I first read this novel in high school as a literature requirement. My attention was on themes, symbolism, setting and figurative language. I simply wanted to pass my exams.
Reading it again as an adult felt like reading a different book. It is only now that I appreciate why Things Fall Apart is regarded as one of the most important novels ever written about Africa.
How would Africa look today if it had never been colonised? What would our cultures look like? What would we believe about ourselves? And how different would our understanding of the people who colonised us be if they had never convinced us that our ways were primitive and that they had come to bring us civilisation?
These were the questions on my mind as I reread Things Fall Apart, first published in 1958.
I first read this novel in high school as a literature requirement. My attention was on themes, symbolism, setting and figurative language. I simply wanted to pass my exams.
Reading it again as an adult felt like reading a different book. It is only now that I appreciate why Things Fall Apart is regarded as one of the most important novels ever written about Africa.
Set in Umuofia, an Igbo community in present-day Nigeria, the novel follows Okonkwo through life before colonialism, his exile, and the arrival of British rule, each marking a turning point for his community.
Okonkwo grows up ashamed of his father, Unoka, a gentle man who loved music and conversation but died without titles, wealth or social status. Determined never to become like him, Okonkwo builds his life around the opposite ideal. He works relentlessly, earns respect, acquires titles and becomes one of the most successful men in Umuofia.
Yet his success is driven by the fear of appearing weak.
That fear shapes almost every decision Okonkwo makes. He mistakes violence for strength, rules his household through intimidation and believes compassion is a sign of weakness. In trying so hard not to become his father, he becomes trapped by the inability to question the version of manhood he has created for himself.
One of the novel's most heartbreaking moments comes when Okonkwo helps kill Ikemefuna. Although an elder had warned him not to take part because the boy regarded him as a father, Okonkwo joins in anyway, afraid of appearing weak.
Later, when grief begins to overwhelm him, he scolds himself:
"When did you become a shivering old woman... How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number?"
The women carry an extraordinary burden. They live in a deeply patriarchal society where violence against wives is normalised, and their voices are secondary to men's. Reading about Okonkwo's wives, especially Ekwefi, I kept wondering how much suffering a woman was expected to endure before anyone questioned the system itself.
Achebe also presents a complex picture of women. When Okonkwo is exiled to his motherland, his uncle Uchendu reminds him that when life becomes unbearable, a child returns to his mother. "Mother is supreme." The same society that limits women also sees the mother as a source of protection and strength. I found myself wrestling with these two realities.
What Achebe presents is a society more complex than I remembered from my school days. It is neither the primitive place described by colonial narratives nor a perfect society without flaws. It has laws, justice, religion, ceremonies and governance, alongside traditions that invite difficult questions.
I thought of how African societies might have changed had they been left to confront those questions on their own. Would some customs have disappeared over time? Would others have been preserved? We cannot know. But Achebe reminds us that change was already part of life long before Europeans arrived.
Religion is one example. The people of Umuofia believe in Chukwu, the supreme creator, while also consulting deities, ancestors and oracles. Their beliefs are woven into every aspect of life. So when the missionaries arrive insisting that theirs is the only true God, the conflict is about more than religion. It is about whose beliefs are seen as legitimate.
That is where Obierika becomes such an important character. Unlike Okonkwo, he is willing to ask difficult questions. He respects tradition, but he does not accept every tradition without reflection. When something troubles him, he says so.
Obierika made me wonder whether change was already possible from within the Igbo society. Perhaps not every tradition needed an outsider to question it. After all, people create culture. As they evolve, so do the cultures they create. Perhaps that was already happening in Umuofia.
Perhaps that is why Things Fall Apart continues to matter nearly 70 years later. Achebe depicts a society already wrestling with its own strengths and weaknesses, just as every society does. Africa's story did not begin with colonialism, nor were Africans waiting for someone else to shape their future. The real tragedy is that colonialism cut those conversations short, taking away a people's ability to decide for themselves what should change and what should remain.
Jane Shussa is a digital communication specialist with a love for books, coffee, nature, and travel. She can be reached at [email protected].
