When I first read Things Fall Apart, it felt like coming home. This was not just a story. This was our story told with honesty, with pride, and with pain. Chinua Achebe, may his soul rest, gave us something powerful with this book. He did not write to please the white man. He wrote to show the world who we are as Igbo people, in our fullness both the beauty and the flaws.
The story follows Okonkwo, a man who reminds me of many men I know, even in today’s Nigeria. He is strong, hardworking, and determined, but he is also haunted by fear fear of failure, fear of weakness, and fear of being seen like his father, Unoka, who was gentle and poor. Okonkwo carries that fear like a heavy load, and it leads him to make choices that, in the end, destroy him.
Achebe shows our culture with great care. The way we gather in the village square, the breaking of the kola nut, the songs and dances, the wrestling matches, the respect for the gods and ancestors he put all of it there. As I was reading, I could smell the harmattan dust, hear the talking drums, and see the red earth of the village. This book is not fiction to me. It is memory.
But Achebe did not just write to praise Igbo culture. He also showed where we struggled. He spoke truthfully about our customs how harsh the gods could be, how women were treated, how fear and shame could lead men to do terrible things. Okonkwo beat his wives, even during the Week of Peace. He killed Ikemefuna, a boy who called him “father.” These are not easy things to read, but they are part of the story. Achebe did not lie to protect us. He told the truth.
The arrival of the white man this is where the heart begins to ache. At first, it seems small. Just a few missionaries, talking about their one God. But then they build a church. Then they bring government, courts, and soldiers. They take the land, they take the people, and they call our customs “savage.” It is painful to watch, because we know how it ends. We lived it. Our people changed forever.
Okonkwo could not bend. He believed in strength, and he could not understand this new world. To him, it felt like weakness was winning. In the end, he chose death over surrender. His story is a tragedy, but not just his alone. It is the tragedy of a people losing their way, being torn apart by a force they did not understand.
What pains me most is the ending. After all that Okonkwo lived through, all his struggles, his story is reduced to a line in a white man’s report. That is how our stories have been treated ignored, silenced, buried. But Achebe said “no.” With this book, he dug up that story and gave it breath again.
Things Fall Apart is not just a book. It is a mirror. It shows us where we came from, what we lost, and what we must remember. Achebe wrote it for us, the sons and daughters of the land. He wrote it in English, yes, but the spirit inside is Igbo. And that spirit still speaks.
If you are Igbo, or African, or someone who wants to understand who we are not the version from colonial textbooks, but the real people this book is where you start. Achebe gave us our voice. Let us never forget to use it.
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