Igbo Metaphysics in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Abstract

I recognize in the critical history of Things Fall Apart three forms of hermeneutics. The first group reads the novel from a linguistic paradigm 1 and argues for the illegitimacy of any anthropological interpretation of the text. For this group, what is important is the symbolic nature of such a novel, which "continually restructures a variety of subtexts: cultural, political, historical and at times even biographical" (Quayson 123). The second group, particularly A.G. Stock, sees a rapport between Achebe's Igboland and Yeats's England. The third group, comprized of Obiechina, Chinweizu et al., Robert Wren, and Nnolim, explores the historical and cultural contexts of the novel. Yet, the pervasiveness of Igbo metaphysics in the text has not been fully discussed, and, therefore, it needs more detailing. What I shall do here is to explore the text with the intention of showing how Achebe uses Igbo metaphysics in his narrative imagination. But before I continue, I want to situate briefly Igbo metaphysics within the range of metaphysics in general and then pave the path of my interpretation.