Monday,
May 13, 2013 |
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One of the
enduring lessons in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is that the ethical
interests of the Umuofia community assert themselves, again and again,
over the overweening pride and impulsive actions of the novel’s tragic
hero, Okonkwo. It’s true that the protagonist “was well known throughout
the nine villages and even beyond,” and his “fame rested on solid
personal achievements.” Yet, it is the community that ultimately lends
meaning to Okonkwo’s extraordinary prowess as a wrestler, his valor as a
warrior, and his success as a farmer. As Achebe narrates, “As a young
man of eighteen [Okonkwo] had brought honor to his village by throwing
Amalinze the Cat.” It is a carefully phrased detail, underscoring that
Okonkwo’s impressive resume of accomplishments is significant to the
extent that it ennobles the community.
Often, students misapprehend the import of that dramatic moment towards
the end of Things Fall Apart when Okonkwo beheads a messenger of the
white administration, arrives at the shocking understanding that his
fellows are in no haste to embrace his precipitate declaration of war,
and decides to go off to a quiet place to hang himself. It is all too
tempting to view Umuofia’s action in the way that Okonkwo does – as
evidence of mass cowardice. Yet, a more careful reading reveals
Okonkwo’s reaction as shallow and reductionist, rather like an
unthinking man’s rush to a judgment that lacks context and nuance.
Umuofia has a settled protocol for going to war. That elaborate
procedure involves several steps: establishing a consensus among the
male citizen that an external provocation rises to a probable cause for
war; sending a delegation to the offending community to demand some form
of reparation in order to avert war; in the event that the preceding
gesture is repudiated, consulting the Oracle of the Hills and Caves, the
deity that superintends war affairs to discern whether the impending war
is a just, warranted one. In sum, these steps that must precede the
declaration of war point to Umuofia’s deep commitment to the ethos of
balance and harmony. It may well be the case that Umuofia’s will to wage
war has been dealt a blow by the invading whites. Yet, the community’s
reluctance to let Okonkwo’s rash homicidal action stampede them to war
is a decisive rebuke of a man so bereft of thought and so deeply
obsessed with raw strength as to represent for the people of Umuofia the
very embodiment of the horrors of inharmoniousness.
Earlier in the novel, we’d seen Okonkwo contemplate, both to himself as
well as in a conversation with his best friend, Obierika, the idea of
fighting alone. It is that heretical fantasy that he actualizes by
beheading an emissary of the British machinery. That beheading
translates into a brusque summons to the warriors of Umuofia to fight a
war that Okonkwo has “personalized.” By balking at that invitation, the
people of Umuofia testify to the firmness and rootedness of their
ethical code. Umuofia’s institutions are too solid – to say nothing of
its citizens’ shared sense of balance – for the community to be easily
swayed by the whims of their strongest man.
Part of Okonkwo’s curse is to lack the mental wherewithal to realize how
the white man, though outnumbered, has nevertheless radically
transformed Umuofia. Achebe’s tragic hero goes to his death without
understanding how thoroughly the white man has redrawn Umuofia’s – nay
Africa’s – map. Okonkwo has no inkling that his nine villages had
become, in effect, the tiniest dot on a much larger map of a space the
British would name Nigeria.
The consequences of that colonial redrawing of Africa’s map persist with
us today. It was as if Okonkwo went to sleep one night in an autonomous
space called Umuofia and awoke the next morning in a nightmare called
Nigeria. A small organic space saw itself swallowed whole, subsumed
within a larger, inorganic and incoherent space. And this new larger
space was designed, delineated, acquired and named entirely by British
fiat.
Nor did the British – or the French, Spaniards or Portuguese – set out
to make the territories they annexed in Africa into nations – in the
likeness of the colonizing powers. No, Africa was carved up in a wholly
cavalier fashion, with the profit motive figuring as the imperial
powers’ motive – never mind their claptrap about the civilizing mission.
In his short novel, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad writes forthrightly
about imperialism: “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the
taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly
flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into
it too much.”
How did the colonial powers acquire addresses like Okonkwo’s Umuofia?
Let’s take two examples from history, both testimonies from British
colonial officials. Following British and French agreement on the areas
of British possession in northern Nigeria, Lord Salisbury triumphantly
stated: “We have been engaged in drawing lines upon maps where no white
man’s foot has even trod; we have been giving away mountains and rivers
and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we
never knew exactly where the mountains and rivers and lakes were.” In
similar vein, Sir Claude Macdonald, reflecting on how the British and
Germans decided the boundaries of their territories in eastern Nigeria,
said that “in those days we just took a blue pencil and a rule and we
put it down at Old Calabar and drew that line up to Yola.”
It is no surprise that the new spaces cobbled together by the British –
or the French, or the Portuguese – continue to exhibit pathologies of
incoherence. Nigeria’s two major writers, Wole Soyinka and Achebe, have
argued that Nigeria yet awaits its founding. The space called Nigeria is
otherwise an illusory idea, at best a promissory note awaiting
redemption. The African Guardian magazine of November 16, 1992 reported
a dramatic exchange at a public lecture: “The atmosphere became charged
when [Ken] Saro-Wiwa, an uncompromising champion of minority rights, was
called upon to comment on Professor Ade Ajayi’s 17-page lecture titled
‘The National Question in Historical Perspective’. As silence enveloped
the entire hall, Saro-Wiwa…caused a stir with his opening remarks: ‘We
don’t want Nigeria.’ The audience roared in affirmation. He went on to
pour scorn on the current state of affairs in the nation…’This country
as presently defined cannot stand because it is anchored around wicked
principles of the subordination of the minorities by the majority.’”
Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s unflattering assessment was made more than twenty years
ago. Today, a man from the minority area – and Nigeria’s oil-rich hub as
well – occupies the highest political post in Nigeria. Even so, many
would argue – count me among them – that Nigeria remains every bit as
messy and depressing and as unwanted as when Mr. Saro-Wiwa – hanged by
the Nigerian state he once championed but later came to execrate –
delivered his jeremiad.
This is the second part of a lecture I delivered at Brown University,
Providence, Rhode Island. The concluding part will be published next
week.
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@okeyndibe.
