by
Obododimma Oha
I posted an update on my Facebook wall after a set of unpleasant experiences and deep thinking about one’s challenges in present-day Nigeria: “Now, it is clearer to me why Okonkwo committed suicide in Things Fall Apart." As would be expected, many people liked the update within few hours and some inquisitive ones requested me to reveal why I thought it had become “clearer” to me. Yes, they were right and, in fact, they were the kind of critical readers that recognised the gap in the message, the not-said, what I was luring my readers to find out, some interesting strategy of creating and animating reader-interest in the update. So, trapped, I had to disclose it: “OK, Okonkwo discovered that he was alone in trying to fight the colonial invader, that it appeared that secretly his kinsmen like the servitude.” That was my own reading, especially as I was trying to see how discourse connected to discourse, how fictional discourse could be connected to real-life discourse. I remember that I had tried to make this kind of crazy connection before in a paper that I presented at a conference on Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God at Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu. In that paper, I looked at the kind of ways that Ezeulu’s descendants might be playing the roles of being their ancestor’s (priest-king’s) “eyes” and “ears” in our time. Crazy; isn’t it? In other words, it is reality that is imitating fiction in our time (not the other way round)! It must be a world of Humpty-Dumpty, a world where things stand on their heads!
Anyway, how does Achebe present Okonkwo’s suicide in Things Fall Apart? What does he tell us about it (apart from our inferences) in the narrative? This is what he says in chapter twenty-four:
In a flash Okonkwo drew his matchete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo,s matchete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body.
The waiting backcloth jumped into tumultuous life and the meeting was stopped. Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action. He discerned fright in that tumult. He heard voices asking: “Why did he do it?”
He wiped his matchete on the sand and went away.
(1959:188)
Albert Camus points out in The Myth of Sisyphus that "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide." Camus is interested, deeply interested, in the philosophy of the absurd.Little wonder killing oneself is one of those absurd sides of life he thinks philosophers should turn their lens to. Indeed, he sees suicide as a response to absurdity in life. We may be forced sometimes to ask the question whether life is worth living after all, whether it is not futile, whether it is not included in the biblical "vanity upon vanity" and declare like Camus that all philosophical questions of life follow afterwards.
Yes, we could understand Okonkwo to be a cultural chauvinist, an erratic fellow, an angry bigot. But he was merely defending his community, a patriot, not a chauvinist. Can patriotism be excessive? Is there a point at which we have to stop being patriotic or limit it? Okonkwo was overzealous indeed and his disillusionment was frustrating. He realised that he was alone.
What does it mean to be alone? How do we expect a man to feel when he discovers that those for whom he is fighting are not really on his side? That man must realise that he is teriribly alone! It seemed his kinsmen secretly liked the servitude! Shocking! Quite shocking and depressing. In reality, has the society fictionally represented as Umofia in Things Fall Apart stopped displaying this secret admiration for the invader? They displayed admiration for the oyibo and his ways. They displayed admiration for the language of the oyibo, thinking this language represented more opportunities, represented the future while the local one meant backwardness. To stick to this language, the vernacular, was to stick to backwardness, meant being dangerously conservative and the individual was penalized at school for trying to use it.
They liked being referred to as the most welcoming of the oyibo and his ways, the most western and westernised. They liked it and retained it, just so that the western and westernised would like them. They liked it. In the post-independence state, they extended this to being nationalistic and tried to show other groups that they preferred being one with them, being "one Nigeria." Other groups further disliked them for this. And thought they wanted "one Nigeria" they could dominate. Their politicians and educated elite preached it. They are, of course, everywhere in the country, increasing that fear of domination. They have made everywhere their home, investing and developing. Yes, further increasing that fear of domination. Yes; preachers of one nation. And were they not punished for it,as the fear for domination was exploited in the national rhetoric to make several minority groups further hate them and cripple their desire for separation when they wanted it in 1967.
