In the Spotlight: "Things Fall Apart"

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) tells the story of a small Igbo village’s first encounter with white Europeans, in the latter half of the 19th century. The first half of the novel paints a vivid portrait of the religion, economy, oral storytelling traditions, and social framework of pre-contact Igbo society; the second half explores the effects of the arrival of Christian missionaries and colonial European rulers.

Below we offer leads into your next FOA, IOP, WT assignments. Use these ideas to inspire your own topic or take them just as they are.

"[I]n its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society."

FOA / IOP

• Analysis of a key passage or extract. Choose a key passage. Explain its meaning and significance in the relation to the rest of the work. For example, how does the opening stanza of William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming,” (from which the title of the novel is taken), act as an epigraph to the novel?

• A presentation on the role of weather in the novel. How does it work, symbolically or otherwise, in relation to important elements of the novel such as religion? Are rain and draught significant? Explore the ways in which weather affects the emotional and spiritual realms of the novel as well as the physical world.

• Interview with Achebe (radio). Make sure you have a clear focus of discussion. For example: “Is Okonkwo a hero?”; “How relevant is Things Fall Apart to our times?”; “What contributes most to things falling apart in Umuofia?” Use the BBC World Bookclub podcast, below, as a model for the format. Include interesting questions from the audience.

• Class Discussion: Animal imagery abounds in the folktales and proverbs circulated among the clan members. What is the significance of some of the animals they discuss? What does the prominence of animal figures suggest about Igbo culture and about Achebe’s larger goals?

• Presentation. The role and significance of music. Throughout the novel, drums, music, and the town crier’s voice punctuate the narrative at key moments. What are the implications, for example, of Unoka’s taking his flute with him to the Evil Forest when he dies?

• Watch and listen to sample student IOPs for this novel.

WT1

• Tabloid sensationalizing Okonkwo’s suicide or the cold-blooded murder of his adopted son or marriage to several women (polygamy). The rationale can explain how the language and content of the tabloid propagates stereotypes of Africans and African culture.

• Report. How would the Commissioner’s report (in full) have looked had it been empathic?

• Advertisement. Base your ad on the Igbo concept of chi.

• Diary entry. A diary entry in which reveals his thoughts and feelings about another character or any aspects of the action of a literary text. This could be one of the missionaries describing his understanding of the source and nature of resistance to conversion.

WT2

• Power and Privilege: "How and why is a social group portrayed in a particular way?" Women suffer great losses in this novel but also, in certain circumstances, hold tremendous power. What role do women play in Things Fall Apart and how is their particular power portrayed?

• Text and Genre: "How has the text borrowed from other texts, and with what effects?"  Achebe includes stories from Igbo culture and tradition, proverbs, and parables. What is the significance of Achebe’s integration of African (oral) literary forms with that of Western literary forms?  How does the novel counter Western stereotypes of Africa and Africans? How effectively does it achieve this aim? Check out Achebe’s lecture “An Image of Africa” (included above).

• Reader, Culture, and Text: "How could the text be read and interpreted differently by two different readers?" This novel would be a source of positive reinforcement for many young African (-American) readers whereas for many White European readers it could challenge their values and beliefs (imagine a Victorian reader of the 1870s … Inspiration from Achebe’s famous lecture “An Image of Africa”

Need more ideas? Need help with starting or completing your assignment? Contact your tutor or, if you don’t have a tutor yet, contact us.

Resources:

• An Interview With Chinua Achebe (podcast) – the renowned author talks about optimism, activism and the meaning of life.
• BBC interview (podcast)
• “An Image of Africa” (transcription)– a famous lecture given by Achebe that explains the problems with the way Africa has often been represented in Western literature (including a scathing attack on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness)

Need help with your project? Contact us.