Assignment-1

Question- “The individual is a small cog in the overall community wheel”. Discuss this
statement with relation to ‘Things Fall Apart’.

Answer- ‘Things fall Apart’, a magnificent classic novel which emerges as a foundational text
as it tries to set up a prominent structure (a reformation in the structure of African Literature)
to glorify “African Culture” through “African Literature”, the creator of this worldwide
famous foundational African Literary text is written by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian writer,
critique and a craftsman who has published it in 1958 (two years before Nigeria became
independent from Colonial forces). Through the novel Things fall Apart, Achebe tries to
counter the notorious, dark and barbarous image of Africa which has been projected by
European forces (western writers) and colonial enterprise from four long centuries (from 15 th
century when Europe discovered Africa). Before highlighting and contrasting the idiom given
with regard to Achebe’s Things fall Apart, there is an utmost need to critically examine the
context of the novel as without knowing the context, it would be problematic to get
equipped with the structure and the function of the story.

There were two myths of Africa which was manufactured through the lens of western writers
and colonizers such as “Racial Myths” (Vidya-mitra, 2016) which deals with ‘Beastly Savage
Africans (cannibalistic, primitive, barbarous, vicious and physically ghostly) associated with
‘Noble Savage Africans’ (confident, elite, an object of extravagant admiration) whereas
another myth which is called “Spatial Myths” (Vidya-mitra, 2016) deals with a peculiar
dichotomy of Africa’s image as the white man’s grave (a place of diseases, insanity, and dark
mysteries) and as the white man’s paradise which encapsulates Africa’s image as a place of
great bounty, exotic flora and fauna. Also, Projection of Africa through European Literature
reflects an antithesis of Europe and of its civilization as Achebe’s novel counters these myths
which were cleverly manufactured by Colonisers.

If we speculate the statement “an Individual is a small cog in overall community wheel” with
regard to the novel, we may find out individuals inevitable contribution to regulate and
protect one’s community and how that inevitable efforts made by one became ignorant and
unacknowledged by the community itself, this statement can be well described by one of the
characters in the novel called ‘Okonkwo’, the central figure, self-made man, a wrestler and a
warrior, a male chauvinist, as the whole actions in the story governed around him and his
misdeeds. Okonkwo being a mighty representative and a leader of his Nigerian community
(shown in the first part of the novel) and how his remarkable identity gets fade away as the
story proceeds (from part second) till the onset of Colonial Force (from part third), Achebe
writes about Okonkwo’s dispositions as “He was tall and huge…………….he would use his fists
(Achebe, pp. 1) as it signifies his superior physique, low temperament, vicious nature (as it
shown in the early chapter of the novel that he brutally beats his wife), he further writes
“Okonkwo was not a man of thought but of action” (Achebe, pp.49) as it outlines his deficient
intellect as he strongly believes in physical fight. The gradual failure of Okonkwo’s
authoritative personality and his hold on his community fails as examined by a pair of
renowned critics and authors called Whittaker and Msiska, as they wrote about Okonkwo in
the book called Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ that “The narrator in Part 1 of Things Fall
Apart employs periphrasis (a roundabout way of speaking to circle around the subject,
………………the novel” (Whittaker, Msiska. Pp.8 ) as it enables an insight to look at the downfall
of Okonkow though he used to be the pivotal force who upholds the community as their
behavioral conduction follows a cyclical way of communication (collectively sharing ideas) but
as after the exile of Okonkwo (he commits a female sin by killing his own member of clan)
and the possession of his community take over by the colonizers, their way of communication
became linear and dialogic that represents the broken parts of Umuofia’s (the Nigerian
indigenous community) culture, customs, and rituals. The author further writes “As always in
Things Fall Apart…………he portrays the colonial encounter as both a site of oppression and
one of the liberation for different within the colonized population” (Whittaker, Msiska. Pp.
12) from the statement it justifies the duality in Achebe’s attitude, one which projects the
notion of oppressed nature of colonizers, on the other hand a sense of liberty of the
marginalized lot within the community (depicts the idea of Subalternism in postcolonial
criticism proposed by Antonio Gramsci) even if we look upon Achebe’s duality through the
lens of Postcolonial Critisism which is “At another level, the double or hybrid identity is
precisely what the postcoloinal situation brings into being” (Barry, Pp. 198) as it would be
simply inferable that this hybrid attitude which at the same time encouraged colonial
enterprise and its intervention (in the culture of indigenous community) led the non-
acknowledged and non-praising attitude of Umuofia’s people over individual effort of
OkonkwoVid against the colonial force.

So, to sum up the entire statements and justifications presented, we can simply apprehend
the novel Things fall Apart as a conscious effort to disprove the colonial image of Africa, to
counter colonial stereotypes of Africa and help African readers to regain their self-respect
and to take pride in their indigenous culture, Achebe being a critical analyser as he doesn’t
entirely rejects each and everything from colonizers at the same time, he doesn’t blindly
follows his cultural set-ups, rituals, values and customs, he enables a dialogic approach to
communicate with each other ( the communication between Western masses with African
masses) and for that he adopts colonizers language that is English (the same idea followed by
a Latin American writer known as Rigoberta Menchu to write up her memoir). The small cog
of the overall community wheel as represented by Okonkow ends up with absolute
discouragement of his deed by killing a messenger of colonizers from his own community as it
propels the distortion and disruption of the entire Umoufia community and its practices.

References-

Primary Source-

1. Achebe, Chinua. Things fall Apart.

Secondary Source-

1. Whittaker, David. Msiska, Hangson-Palive. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Pp. 8,10
and 12.
2. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory.
3. Vidya-mitra. Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart- The Context. 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ-pLiomGSQ. Accessed 17 Apr 2022.