I was one day shocked when one elderly Igbo who had just retired from government service told me that he decided to "plant' a church, a Pentecostal church, in the Western part of Nigeria where he worked because his people in his hometown were wicked and would not let the church succeed. He needed to locate it in a place it would succeed. At the risk of losing his friendship (which happened minutes later), I cleared my throat and told him bluntly that he was looking for where he thought there would be good market for his product, the church. I stated that it was such "wicked" people in his hometown that he needed to convert by "planting" a church there, that he was acrting the script of Jonah who was sent by God to convert Niniveh, but he dodged it, and had to be swallowed by a fish and given a free ride to the place, against his scheme. I noted clearly that his business idea was flawed, for Nigeria's South-west already had many successful born-again churches here and there; that it was like taking coal to Newcastle to sell. Of course, he disliked my criticism. Imagine and elderly Igbo who had retired from government service and should be in his village helping to counsel the youth to move in helpful direction! Now, he wants to plant a church in the South-west as his post-retirement project. Is he not a colossal loss to his home community? If his community is unlucky to have 90% of his kind who are deracinated, is that community not very unlucky? Is this invasion we are talking about not happening in recent times, not just with the help of Igbo people themselves but by Igbo people? Have Igbo people not continued their own conquest, at various spheres -- economy, education, religion, etc?
Have they stopped asking for "one nation" and thinking that every part of the country is their home, their own? Have they stopped being the victims of their self-blame and showing that they are the most detribalised? Are they not still being used by every bush fellow in federal politics who thinks he can still revive and use the one-nation rhetoric? In line with this, are some of them still not being used by external-internal invaders (indeed, internal colonizers) in making Okonkwo hang himself?
Why focus only on the colonial invader and the ethnic Other who wants to continue where the European colonial master stopped? My fellow Igbo people seem to like it and want the oppressive Other to recognise them as "good, progressive, non-ethnocentric Igbo." That assumption is always wrong, for the Other is wise enough to understand the actor as a trickster: if this trickster can betray, even supervise the masacres of their kinsfolk, what is the assurance that this house slave trickster won't poison the master's food later?
I pointed out earlier that this invasion is happening in various spheres in various ways. I was not generalising faultily. Look closely, and you would see it. Just one annoying instance of invasion at the level of language. An elderly kinsman once invited me to a traditional wedding of his daughter in Ibadan. He was a member of a Christian born-again church. I attended the wedding, but instead of being the host, I became the guest. Instead of being the among those (Igbo kinsmen) telling the Yoruba groom-to-be what to bring to satisfy traditional Igbo culture of marriage, I became a guest listening to the master-of-ceremonies direct the occasion in Yoruba. I thought it was one of those MC errors, but was surprised and shocked when he announced in English that if he used Igbo that no one would understand him! So, I had suddenly lost my linguistic identity? And what was traditional about the wedding, therefore, if Igbo and its culture had been deceptively jettisoned? Chai! Did my mother not warn me to be careful, to make sure the Other does not deceive me? That no one would understand ...and the people nodded their assent! Who was "no one"? Whose traditional marriage was taking place? Igbo or Yoruba? This was again happening in the house of an elderly Igbo who retired from government service years ago and was being helped by his church to kill Igbo! I lost my cool; walked up to him and told him how disappointed I was. To try to drown my pain, I crossed the road, bought a bottle of beer and drank it hurrriedly and angrily. I beckoned to my wife to join me on the bus, and minutes later I sped off!
The people of Umuofia and Alaigbo (its real-life parallel world) have disappointed Okonkwo; have sent a message through their tumult and words of blame that he is alone, that he is not one of them anymore. He is an outsider and the best for him is to make his exit! In a heroic way, not like a dog.
Indeed, one has a deeper understanding of the idea of things fall apart used as the title of Chinua Achebe's novel. Was it only in the colonial, fictional Umuofia society that things fell apart? In reality -- and in continuation of our idea of reality mimicking fiction now -- has that imaginary "one nation state" hatched by the British colonial hen not fallen apart? And are the descendants of Okonkwo not still in tumult?
Things have fallen apart in a Nigerian society and in many other postcolonial societies, more then Yeats the visionary poet that provided the intertextual material for Achebe thought about. The spiritus mundi is already inside the rock abode: one is not talking of crouching to Bethlehem to be born. The rocky protective, its destined Bethlehem, is from where flows its venom as this tumult goes on in reality and the people of Umuofia will taste its wrath.
