Overlapping Character Variations in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Overlapping Character Variations in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Muna Abd-Rabbo (bio) 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 [End Page 55] reactions to the advent of European colonialists and thus help explain why the Umuofian society eventually falls apart. While the individuals in Things Fall Apart may illustrate the categories in Williams’ social stratification, they tend to go beyond such groupings, consequently revealing the limitations of Williams’ proposed social system. My argument will demonstrate how Williams’ categories overlap within the same character, while some characters altogether defy classification within these social categories. Despite such shortcomings, Williams’ classification still offers the means to portray Achebe’s characters as fully-fledged individuals with their own distinct voices and narratives. Their polyphonic narratives become part of Achebe’s postcolonial counter-discourse which, in turn, serves to dismantle the formerly dominant colonialist discourse that had distorted depictions of Africa in the past. I will first present a brief outline of Williams’ classification, which will be followed by an analysis of the characters in light of the various categories in his paradigm. Although Williams’ classification is not all-encompassing due to the lack of distinctiveness and overall comprehensiveness of the categories, its application to Achebe’s novel helps foreground the individuality of his characters in order to further articulate his postcolonial discourse. In a sense, Achebe’s characters defy Williams’ classification in that the Umuofians in Things Fall Apart either merge certain categories or escape classification entirely. This lack of complete conformity to a Western descriptive system of social classification may serve as further testimony to Achebe’s postcolonial counter-discourse. The overlapping variations in Achebe’s characterization within Williams’ social framework help readers uncover the polyphonic quality of Things Fall Apart. It is this multilayered texture of Achebe’s masterpiece that endows this African narrative with a distinct voice, thereby undermining the validity of the colonialists’ previously authoritative, monolithic discourse. The colonial encounter leaves behind what Homi Bhabha terms “the intervention of the Third Space, which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, [and] destroys this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is continuously revealed as an integrated, open, expanding code” (208). In this Third Space, the articulation of cultural differences occurs within the framework of hybridity (Bhabha 208). Achebe takes his position most prominently in this Third Space by appropriating the former colonizer’s discourse for the purpose of his African, [End Page 56] postcolonial counter-discourse.3 As Helen Tiffin contends, “post-colonial counter-discursive strategies involve a mapping of the dominant discourse, a reading and exposing of its underlying assumptions and the dis/mantling of these assumptions from the cross-cultural standpoint of the imperially subjectified ‘local’” (98). One of the...