THEMES, SYMBOLS & FORESHADOWING

LIST OF THEMES &

THEMES
 TRADITION VS
CHANGE

 The novel's title is a quote from a poem by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats called
"The Second Coming": "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere
anarchy is loosed upon the world.‖
 Much of the novel centers on Umuofian traditions of marriage, burial, and
harvest.
 Achebe's decision to use a third person narrator instead of writing the
book from Okonkwo's perspective, demonstrates just how central the idea
of tradition is to the book, since the third-person narrator can more
objectively describe facets of Umuofian society—their love of proverbs or
how they make judicial decisions, for example—to the reader than
Okonkwo could as an insider to these rituals.
 As the quote in the epigraph suggests, though, these traditions that form
the centre of Umuofian society cannot survive in the face of major changes
occurring around them. As the white men enter the clans and impose their
world order upon them, Umuofian society falls apart.
 TRADITION VS
CHANGE CONT…

 Okonkwo and his son Nwoye also symbolize tradition and
change, respectively.
 OKONKWO = TRADITION - he holds conventional ideas of
rank, reputation, and masculinity in high esteem.
 NWOYE = CHANGE - Nwoye feels cold when he
contemplates certain aspects of the Umuofian society—such
as leaving infant twins out to die and the idea of sacrificing
innocents like Ikemefuna—and this pushes him to join the
Christians when he's given the chance later in the novel.

 LANGUAGE
THE IGBO LANGUAGE:

 Achebe's decision to transcribe several words from the Igbo
language throughout the novel takes back some of this power, by
suggesting that there are African ideas that cannot be adequately
described in English.
 Achebe also uses repetition and idioms to create a more African
style while writing in English.
ENGLISH:
 The ability to read and write in English begins to represent power,
as the white men provide more financial incentives for learning
their language and more clan members choose to enrol in their
schools.
 The English language is portrayed as the superior language and the
colonizers emphasise the power one can obtain in learning it.
 LANGUAGE

 Whenever a translator would mediate between the colonizers
and the Igbo people, there were often misinterpretations and
this lead to societal issues.
 To add to this, what colonial rule and education unwittingly
gave Nigerians was a common language with which to
communicate with one another.
 By writing in English, Achebe is telling a story that people
across Nigeria can comprehend, and by shaping it to his
purposes, Achebe is claiming what was originally imposed.

 MASCULINITY

OKONKWO
 Okonkwo dedicates himself to being as masculine as possible,
and through his rise to become a powerful man of his tribe
and subsequent fall both within the tribe and in the eyes of
his son Nwoye, masculinity is explored.
 Okonkwo believes in traditional gender roles, and it pains
him that his son Nwoye is not more aggressive like he is.
 As a result, it's revealing that he expresses the wish that his
daughter Ezinma were a boy—from this we know how fond
he is of her and also that her characteristics.
 MASCULINITY
CONT…

 Additionally, in a meeting towards the very beginning of the
book, Okonkwo insults a man without title by calling him a
woman, demonstrating how much masculinity is valued
when ranking those in Umuofia society
 Okonkwo forces himself to kill his own surrogate son,
murder the white man against his better judgment, and hang
himself before a punishment can be imposed by others.
 Okonkwo's aggression makes him weak in the end—it leaves
him with no room to maneuver against the more subtle ways
of the white man.
 MASCULINITY
CONT…

NWOYE:
 Nwoye struggles with the idea of masculinity as he wants to
please his father by being aggressive and traditional, but is
repelled by the violence in Umuofia and joins the Christians.
 Uchendu (Okonkwo’s uncle) tells Okonkwo that a child
belongs to his father, but when a father beats his child, the
child will run into the safety of their mother. Similarly, after
being beaten by his father, Nwoye leaves to seek solace in the
more feminine and seemingly gentle Christian religion.

 RELIGION

 Religion is the main arena where both cultural differences
and similarities play out at the end of the novel. Religion
represents order in both societies, but they manifest
differently.
 UMUOFIAN RELIGION: religion is based on agriculture. The
gods in Umuofia are fearsome as clan members are at the
mercy of natural cycles for their livelihood. (Exile, death etc
as punishments)
 CHRISTIAN RELIGION: Religion is seen as education in the
white man’s world. Mr Brown, the missionary, condemns the
idea of fearing your god. Christianity, as portrayed by the
missionary, provides a safe haven for those who have been
condemned by Umuofian laws.
 RELIGION CONT…

 The dialogue between one of the clan leaders of a
neighbouring tribe, Akunna, and Mr. Brown reveals how
much both systems of religion have in common.
 This dialogue about religion does a lot to carry out Achebe's
mission of depicting Nigerian society as one that's far from
primitive—depicting it instead as a culture with mythologies
and rituals and an understanding of the mythologies behind
those rituals. (This is beneficial to the people at the time who
understood very little about African Traditions, falsely
displaying them as primitive in various writings)

 

