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Jonathan Kopnick

Mrs. White

Honors English 10

May 13, 2009

Quote Analysis

“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can

be matched in this country, [America] at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in

native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters.

Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European

civilization.-W.E.B. DuBois

"The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were

amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan

can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have

fallen apart." (Companion quote)

- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, Ch. 20

The quote directly compares to When Things Fall Apart as illustrated by its companion

quote from the novel itself. The quote shows the terror that the White Europeans brought to the

Nigerian Ibo Tribe. The quote shows how the colonizers through their racially driven

stereotypical self-excuses took advantage of the Nigerian culture. They brought terrible problems

to the tribe in the novel. They brought not only their own problems but they broke the cultural

beliefs of the Ibo, and they broke the tight knit community that the tribe had valued before the

Christian influx into the country. The quote describes the cultural mutilation of the Ibo as

lynching; this draws a parallel to the novel when the main character hangs him in disgust at the

ability of the settlers to divide the tribe. The quote shows the symbolism in Achebe’s novel, of
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how the main character, representative of traditional African culture hangs himself. The falling

apart of the tribe, is the falling apart of Nigeria as a whole, and what better way to divide a

culture than by making its traditions hang themselves. The idea that the traditional beliefs were

inferior and the passing on of these ideas to the generation of Africans who converted to Western

beliefs are the rope around Okonkwo’s neck. The quote is an illustration of the “knife on the

things that held” together the tribe. The colonizers made Nigeria, the village separate itself, it

made the culture disrespect itself. The stereotype became reality when accused believed their

own insult. The West won because they hung the Nigerian with his own rope, made out of his

community.