Overlapping Character Variations in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Chinua Achebe’s first novel Things Fall Apart (1958) is, as he puts it, “an act of atonement with [his] past, the ritual return and homage of a prodigal son” (Achebe, “Named for Victoria” 193). In this novel Achebe reconciles himself with his African heritage by taking possession of the African voice and articulating the narrative of the African people, thereby deconstructing the dominant, colonial discourse that had created the image of the African people and their history during colonial rule. In their approach to this novel, critics have dealt extensively with the dialectics of the colonizer and the colonized on the one hand,1 and the dichotomy of the individual and society on the other.2 It becomes apparent that the Umuofian characters in Achebe’s novel exemplify these two elaborately structured dichotomies very clearly: the characters not only suffer from the repercussions of colonialism, but also undergo inner divisions within their own tribal domain. In this paper I will explore both of these intricately woven dichotomies, expounding upon the characters’ social interactions within the framework of Raymond Williams’ classification of the individual’s connection to society. Furthermore, I will analyze the spectrum of the various characters’ individuality in the wake of the European-African colonialist encounter. Williams’ social classification helps bring to the fore the complexity of the characters in Achebe’s novel, while also shedding light on the elaborate composition of pre-colonialist African civilization. Moreover, Williams’ categories provide the means to examine the African characters’ varying