SYMBOLS
 YAMS

 Towards the beginning of the novel, Achebe's narrator refers
to yam as ―the king of crops,‖ emphasizing both its
importance in Umuofia society and its masculine status.
 The clan's year is divided according to the planting and
harvesting of yams, and Okonkwo's mood and actions vary
whether it's the Week of Peace, the planting season, or the
Feast of the New Yam.
 During the Feast of the New Yam, for example, Okonkwo
grows restless with celebrations and the lack of work, and his
temper flares, creating an episode of violence against Ekwefi.
 YAMS

 During the planting season, Okonkwo berates Ikemefuna and
Nwoye for mishandling the seed-yams, but he's actually the
most content during this period of labor, since he can work
tirelessly.
 Yams are labor intensive and considered a man's crop.
 Only men plant yams, and their ability to support their family
with their yam harvest is a sign of wealth and ability.

 FIRE

 Okonkwo and his fellow clansmen liken him to a ―Roaring
Flame‖—aggressive, powerful, and strong-willed.
 For Okonkwo, these are all positive, masculine traits, and he
laments the fact that his son Nwoye doesn't possess the same
fiery spirit.
 However, Okonkwo has a revelation in Chapter 17, as he
gazes into the fire after his son joins the Christians: ―Living
fire begets cold, impotent ash.‖ He realizes that his aggression
could foster the opposite in Nwoye, but he never makes the
connection that fire eventually exhausts its source as well.
 All of Okonkwo's impatience and aggression eventually lead
to his own destruction after a spectacular final flare of anger
when he murders the white messenger.

 

FORESHADOWING
 FORESHADOWING

 Foreshadowing in Things Fall Apart begins with the novel’s
title, which indicates that the story to come does not end well.
 Achebe amplifies this sense of impending doom by prefacing
Part One with an epigraph containing the quote from W. B.
Yeats’s poem ―The Second Coming‖ from which the novel gets
its name.
 Yeats’s poem presents a deeply ominous vision of some
mysterious future event, which its speaker envisions arising
from the chaos and anarchy that characterizes the present
moment.
 It is not at all clear, however, whether this future event bodes
well or ill: ―[W]hat rough beast,‖ the speaker asks, ―Slouches
towards Bethlehem to be born?‖ Achebe’s use of Yeats is
significant.
 FORESHADOWING

 Yeats wrote his poem at the start of the Irish War of
Independence, when Ireland sought its freedom from British
colonialism.
 While Yeats envisions an obscure future beyond the horror of
colonialism, Achebe uses Yeats to signal not the end but the
beginning of colonialism in Nigeria.

 The arrival of the British

 Achebe uses other strategies to foreshadow the arrival of the
British. Take, for instance, the coming of the locusts.
 The narrator explains how the first swarm of locusts that came
was small: ―They were the harbingers sent to survey the land‖
before the rest descended.
 The locusts prefigure the missionaries, who in turn prefigure
the eventual coming of colonial governance. The narrator
makes this connection explicit later in the novel, when Obierika
informs Okonkwo of the oracle’s prophecy following the first
appearance of a white man in the nine villages: ―It said that
other white men were on their way. They were locusts, it said,
and that first man was their harbinger sent to explore the
terrain.‖

 Nwoye’s Conversion

 Although Nwoye’s conversion to Christianity comes as a
surprise to Okonkwo, the narrator foreshadows this event by
frequently underlining Nwoye’s frustration both with his
father’s harsh expectations and with certain Igbo cultural
practices he finds morally questionable.
 One clear instance of foreshadowing comes in Nwoye’s love for
the tales his mother tells.
 Okonkwo dismisses these as ―women’s‖ stories and forces
Nwoye to listen to ―masculine stories of violence and
bloodshed‖ instead. When Nwoye later hears ―the poetry of the
new religion,‖ it captivates him like his mother’s stories and
lays the groundwork for his conversion.

 Okonkwo’s Suicide

 Just as clues predict Nwoye’s conversion, clues also predict
Okonkwo’s suicide.
CLUE 1 - The first clue comes early in the novel, when a farmer
succumbs to despair following a particularly devastating yam
harvest: ―One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged
himself,‖ just like Okonkwo will do at the novel’s conclusion.
CLUE 2 - A second clue comes much later, when Okonkwo is
exiled in Mbanta and Obierika comes to deliver the profits from
his friend’s yam harvest. In a morbid, joking exchange, Okonkwo
expresses that he does not know how to thank Obierika. When
Okonkwo indicates that it would not even be enough to kill one of
his sons in gratitude, Obierika suggests an alternative: ―Then kill
yourself.‖
 Okonkwo’s Suicide
Cont…

Although meant as a joke, the reader recalls this grim suggestion
ten pages later when Obierika returns to Mbanta to inform
Okonkwo of Nwoye’s conversion to Christianity. Okonkwo has a
premonition of doom: ―[He] felt a cold shudder run through him
at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation.‖ The
sense of doom Okonkwo feels here speaks at once to the
annihilation of the Igbo world and to his own future suicide.

 

THE END