Things Fall Apart as Landmark 20th Century Literature?

I'm finding it particularly difficult to think of an conceivable reason why Things Fall Apart should be considered one of the great novels of the 20th century. While it is entertaining, it is also simplistic and undeveloped. Indeed, other than providing a certain amount of cultural knowledge it does not do anything which separates it from the vast majority of popular or young adult literature published. Not only does Achebe fail to demonstrate a mastery of the English language (something which has been accomplished by many non-native authors) his novel is also completely devoid of developed characters. If he wanted Europeans to realize that Africans were not one-dimensional he should have created a main character who was less of a savage.

While Things Fall Apart is considered to be the beginning of the 20th Century African novel (or something of that nature) it is entirely unremarkable except for its chronologically early popularity; that is to say, other African fiction does not come from it but simply comes later. Were a similar novel written which did not take place in Africa, it may have fallen entirely out of print at this point. This novel quite simply does not meet any imaginable standard of great literature, nor does it create a discernible "African Voice." Instead, Achebe provides a simplistic narrative of the process of colonization which is only unique in that it is set in Africa.

However, beyond stylistic issues, this novel has several weaknesses when trying to make its intended points. Firstly, while Achebe's Africans are sympathetic characters and clearly intended to be wholly human, it is difficult for the reader to be particularly critical of the British, being as the Africans were mutilating the corpses of children and leaving twins to die of exposure. There is nothing nice to call these things but "savage customs." Certainly not a culture anyone thinks should be held onto. It is very easy to understand how this seemingly accurate experience in Africa would lead Europeans to civilize the continent- and civilize doesn't need to be in quotations when one is talking about ending the practice of leaving twins to die of exposure. More than anything, the novel shows the end of a culture which may have had a sort of quaint pastoral charm if one is a Romanticist or an egalitarian anarcho-Primitivist, but was savage and in great need of reform. While it is unfortunate that Africans were suddenly put under a foreign yoke, jobs were created, prices for agricultural goods increased drastically, and untouchables were allowed into the fold of decent society. And somewhere someone is crying because this happened.

A further weakness of this novel comes in Achebe's extraordinarily clumsy handling of European disinterest in African customs. This is akin to Upton Sinclair writing a book which was supposed to be entirely in favor of socialism then not showing enough faith in his readers (incidentally, the "huddled masses") to figure out the message on their own, and going on to destroy an otherwise reasonable narrative with explicit political proselytizing. Achebe falls into the same trap with the District Commissioner who is planning on writing a book about African customs. Specifically, his idea that Okonkwo's story could occupy a chapter, or "Perhaps not a whole chapter, but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate" (209). As the book closes with that, the ending message is that to Europeans African lives will never be more than a sidestory (whereas the reader nows that it is possible to write a novel about Okonkwo: they just read it.) However, this point is well made without this commentary. Instead of ending the book by saying that the body of a suicide will desecrate the soil, thus leaving the novel a tragedy whereby an admirable character is unable to adapt to a rapidly changing world, the reader is left with a patronizing effort to induce guilt about an insufficient breadth of cultural knowledge.

Things Fall Apart is a lot of things. It is interesting and entertaining. It is informative about African culture and customs. However, this novel does nothing to further the art of the novel, it instead just takes basic conventions of narration and sets them in Africa. The use of African religion is no different from a European work discussing God, and the things the Africans go through are no different than what progress did to disrupt the European social fabric. It is easy to understand why this book is read in schools, being as I would have been able to easily read and understand it in the third grade, but it seems this becoming one of the "Great Novels of the 20th Century" has far more to do with the ideology of literary scholars than with any real or imagined literary merit.


On one level I feel bad being so harsh, as I actually quite enjoyed reading this book and found the exposure of African culture to be very interesting, however the books weaknesses in plot, storytelling, and style wholly separate it from great world literature of the period. The issue with this book is that it is something you would give to a friend who doesn't like reading when they are about to fly somewhere, it is no sort of revolution for third world literature.


Further, it is extraordinarily ironic that Achebe wants to call Conrad racist for portraying Africans as savages, then rights a story about how leaving twin babies to die of exposure because they were cursed were normal. According to Achebe these people were practicing human sacrifice, and somehow the use of the term savage is unfair. Like so many other terms, savage has been attacked by cultural Marxists to the point of being profane in any context which is not criticizing someone for using it to describe a native. In reality, Conrad is showing the pieces of the society that Achebe says fell apart because of Europeans. Ironically, Heart of Darkness is in most ways a far more scathing critique of colonialism than Things Fall Apart, being as most of the actions that Europeans take in the latter are objectively positive whereas in the former the actions of Europeans are morally questionable at best.