Things Fall Apart Chapters 1-8

Please discuss your thoughts and feelings concerning chapters 1-8.

I got this book from the library on Dec. 24. When I originally requested it, I was advised it would be 4 weeks--serendipity!

Right away, in chapter 1 was in love with the following: Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Just beautifully written!

From the beginning, I'm "plagued" by the African words. I love, almost "require" that I be able to pronounce words correctly. I'm a frequent visitor to howjsay.com. However, the words contained in the book such as people and places are not within the howjsay dictionary. I seem to stumble (in my mind) over this plethora of African words. This is making me uncomfortable.!

I hope to make a big dent in this book today (New Year's Day). I have nothing planned except a walk and dinner!

I'll be a few days late joining in. I mislaid my copy and discovered it only two days ago.

The book is being widely taught hereabouts. There were no circulating copies available in any of the three public systems I have access to. That includes Toronto Public, which holds many copies.

>3 librorumamans: Happens to me often! Feel free to join in when you can. I know that it is a popular book.

I'm hoping to join but it will be rather in the later half of the month, as I have an exam and I've promised myself not to start any new books till that's done with!

>5 Majel-Susan: See you after the exam!

>5 Majel-Susan: I might join around the same time as you. No exams for me, but other reading commitments: I'm about to embark for a Turkish book, before coming here to travel to Nigeria!

>7 raton-liseur: Good to know that I won't be lagging that far behind. Enjoy Turkey in the meantime!

Achebe certainly has the gift of portraying the language of the Umuofians (?) as very complex as well as beautiful. I think a lot of times people consider those with less formal education to not be as eloquently verbal as those with more training. I'm thinking the old stereotypical, "me Tarzan, you Jane" vernacular.

Unfortunately, I think that Okonkwo's temper will figure heavily in this book and not necessarily in a good way.

I'm dedicating all day, January 4, for reading this book.

>7 raton-liseur: Are you doing the Asian challenge with Paul? If so, I'm also following that one. I'll be reading My Name is Red.

>9 Tess_W: Yep, I'll participate (not every month though) to the challenge hosted by Paul.
You're up for a great read with My Name is Red! I'll be reading Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Atlan.

Chapter 2 Creepy Okonkwo has 5 skulls as souvenirs and he drinks palm wine from one on special occasions

Chapter 4 Okonkwo if fined for breaking the peace during a holy season; not for beating his wife. The first few chapters try to portray the Igbo as peaceful people who want to live in harmony. I find this ironic. Freud with have a hey-day with Okonkwo's hatred of all things feminine.

I'm torn when trying to analyze the Igbo in this story. Are they peaceful (pray to Oracle before going to war, try to live in harmony with other villages) or not?


Chapter 7 I think I've answered my own question (Chapter 4). The Igbo pay only lip service to being peaceful, since they all agreed that Ikemefuna must be killed after living with them for 3 years. Even Okonkwo agreed that Ikemefuna helped his son become more manly. Just shocked that Okonkwo helped machete him.

Remarks on the world that Achebe creates in Chapters 1 - 8:

1.   This is a stable, well established culture based on subsistence farming. There is no significant pasture land and so there are few or no draught animals – goats and chickens being the primary domesticated animals. Dogs are unimportant. There is some fishing.
   
   
2.   The soil seems not very fertile. Yams are the principal crop and one that exhausts the soil (Okonkwo's father did not clear new land and so had poor yields.); yam is also not very nutritious, but is a labour intensive crop. What are the social implications?
   
   
3.   The culture is patriarchal; male status is important (men spend significant wealth to take titles). I note, though, that Ekwefi was able to leave her abusive husband and move to Okonkwo's compound without a legal process.
   
   
4.   Husbands pay a bride price rather than receive a dowry. Does this imply that women's labour is highly valued?
   
   
5.   The culture is polygamous. Why? To me this implies that something causes a loss of young men at a greater rate than the loss of young women to natural causes like childbirth. Since large predators play no part in the cultural portrait to this point, I'm supposing that war is important. Certainly Okonkwo is proud that he has killed five men(?). Does the infertility of the soil create competition for land among neighbouring tribes?
   
   
6.   This is an oral culture with a developed understanding of its world. I read this as important to Achebe's portrait of a stable society.
   

>12 librorumamans:

I intended to preface the previous post by saying that I am intentionally working only with what Achebe gives us in the text. I am not approaching the text by looking for outside sources to explain Ibo/Igbo culture and history.

I should mention that I read Achebe's trilogy in early 1969; I have only the vaguest recollections of the details. My prof – it was a course in Commonwealth lit – had just come to my university from the University of Ibadan, where he had been friends with that circle of Nigerian writers that included Achebe, Cyprian Ekwense [no touchstone], and Wole Soyinka, whose then-published work we also read.

That said, given the title of this novel, I don't think I'm disclosing anything in advance when I say that my recollection is that things do not end well, even in this first book.

Achebe has already make it clear that Okonkwo's principal driver is shame at his father's failure as a man and as a farmer (to the extent those two roles are distinct in this culture). He is thus a weak and insecure man hiding behind his physical strength and aggression. I read his insecurity as leading him to ignore advice and to participate in killing Ikemefuna.

Achebe provides us with a European psychological explanation for his behaviour. If, as I expect but do not recall, Okonkwo "falls apart" as a result of his betrayal of Ikemefuna, how will his fall be understood within his culture, I wonder. He has committed a sin against the earth, we are told. I can also see a way to interpret his behaviour and its potential consequences as his destiny.

