Things Fall Apart

Achebe said he wrote Things Fall Apart as a direct response to Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Joyce Cary's Mister Johnson. What specifically is wrong with how those novels portray Africa — and how does Achebe correct it?

Okonkwo is described as driven not by strength but by fear — 'fear of failure and of weakness.' Does the novel support this diagnosis? Find three moments where his actions are better explained by fear than by courage.

The novel uses Igbo proverbs throughout ('When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk'). What function do the proverbs serve — are they decoration, characterization, or something structural?

Okonkwo wishes Ezinma had been born a boy. Is this a compliment or a limitation — and what does it reveal about Okonkwo's entire worldview?

Nwoye converts to Christianity not because of theological argument but because of 'the poetry of the new religion.' What was Christianity offering that Umuofia's religion couldn't — or wasn't — offering Nwoye specifically?

The District Commissioner plans to title his book 'The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.' Unpack every word in that title. What does each word reveal about the colonial worldview?

Mr. Brown is patient, curious, and builds a school and hospital. Is he still an agent of colonialism? Can someone do good things and still cause great harm — and how does the novel answer that?

Uchendu tells Okonkwo: 'Mother is supreme.' Why can't Okonkwo hear this message — and what would his life have looked like if he could?

Achebe gives Okonkwo a chi (personal god/fate). Okonkwo at his lowest thinks: 'When a man says yes, his chi says yes also... but Okonkwo's chi was not made for great things.' Is the novel ultimately about fate, free will, or both?

Why does Achebe end the novel from the District Commissioner's perspective? What would be lost if the novel ended with Obierika's 'You drove him to kill himself'?

Compare Okonkwo to a classical tragic hero (Oedipus, Antigone, Hamlet). Does he have a hamartia? Is his flaw a character trait or a structural position?

The novel's title comes from Yeats's poem 'The Second Coming' — 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.' What is the 'centre' that cannot hold in Umuofia — and who or what represents the 'rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem'?

Obierika does not participate in Ikemefuna's killing and suffers no consequence for that choice. Why doesn't Achebe use Obierika to show that Okonkwo had options?

Igbo culture in the novel practices things we would consider cruel — abandoning twins, the killing of Ikemefuna, the exile of those who commit abomination. How does Achebe ask us to hold this complexity without either excusing or condemning?

Reverend Smith 'saw things as black and white.' In what ways is binary thinking itself the instrument of colonial violence — independent of any individual colonial actor's cruelty?

The novel covers roughly three years (Parts 1-2) and then seven years of exile and return in Part 3. How does this compression of time affect the sense of catastrophe in the final section?

What is Ikemefuna's narrative function? Could the novel work without him — and what would be lost?

The egwugwu — masked ancestral spirits — administer clan justice. Achebe describes them both as spirits and as men wearing masks, both simultaneously. What is the significance of that double vision?

Achebe does not show us what happens to Nwoye after he converts. Why not? What does his disappearance from the narrative after the conversion suggest?

If you were to teach this novel alongside Heart of Darkness, at what point in the semester would you assign each — and which would you assign first? What changes depending on the order?

Okonkwo kills himself. Is this an act of despair, defiance, or pride — and does the text allow all three readings simultaneously?

The novel is written in English by a Nigerian author about an Igbo community that did not speak English. What is the politics of this choice — and what is the cost?

The women in the novel — Ekwefi, Ojiugo, Chielo — operate mostly outside the main plot. But Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, carries Ezinma to the Oracle against Okonkwo's wishes and he cannot stop her. What does that scene reveal about women's power in Umuofia?

How does the novel use weather, seasons, and the agricultural calendar to structure its emotional arc?

Achebe said he did not 'set out to write a protest novel.' Is Things Fall Apart a protest novel? Can a novel be both a protest and a work of genuine literary art — or does the political intention contaminate the fiction?

A student says: 'Okonkwo is a domestic abuser and the novel asks us to sympathize with him — that's a problem.' How do you respond?

The Oracle of the Hills and the Caves is described as the clan's highest authority — infallible, terrifying, consulted for the most serious decisions. When it orders Ikemefuna's death, the clan obeys. What does this tell us about how authority functions in Umuofia — and how does it compare to how authority functions in the colonial system that replaces it?

What does the novel say about the relationship between individual greatness and collective survival? Can a society sustain people like Okonkwo, or does it always eventually break them — or be broken by them?

Trace the word 'abomination' through the novel. What does the clan call an abomination — and who decides? Does the colonial system also have abominations, just under different names?

If Okonkwo had been able to adapt — to join the colonial administrative system, send his sons to school, work within the new order — would he have survived? And would that survival have been better or worse than his death?