Things Fall Apart (Macmillan Reader) by Chinua Achebe, John Davey Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Things Fall Apart (Macmillan Reader)
Book Review: One of the best and most important books you'll ever read
Summary: 5 Stars
I've just finished reading this book and can not help singing its praises. The previous reviewer from Dublin sums it up well and there is nothing I can add to that.What I find amazing about the book is that it is written over 40 years ago, describes events that are nearly 150 years old, and yet it is as relevant to society and culture today as anything written in the past few years. To my mind this book will always tell the story Africa as well as the story of all the peoples of the world who struggle to preserve an identity for themselves and their beliefs and traditions.
The world will always change, and if you want to try to understand that change, this would be the best book to read.
Book Review: One of the most thought provoking books I have read
Summary: 4 Stars
When I first started to read this book I was seceptical that it would be no more than an elaborate history essay on colonialism. However after reading the first part I came to realise a lot about about african cultre and prehapes come to realise my own lack of knowlage about other cultres. The pressures faced by Okonwko and his son Nwoye, and the whole tribe it's self are different. However when I thought deeper about it the problems they faced were fundamentally the same faced by people now. It is in the end a sad ending, not only for cetain charecters butthe feeling of what was lost during colonialism. A final point that Achebe makes, which is thought provoking is the use of African words and the inept translator. The point I feel he is making is that very few English speakers could even be fulent, yet he could write a whole novel in English.Book Review: Actually deserves the description 'must-read'
Summary: 5 Stars
A landmark novel which tells the story of Okonkwo and his family, and through that, the tale of his tribe and the fate of many others like it as colonial rule and the missionaries made their presence felt.What marks this book out is its refusal to resort to a black-and-white picture of events. Okonkwo is no hero; the whites are not inherently evil; the tribal way is not always 'honourable', but nor are the tribes 'civilised' by the colonial process. There are victims of both ways of doing things, and this is a tragic story to say the least - but it is an incredibly important one, beautifully written with an almost mythic quality. A book you'll always remember.
Book Review: An excellent and unique perspective on colonialism
Summary: 4 Stars
This book superbly counterbalances the western perspectives on colonial Africa in the nineteenth century ('Heart of Darkness' springs to mind). In Conrad's book, West Africa is uncivilised, a hell on earth, and the people there (both locals and Europeans) behave savagely, as their surroundings dictate. Achebe rubbishes this view.The book is the story of Okonkwo, a great but deeply flawed man, proud and violent yet deeply concerned with right and wrong and the rule of law. His village is strongly traditional, and Achebe repeatedly emphasises the use of laws and village beliefs to settle disputes. These are far from Conrad's savages, but rather they present a life every bit as orderly and civil as the Europeans soon to be invading them. When Okonkwo commits a crime (accidentally) he accepts his punishment unquestioningly, as do his close friends who must punish him, because to not do so is alien to them. Their society is not presented as idyllic, and has many unpleasant aspects (the beating of women, the killing of all twins, the sacrifice of Okonkwo's adopted son), but it is, above all, subject to the rule of law. This is an Africa that many western writers have enjoyed pretending didn't exist.
The finale of the book is beautiful and disturbing. Europeans arrive and, unable or unwilling to see the order in the Ibo society arround them, begin to install christian morals and ethics. This undermines the society, and the Ibo's violent backlash only serves to confirm what the Europeans have suspected all along. This is where the myth of uncivilised africa begins, and Achebe, himself an Ibo, but writing much later than the events descibed in the book, is in a unique position to expose this.
The joy of this book is in Achebe's understanding of the Ibo and his ability to explain the workings of a successful peaceful society. The darkness that Conrad saw comes from Okonkwo and men like him, but who exist all over the world, and also from the Europeans who went about 'pacifying' a peaceful people. No writer that I've read has ever shown this so brilliantly.
Book Review: A masterful account of the downfall of a civilisation
Summary: 5 Stars
Ironically, I got turned on to this book by a piece of music. For years I'd marvelled at The Roots' album whose name, I recently found out, was taken from the title of this book. Having a degree in English Literature dominated by DWEM (dead white european males), Achebe's name had never even surfaced on my radar. What a travesty. Things fall apart is the perfect account of a dead civilisation, following a man, Okinkwo, as he battles with his culture, only to see it destroyed from both within and without by European colonialism. In contradiction to other accounts of Africa (such as Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'), Achebe's account is beautiful for its lack of Orientalist language and allusions, treating the complexities of indiginous Africa as both beautiful and, above all, natural. Neither the Africans, nor the collonialists, are treated as unusual oddities, instead the author manages to impartially portray people, events and traditions with astounding pragmatism, the simple, often abrupt language only reinforcing the novel's lack of sentimentality. A miraculous novel, Things Fall Apart not only paints a picture of Africa during its golden-age, but also demonstrates the ignorance and orientalism which led to its destruction. A true masterpiece.