Obododimma Oha
I posted an update on my Facebook wall after a set of unpleasant experiences and deep thinking about one’s challenges in present-day Nigeria: “Now, it is clearer to me why Okonkwo committed suicide in Things Fall Apart." As would be expected, many people liked the update within few hours and some inquisitive ones requested me to reveal why I thought it had become “clearer” to me. Yes, they were right and, in fact, they were the kind of critical readers that recognised the gap in the message, the not-said, what I was luring my readers to find out, some interesting strategy of creating and animating reader-interest in the update. So, trapped, I had to disclose it: “OK, Okonkwo discovered that he was alone in trying to fight the colonial invader, that it appeared that secretly his kinsmen like the servitude.” That was my own reading, especially as I was trying to see how discourse connected to discourse, how fictional discourse could be connected to real-life discourse. I remember that I had tried to make this kind of crazy connection before in a paper that I presented at a conference on Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God at Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu. In that paper, I looked at the kind of ways that Ezeulu’s descendants might be playing the roles of being their ancestor’s (priest-king’s) “eyes” and “ears” in our time. Crazy; isn’t it? In other words, it is reality that is imitating fiction in our time (not the other way round)! It must be a world of Humpty-Dumpty, a world where things stand on their heads!
Anyway, how does Achebe present Okonkwo’s suicide in Things Fall Apart? What does he tell us about it (apart from our inferences) in the narrative? This is what he says in chapter twenty-four:
In a flash Okonkwo drew his matchete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo,s matchete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body.
The waiting backcloth jumped into tumultuous life and the meeting was stopped. Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action. He discerned fright in that tumult. He heard voices asking: “Why did he do it?”
He wiped his matchete on the sand and went away.
(1959:188)
Albert Camus points out in The Myth of Sisyphus that "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide." Camus is interested, deeply interested, in the philosophy of the absurd.Little wonder killing oneself is one of those absurd sides of life he thinks philosophers should turn their lens to. Indeed, he sees suicide as a response to absurdity in life. We may be forced sometimes to ask the question whether life is worth living after all, whether it is not futile, whether it is not included in the biblical "vanity upon vanity" and declare like Camus that all philosophical questions of life follow afterwards.
Yes, we could understand Okonkwo to be a cultural chauvinist, an erratic fellow, an angry bigot. But he was merely defending his community, a patriot, not a chauvinist. Can patriotism be excessive? Is there a point at which we have to stop being patriotic or limit it? Okonkwo was overzealous indeed and his disillusionment was frustrating. He realised that he was alone.
What does it mean to be alone? How do we expect a man to feel when he discovers that those for whom he is fighting are not really on his side? That man must realise that he is teriribly alone! It seemed his kinsmen secretly liked the servitude! Shocking! Quite shocking and depressing. In reality, has the society fictionally represented as Umofia in Things Fall Apart stopped displaying this secret admiration for the invader? They displayed admiration for the oyibo and his ways. They displayed admiration for the language of the oyibo, thinking this language represented more opportunities, represented the future while the local one meant backwardness. To stick to this language, the vernacular, was to stick to backwardness, meant being dangerously conservative and the individual was penalized at school for trying to use it.
They liked being referred to as the most welcoming of the oyibo and his ways, the most western and westernised. They liked it and retained it, just so that the western and westernised would like them. They liked it. In the post-independence state, they extended this to being nationalistic and tried to show other groups that they preferred being one with them, being "one Nigeria." Other groups further disliked them for this. And thought they wanted "one Nigeria" they could dominate. Their politicians and educated elite preached it. They are, of course, everywhere in the country, increasing that fear of domination. They have made everywhere their home, investing and developing. Yes, further increasing that fear of domination. Yes; preachers of one nation. And were they not punished for it,as the fear for domination was exploited in the national rhetoric to make several minority groups further hate them and cripple their desire for separation when they wanted it in 1967.
