Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

What with the false report about Achebe's death (he actually died in 2013), I was reminded that I needed to read this book. I can't remember if I had read it before. My uni reading list was insane. Basically it required that I read 8 classic books a week. Sure! I read fast, but not that fast, and definitely not that fast with heavy books, juggling other courses and doing essays - oh and the social life! I might have read it and forgotten it completely - there were soooo many books; I might have started it and then decided that I did not like it and put it down; or it could have been one of those that I just didn't ever get too. Either way, it needed a read.

While I won't be teaching this one at school, I can see the benefit of studying it. There are some very interesting themes in here that make one think. It covers gender issues, colonialism, religion and tribal life to name but a few.

The main character, Okonkwo, was a strange character. Initially he seemed to be heroic. But by the end he was a huge disappointment. He was aggressive and violent, and his compassion was completely jaded by his fear of looking like an efulefu (a worthless man, or a man who behaved like a woman) or becoming anything like his own father. Okonkwo is involved in some terrible things and it is through his own actions that many things fall apart.

Of course the other cause of things falling apart was the arrival of the white man. We see how they have an effect on the spirituality of the tribe, how it is their arrival that causes a division in the tribe.

Reading this book as a white person is quite an experience. The idea of dumping new born twins in the evil forest because twins are something evil is barbaric and stupid. Mutilating the corpses of dead children so that they don't keep returning to die is equally insane. But yet, I could still appreciate why these people might have thought this. Yet, the arrival of the white man, with their religion and courts, does not fix anything. They felt like an intrusion. These people had their own way of dealing with crimes and issues that arrived in the tribe, and they worked for them. I felt the injustice of having other people arrive and then dictate how they were to run their land. I sympathised as they faced challenges that they did not have solutions for,. because such unthinkable things had never happened in the past.

This was a thought-provoking read. It wasn't a fun read, but it definitely got me thinking.

I rated this 4 stars on Goodreads, because, even though my enjoyment was not there, I found the narrative intriguing and continued turning pages, and then the themes were handled very well.

This is the 13th book read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.