Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart uses Okonkwo’s failed relationship with Unoka as a kind of origin story: a failed father leads to a harshly determined son. Okonkwo works to “wash his hands” of his father so that he can “eat with kings,” separating himself and working from his first, loaned seed-yams to achieve standing among Umuofia’s leaders (8). It is important to Okonkwo to be a “good” father because his father was not. For Okonkwo, “good” means showing “a heavy hand,” treating sons just as harshly, or perhaps more harshly, than the others he encounters (28).

The clan elders’ greatest reason for fear is that “a man can now leave his father and brothers” (167). The offense of breaking a father-son relationship—even broken ones, like Okonkwo’s with Unoka or Nwoye—opens the clan to “madness,” “like a hunter’s dog” who has suddenly “[turned] on its master” (167). A father is a man’s connection to his ancestors, for they become ancestors one day. This loss of hierarchy and lineage resonates with the arrival of the white colonizers, who in their paternalism toward the Ibo, become the community’s new fathers. Things Fall Apart demonstrates how this unnatural, reconstructed lineage that replaces one set of traditions and beliefs with another for the sake of gaining power is not sustainable and can only end in grief and violence.

Fathers (and mothers) speak in proverbs, passing on the wisdom of prior generations. Men’s bodies embody the spirits of the ancestors, bringing justice to the tribe. This system educates the youth; within the family, storytelling teaches children both to speak as their elders do and to envision the world in the same way. Fatherhood, particularly, connects men to the past generations, keeping the vital kinship bonds alive, and parenthood raises children to value these systems. Nwoye’s abandonment of the relationship points to Okonkwo’s failure as a father, but also to the general failure of the system of fatherhood to protect the generations.