Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Title)

 

Things Fall Apart

by Chinua Achebe

(Title) 

The title of Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart has been taken from William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”. The epigraph taken as the title occurs in the first few lines of the visionary poem.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …..

Yeat’s poem which comes from the Irish poet’s 1921 collection of poems, Michael Robartes and the Dancer, speaks of the breakdown of the “old” order and its displacement by a “new”  order that rouses mixed feelings of revulsion and fascination. Chinua Achebe’s novel too is about a forcible break-up of an older and settled order. Focusing on the life of Okonkwo he has assessed and analysed the various reasons for the breakup of the older and settled way of life. The protagonist is brave, hardworking and honest but egoistic and reckless. His own pride and the turn of events both contribute to the fall of things. An accidental shot from his gun leads to the killing of a young boy of the clan and as per the norms of the tribe the only course open to Okonkwo was to flee from the clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman and he could return to the clan after seven years only. This event happens in the last chapter of part one of the novel and marks the beginning of the things falling apart. Dislocation leads to the subversion of power and Okonkwo had to begin life anew because of the tragic events in life. Part two and three of the novel highlight that the things fall apart because of the discontent, dissent and discord sown amongst the people of Ibo land by the new Christian religion, which the white missionaries brought with them setting son against father.

People start doubting the age-old traditions and customs which they have been following without question since birth. Obierika while explaining the loss of faith of the people in the old authority says “The white man is very clever ..... He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart”. Even Okonkwo’s son Nwoye gets attracted by the new dispensation and leaves his family thus breaking the norm of following the patriarchal customs. The centre does not succeed in holding and a gradual disintegration begins in the accepted patterns of the society.

After the act of suicide Okonkwo is treated as a “Thing” that has ‘Fallen Apart’ rather than as a human being who had brought much credit to his village. As it is an abomination for a man to take his own life and is an offense against the Earth, his body cannot even be touched and buried by his clansmen as it becomes evil. Okonkwo meets a tragic end but the novel is not only a personal but also a collective tragedy. The title thus is apt and justifies how things fall apart in Igbo land in the1890’s.