uli: a dye used by women for drawing patterns on the skin.
umuada: a family gathering of daughters, for which the female kinsfolk return to their village of origin.
umunna: a wide group of kinsmen (the masculine form of the word umuada).
Uri: part of the betrothal ceremony when the dowry is paid.
READING GROUP GUIDE
1. The Ibo religious structure consists of chi—the personal god—and many other gods and goddesses. What advantages and disadvantages does such a religion provide when compared with your own?
2. The text includes many original African terms and there is a glossary provided. Do you find that this lends atmospheric authenticity, thus bringing you closer to the work? Do you find it helpful?
3. There is an issue here of fate versus personal control over destiny. For example, Okonkwo’s father is sometimes held responsible for his own actions, while at other times he is referred to as ill-fated and a victim of evil-fortune. Which do you think Okonkwo believes is true? What do you think Achebe believes is true? What do you believe?
4. The threads of the story are related in a circular fashion, as opposed to a conventional linear time pattern. What effect does this impose on the tale of Ikemefuma? What effect does it have on the story of Ezinma?
5. The villagers believe—or pretend to believe—that the “Supreme Court” of the nine egwugwu are ancestral spirits. In fact, they are men of the village in disguise. What does this say about the nature of justice in general, and in this village in particular?
6. Our own news media pre-programs us to view the kind of culture clash represented here as being purely racial in basis. Does Achebe’s work impress as being primarily concerned with black versus white tensions? If not, what else is going on here?
7. Certain aspects of the clan’s religious practice, such as the mutilation of a dead child to prevent its spirit from returning, might impress us as being barbaric. Casting an honest eye on our own religious practices, which ones might appear barbaric or bizarre to an outsider?
8. In an essay entitled “The Novelist as Teacher,” Achebe states: “Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse—to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement” (Hopes and Impediments, p. 44). In what ways do you feel that this novel places Achebe closer to the fulfillment of this noble aspiration?
9. Nature plays an integral role in the mythic and real life of the Ibo villagers, much more so than in our own society. Discuss ways in which their perception of animals—such as the cat, the locust, the python—differ from your own, and how these different beliefs shape our behavior.
10. The sacrifice of Ikemefuma could be seen as being a parallel to the crucifixion of Jesus. The event also raises a series of questions. Ikemefuma and the villagers that are left behind are told that he is “going home” (See this page). Does this euphemism for dying contain truth for them? Do they believe they are doing him a favor? Why do they wait three years, him and Okonkwo’s family to think of him as a member of the family? Finally, Okonkwo, “the father,” allows the sacrifice to occur as God presumably allowed Christ’s sacrifice, with no resistance. How can one accept this behavior and maintain love for the father or God?
11. Of Ezinma, Okonkwo thinks: “She should have been a boy” (See this Page). Why is it necessary to the story that Okonkwo’s most favored child be a girl?
12. Of one of the goddesses, it is said: “It was not the same Chielo who sat with her in the market . . . Chielo was not a woman that night” (See this Page). What do you make of this culture where people can be both themselves and also assume other personas? Can you think of any parallels in your own world?
13. There are many proverbs related during the course of the narrative. Recalling specific ones, what function do you perceive these proverbs as fulfilling in the life of the Ibo? What do you surmise Achebe’s purpose to be in the inclusion of them here?
14. While the traditional figure of Okonkwo can in no doubt be seen as the central figure in the tale, Achebe chooses to relate his story in the third person rather than the first person narrative style. What benefits does he reap by adopting this approach?
15. Okonkwo rejects his father’s way and is, in turn, rejected by Nwoye. Do you feel this pattern evolves inevitably through the nature of the father/son relationship? Or is there something more being here than mere generational conflict?
16. The lives of Ikemefuma and Okonkwo can be deemed parallel to the extent that they both have fathers whose behavior is judged unacceptable. What do you think the contributing factors are to the divergent paths their fate takes them on as a result of their respective fathers’ shadows?
17. The title of the novel is derived from the William Butler Yeats poem entitled The Second Coming, concerned with the second coming of Christ. The completed line reads: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” What layers of meaning are discernible when this completed line is applied to the story?
18. The District Commissioner is going to title his work The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Niger (See this Page). What do you interpret from this to be his perception of Okonkwo and the people of Umuofia? And what do you imagine this augurs in the ensuing volumes in Achebe’s trilogy of Nigerian life?
CHINUA ACHEBE
Chinua Achebe is the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. He was, for over fifteen years, the Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He is the author of five novels, two short story collections, and numerous other books. In 2007, Achebe was awarded the Man Booker International Prize. He lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island.