I was one day shocked when one elderly Igbo who had just retired from government service told me that he decided to "plant' a church, a Pentecostal church, in the Western part of Nigeria where he worked because his people in his hometown were wicked and would not let the church succeed. He needed to locate it in a place it would succeed. At the risk of losing his friendship (which happened minutes later), I cleared my throat and told him bluntly that he was looking for where he thought there would be good market for his product, the church. I stated that it was such "wicked" people in his hometown that he needed to convert by "planting" a church there, that he was acrting the script of Jonah who was sent by God to convert Niniveh, but he dodged it, and had to be swallowed by a fish and given a free ride to the place, against his scheme. I noted clearly that his business idea was flawed, for Nigeria's South-west already had many successful born-again churches here and there; that it was like taking coal to Newcastle to sell. Of course, he disliked my criticism. Imagine and elderly Igbo who had retired from government service and should be in his village helping to counsel the youth to move in helpful direction! Now, he wants to plant a church in the South-west as his post-retirement project. Is he not a colossal loss to his home community? If his community is unlucky to have 90% of his kind who are deracinated, is that community not very unlucky? Is this invasion we are talking about not happening in recent times, not just with the help of Igbo people themselves but by Igbo people? Have Igbo people not continued their own conquest, at various spheres -- economy, education, religion, etc?
Have they stopped asking for "one nation" and thinking that every part of the country is their home, their own? Have they stopped being the victims of their self-blame and showing that they are the most detribalised? Are they not still being used by every bush fellow in federal politics who thinks he can still revive and use the one-nation rhetoric? In line with this, are some of them still not being used by external-internal invaders (indeed, internal colonizers) in making Okonkwo hang himself?
Why focus only on the colonial invader and the ethnic Other who wants to continue where the European colonial master stopped? My fellow Igbo people seem to like it and want the oppressive Other to recognise them as "good, progressive, non-ethnocentric Igbo." That assumption is always wrong, for the Other is wise enough to understand the actor as a trickster: if this trickster can betray, even supervise the masacres of their kinsfolk, what is the assurance that this house slave trickster won't poison the master's food later?
I pointed out earlier that this invasion is happening in various spheres in various ways. I was not generalising faultily. Look closely, and you would see it. Just one annoying instance of invasion at the level of language. An elderly kinsman once invited me to a traditional wedding of his daughter in Ibadan. He was a member of a Christian born-again church. I attended the wedding, but instead of being the host, I became the guest. Instead of being the among those (Igbo kinsmen) telling the Yoruba groom-to-be what to bring to satisfy traditional Igbo culture of marriage, I became a guest listening to the master-of-ceremonies direct the occasion in Yoruba. I thought it was one of those MC errors, but was surprised and shocked when he announced in English that if he used Igbo that no one would understand him! So, I had suddenly lost my linguistic identity? And what was traditional about the wedding, therefore, if Igbo and its culture had been deceptively jettisoned? Chai! Did my mother not warn me to be careful, to make sure the Other does not deceive me? That no one would understand ...and the people nodded their assent! Who was "no one"? Whose traditional marriage was taking place? Igbo or Yoruba? This was again happening in the house of an elderly Igbo who retired from government service years ago and was being helped by his church to kill Igbo! I lost my cool; walked up to him and told him how disappointed I was. To try to drown my pain, I crossed the road, bought a bottle of beer and drank it hurrriedly and angrily. I beckoned to my wife to join me on the bus, and minutes later I sped off!
The people of Umuofia and Alaigbo (its real-life parallel world) have disappointed Okonkwo; have sent a message through their tumult and words of blame that he is alone, that he is not one of them anymore. He is an outsider and the best for him is to make his exit! In a heroic way, not like a dog.
Indeed, one has a deeper understanding of the idea of things fall apart used as the title of Chinua Achebe's novel. Was it only in the colonial, fictional Umuofia society that things fell apart? In reality -- and in continuation of our idea of reality mimicking fiction now -- has that imaginary "one nation state" hatched by the British colonial hen not fallen apart? And are the descendants of Okonkwo not still in tumult?
Things have fallen apart in a Nigerian society and in many other postcolonial societies, more then Yeats the visionary poet that provided the intertextual material for Achebe thought about. The spiritus mundi is already inside the rock abode: one is not talking of crouching to Bethlehem to be born. The rocky protective, its destined Bethlehem, is from where flows its venom as this tumult goes on in reality and the people of Umuofia will taste its wrath.
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