The New Lifetime Reading Plan

One is tempted to say that One Hundred Years has a cer­tain claim to be called the Great Latin American Novel. At any rate, for ali its concentration on the sufferings, madnesses, delusions, incestuous loves, and outsize passions of a single family, it seems to evoke the tragic real life and dream life of a whole continent.

C.F.

133

CHINUA ACHEBE

1930-

Things Fali Apart

Just as the inclusion of Garcia Marquez [132] in earlier edi- tions of the Lifetime Reading Plan acknowledged the growing importance of Latin American writers in modern world litera­ture, so also it is fitting that the final work in the New Lifetime Reading Plan be the masterpiece of Chinua Achebe, in recog- nition not only that Things Fali Apart has already entered the worldwide modern canon, but that henceforth African litera­ture will claim its due as part of the literary heritage of readers everywhere. Achebe in this sense also stands here as a surro- gate for Senghor, Soyinka (for both of whom see Going Further, below), Diop, and many other African writers whose works transcend merely regional significance.

Chinua Achebe was born and educated in Nigйria, a mem- ber of that country's Ibo ethnic group. After graduation from University College, Ibadan, he pursued a career in the public radio Corporation, but resigned abruptly in 1966 during the turmoil surrounding the attempted secession from Nigйria of the Ibo ethnic province of Biafra. Thereafter he has spent much of his time abroad, primarily in the United States, where he now lives and pursues a career as a college professor.

Although Achebe has been a prolific writer of novйis, short stories, plays, and other works, his international reputation rests overwhelmingly on his first novel, Things Fali Apart, pub- lished in 1958. Achebe himself was raised in a Nigerian village in the midst of a difficult transition from traditional society to life under British missionary and colonial government influ­ence. His novel, drawn from his childhood experiences, tells the story of a traditional village "big man" whose life is destroyed by changes he can neither understand nor halt.

Okonkwo is a man of wealth and power in the village of

Umuofia. His gardens yield heavy crops of yams, his com- pound is large and comfortable, his wives desirable and his children satisfactory; most importantly he enjoys the respect of his fellow villagers, and his words are listened to as those of a man to be reckoned with. He is not immune to difficulties and troubles; when, for example, he accidentally kills a fellow clansman, he must endure the obligatory seven years' exile in his mothers native village. But he understands troubles in a traditional context, and knows how to cope with them. What is completely beyond his grasp is the appeal of the newly built missionary church, which seduces even some of his clansmen with its bizarre new doctrines, and the authority of the British District Commissioner and his hated retinue of constables recruited from outside the village. What is tragic about Okonkwo's downfall in the face of these new circumstances is that, in terms of the traditional world that he understands, he makes ali of the right moves, says the right things, asserts his power in strategically effective ways; the only problem is that things have changed, things have in fact fallen apart, and every move he makes to assert his authority makes his downfall more certain.

Achebe, in other words, has created a figure who would be recognized by Sophocles [6] or by Shakespeare [39], an African Oedipus or Lear brought down not only by fate but by his own stubborn pursuit of inappropriate goals and his blindness to circumstances. This, I think, is what accounts for the extraordi- nary appeal of Things Fali Apart, and why it has become estab- lished as a modern classic in dozens of translated versions around the world.

J.S.M.

GOING FURTHER