>12 librorumamans: I would disagree that yams are not nutritious. They are in fact dense, nutritious, tuber vegetables. (good source of potassium) The people in the story had no idea......I think it is interesting that old yams are thrown away before the Feast of the Yams. I would conclude that hunger was not an issue, then?

Chapter 8 Okwonko and Obierika are contrasted at the end of this chapter. One being a man of peace and thought and one being a man who reacts (usually violently) without thinking

>15 Tess_W: I would disagree that yams are not nutritious.

Okay; fair enough. For what it's worth, I was generalizing from a comparison in Wikipedia of nutrient density in other staple foods. What I have in mind is that the culture appears to rely heavily on a single crop that is finicky and provides little protein; thus social disruption – which is what Achebe seems to be preparing for – will have deep and serious consequences. I'm seeing a fragile society.

>16 librorumamans: I'm not seeing the fragility--yet. I see people who try to live in peace, seem to have "enough" to eat, and have elaborate rites and rituals. I know things are going to fall apart, though! As stated before, I know that Okwonko's temper will have serious repercussions. I'm not surprised, but do see wife beatings.

>17 Tess_W:

Yes, Achebe is careful to show that this culture is not particularly hierarchical. Disputes seem to be resolved collectively, although the priestess holds a lot of influence when she's in that role.

>16 librorumamans: I think things begin to fall part in chapter 7 with the senseless killing of Ikemefuna

Change of plan, I've decided to visit Nigeria before travelling to Turkey, so I've started Things fall apart yesterday.

Preliminary remark: my translation is probably fairly new, and the book is titled Tout s'effondre (literaly "Everything fall apart"), while the earlier translation (and how I had previously heard about this book) is Le Monde s'effondre (literaly "The world falls apart"). I don't know yet if this change is meaningful, but I'll keep this at the back of my mind while reading.
And my book cover is really strange. It represents a woman whose extremities are changing into a tree. Same, I wonder about the meaning of this cover. My book is a paperback edition from Actes Sud, and I've already noticed that they have strange choices for their covers, so I'll see if it's another strange choice or if I can find a meaning to it.

Chapter 1 and 2:

Regarding the two first chapters, I see some paralells on how the word is described with a book I've read early last year, Batouala by René Maran.
René Maran is French novelist, born in Martinique in 1887. A black man, he became an administrator in the French colonies in Africa. This experience has triggered some of his writting, in particular Batouala that won the Prix Goncourt in 1921. René Maran is considered as a precursor of the "négritude" movement (with Césaire, Senghor and alikes), although he never wanted to be labelled as such.

The caharacter of Batouala would probably be closer to Okonkwo's father than to Okonkwo himself, but the description of the societies in which lived Batouala and Okonkwo seemed very similar. Batouala is probably set in what is now Central African Republic (where René Maran was posted), but the social structure is similar, and what >12 librorumamans: writes does apply as well, giving a more universal (or at least continental) feel to the book.

>16 librorumamans: Following up on your conversation about yams...
In my French translation, Okonkwo plants yams graines, ie an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering (wikipedia definition), and it bothered me all along, but I believe he was planting yams tubers.
I think in English seed both means graine and semence, ie seeds (with its restrictive definition) or other reproductive organ (bulb, tuber...) selected to be seeded (translated roughly from the French wikipedia definition), so I guess it's a mistake from the French translator, not from the author.

>19 Tess_W: I think I don't agree with this. Although Ikemefuna's killing in chapter 7 is unsettling for Okonkwo, he seems to recover well in the following chapters, and it is just an expression of the tradition, that can be brutal in some of its aspects. Okonkwo accepts it on this very ground: it's tradition, and it's his duty to adhere to it.

>22 raton-liseur:

I also found this confusing. English Wikipedia speaks of "seed yams" without explaining further. It also mentions planting "tuber portions", which I'm guessing might be like cutting a single potato into separate eyes for planting – although they are completely different plants and may not have that similarity.

>24 librorumamans: Interesting that it bothered you in English as well.
Potatoes and yams are not the same family, but they are both tuber, and in that way, have some similarities in how they are cultivated. There is a scene (can't remember the chapter), when Okonkwo is preparing for sowing, but "cutting the seed" (it cannot be the seed in a biological sense, it's too small to cut, and anyway, if you cut them, they won't germinate!), and he is bullying his son and Ikemefuna because they don't do a good job.
So it's definitely what you call the "tuber portions" that are sown.

I'm in for the afterparty! And just finished Ch 1-8.

Oof, Okonkwo has a terrible temper! He appears to be, in his way, a godfearing man, but not enough to overcome his own violent emotions and fear of weakness, as he lives under the psychological shadow of his father's failure. It's a pity because he has everything now, yet still misses out on the better aspects of his fortune, such as Ikemefuna and his children, for whom he does feel affection but can't allow himself to either feel it too deeply or show it at all.

In Chapter 7: Awful, the killing of poor Ikemefuna... I thought that he was going to be the one who brings tragedy to the story, which I suppose in a way, he still will but through Nwoye. Poor Nwoye. Growing up is miserable business. And it is hard enough that Okonkwo accepts his being killed, but now he has to go a step further in killing Ikemefuna himself. Oh, dear! Okonkwo is indeed a very cowardly man for all his pomp.

The discussion about Ndulue and Ozoemena in Ch 8, was interesting too, and Okonkwo's inability to comprehend how a man can be devoted to his wife and also a solid warrior.

>18 librorumamans: I noticed that as well, that even Umuofia's most respected men are able to be challenged by their less senior members.

I find it amusing too, when the Umuofia people sit down to compare their traditions with those of their neighbours, and how they like to point out the others' "bad custom," usually to conclude the superiority of their own. Haha, isn't that a natural conclusion!