight into the reality of their existence''( Conch 6. 1-2, 1974, p.19). As clearly demonstrated in Things Fall Apart, he is making neither excuses nor apologies for African existence.
Similarly, he does not try to force Nigerian culture upon a European audience. This is exactly what he objects to in the colonial project - the forcing of European culture on an unwilling Nigerian clan. The missionaries simply walk into the midst of the tribe with their interpreters, and ''told them that they worship false gods, gods of wood and stone'' (Things Fall Apart, 120). After thousands of years of worshipping unchanged deities, the white man virtually commands them to ''leave your wicked ways and false gods'' (120). Upon first contact, the natives are instantly and ignorantly termed labelled ''false'' and ''wicked'', a poignant example of Manichean aesthetics at work. It is easy to understand how Achebe repeatedly views colonial relationships as ''Master and Slave'' relationships.
In his rejection to this approach to missionary work, and the colonial project in general, Achebe not only makes them seem ''mad'' (Things fall Apart, 121) and a reason for much laughing and joking, but he also hints at darker and more sinister aspects to them. The missionaries were injected into Africa with the expressed desire to completely change all aspects of African life, and convert it into something much more Europhile. They ''pride themselves on their indifference to all the ceremonies which bind and express the life of the tribe'' (Moore, Seven African Writers, 63). By extension, they can be assumed to have entertained a great of indifference within the tribe also. Basically, these individuals were statistics of converted and unconverted natives.
The missionaries were ruthless in pursuit of new converts. Domestic support for the missions depended in large measure upon the tangible success of their preaching, ''success'' being reflected in the numbers of conversions. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe even hints at their use of bribery and blackmail in their endeavours. He tells us, ''the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write'' (126). The inference is clearly that the unconverted heathens were not given this opportunity. Yet bearing in mind the orality of Nigerian culture, the apparent pointlessness of learning to read and write is exposed. This is indicative of the move away from Nigerian pre-colonial orature, towards a more Eurocentric culture.
In their desire for quick converts, the missionaries allowed into their ranks outcasts and ''afulefu, worthless, empty men'' (Things Fall Apart, 119). In the ideology of the missions, this was portrayed as display of the truly egalitarian nature of European Christianity, so different to the harshness experienced in tribal living. Yet as Gerald Moore notes, there are more duplicitous aspects to this. He states that outcasts and seemingly worthless man were specifically targeted by the missionaries because they are a group which ''despises and gradually undermines the older ones. Thus a fatal weakness is introduced at the very heart of the clan, which is the unit of its customary life'' (Seven African Writers, 64). In his portrayal of Nwofia, Achebe also acknowledges the subversive side of the converts, men who have no real place in the tribe, and no loyalty to it.
To further enhance the negative aspects of the missions, Achebe suggests that even the converts never really accept the religion they are being offered. The reader is led to believe that each convert has their own self-centred alterior motives for going into the ''evil forest'' with the missionaries. Two examples of such behaviour are given. Nwofia is more attracted by the ''rollicking tunes of evangelism'' (Things Fall Apart, 121) than by the doctrines of Christianity, and he doesn't really fit in within the tribe anyway. Nneka also has her own reasons for conversion. Having had two sets of twins killed by the tribe already, and once more being pregnant, she goes to the missionaries, it seems, to save her unborn child. Not only that, but her family are relieved to separate themselves from such an obviously cursed woman. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe never accepts that Christianity has been fully recognised, even by the converts.
The people of Umuofia find it difficult to arrive at a firm conclusion as to their opinion of the whites. To the end they remain ambiguous, for example, they like the wealth and new found value that white trade brings, a strong reminder of the missionaries' role to find a substitute for slaves. Yet they cannot reconcile themselves with white intrusion and indirect rule through a District Officer. Perhaps the reason for this ambiguity and uncertainty lies in the difficulty in finding a language or a voice for expressing and describing white intervention. Such was the clash of cultures involved in the colonisation of Nigeria that even the language had to alter to accommodate it. In many cases, this alteration brought about a silencing of native dialects, and a loss of indigenous voice. This is potently reflected towards the close of the novel with Achebe's assertion that ''even now they have not found the mouth with which to tell of their suffering'' (Things Fall Apart, 145), an issue keenly raised in Spivak's essay ''Can the Subaltern Speak?''.
This page was written by Richard Bleakley.
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