Books by Chinua Achebe
Anthills of the Savannah
The Sacrificial Egg and Other Stories
Things Fall Apart
No Longer at Ease
Chike and the River
A Man of the People
Arrow of God
Girls at War and Other Stories
Beware Soul Brother
Morning Yet on Creation Day
The Trouble with Nigeria
The Flute
The Drum
Home and Exile
Hopes and Impediments
How the Leopard Got His Claws (with John Iroaganachi)
Winds of Change: Modern Short Stories from Black Africa (coeditor)
African Short Stories (editor, with C. L. Innes)
Another Africa (with Robert Lyons)
ALSO BY CHINUA ACHEBE
ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH
In the fictional West African nation Kangan, newly independent of British rule, the hopes and dreams of democracy have been quashed by a fierce military dictatorship. Chris Oriko is a member of the cabinet of the president for life, one of his oldest friends. When the president is charged with censoring the oppositionist editor of the state-run newspaper—another childhood friend—Chris’s loyalty and ideology are put to the test. The fate of Kangan hangs in the balance as tensions rise and a devious plot is set in motion to silence the firebrand critic.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-26045-9
ARROW OF GOD
Ezeulu, the chief priest of several Nigerian villages, is a prominent member of the Igbo people. So prominent, in fact, that he is invited to join the British colonial administration. But when he refuses to be a “white man’s chief” and is thrown in jail, Ezeulu’s influence begins to wane, as the resentful decisions he makes from prison have adverse effects on his people. As Christian missionaries flood Ezeulu’s villages, Western culture may very well unravel the traditions he has spent his life protecting.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-01480-9
THE EDUCATION OF A BRITISH-PROTECTED CHILD
Essays
Chinua Achebe’s characteristically eloquent and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. From a vi
vid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria to considerations on the African-American diaspora, from a glimpse into his extraordinary family life and his thoughts on the potent symbolism of President Obama’s election—this charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise collection is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.
Essays/978-0-307-47367-7
GIRLS AT WAR
And Other Stories
Here we read of an ambitious farmer who is suddenly shunned by his village when a madman exacts his humiliating revenge; a young nanny who is promised an education by her well-to-do employers, only to be cruelly cheated out of it; and in three fiercely observed stories about the Nigerian civil war, we are confronted with the economic, ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions that continue to rack modern Africa.
Fiction/Short Stories/978-0-385-41896-6
HOME AND EXILE
More personally revealing than anything Achebe has written, Home and Exile is a major statement on the importance of stories as real sources of power, especially for those whose stories have traditionally been told by outsiders. In three elegant essays, Achebe seeks to rescue African culture from narratives written about it by Europeans. Looking through the prism of his experiences as a student in English schools in Nigeria, he provides devastating examples of European cultural imperialism. He examines the impact that his novel Things Fall Apart had on efforts to reclaim Africa’s story. And he argues for the importance of writing and living the African experience because, he believes, Africa needs stories told by Africans.
Essays/978-0-385-72133-2
HOPES AND IMPEDIMENTS
Selected Essays
In Hopes and Impediments, Chinua Achebe considers the place of literature and art in our society. This collection of essays spans his writing and lectures over the course of his career, from his groundbreaking and provocative essay on Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness to his assessments of the novelist’s role as a teacher and of the truths of fiction. Achebe reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, between blacks and whites, but also instills us with hope that they will soon be overcome.
Essays/978-0-385-41479-1
A MAN OF THE PEOPLE
Chief Nanga—the powerful but corrupt minister of culture— comes to visit the school where his former student Odili is now a teacher. But Odili soon sees that Nanga is not the man he pretends to be … and eventually decides that he must run for office himself, with disastrous consequences. Perhaps Achebe’s most political novel, A Man of the People is a story of corruption and expectations, deceit and hope. Elegantly fusing the worlds of the traditional village and the modern city, A Man of the People brings together multiple identities of a country leaving behind its colonial past, while trying to make its way into an independent future.
Fiction/978-0-385-08616-5
NO LONGER AT EASE
When Obi Okonkwo—grandson of Okonkwo, the main character of Things Fall Apart—returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots. He’s become a part of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. Forced to choose between traditional values and the demands of a changing world, he finds himself trapped between the expectations of his family, his village, and the larger society around him.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-47455-9
THINGS FALL APART
Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo’s world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-385-47454-2
ALSO AVAILABLE
Collected Poems, 978-1-4000-7658-1
ANCHOR BOOKS
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
(Series: The African Trilogy # 1)
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