The best thing about this book is that although it is short and although it isn’t necessarily the most flowery of all books I’ve ever read, the story itself and the sincerity with which Chinua Achebe tells his story is enough to make the reader weep for both a culture and a world that is about to be drastically changed.
One of my personal favorite parts about this book is the description and depiction of women and their relationships with men in the story. Okonkwo has three wives, and he beats them and yells at them. Yet in the moments like when he is standing outside of the cave waiting for his daughter, when he is whispering softly to his wife telling her to go home to bed, the reader can tell that he loves them, in his own way. That’s not to say what he does to them isn’t despicable; it is. But he is, more than anyone else in this story, victim to a society that prizes “masculinity”, the kind that is violent, thoughtless, brutal, and arrogant. Rather than making him either evil or redeemable, Achebe’s choice to reiterate constantly his desire to distance himself from “womanly” attributes helps make Okonkwo a real character, a person that can be reflected in those with toxic masculinity ideals around us. He is not innocent, but he is the product of a larger problem, and for the larger environment he cannot be blamed.
As one of the most famous pieces of African literature, the depictions of the “savage cultures” of the Ibo and the culture around them do not critique them for their ways. Instead, it shows a true humanity to the cultures that are so often just seen as “monstrous” and “primitive”. They are not in any sense less “civil” that we are, because they too have their own sets of rules and ethics. They aren’t less important and less impactful because they make human sacrifices and abide by rules to satisfy their Earth Goddess. Indeed, what makes them different from the Crusaders and Salem Witch Trials is that they weren’t the ones with the last laugh in history. There is not a single religion in history that has never killed nor mutilated for beliefs, yet we are often led to believe that cultures like the Ibo are somehow more primitive and violent, because history is told by the victors.
The ending is actually pretty depressing. When I told my friend I had just finished the book, she nodded, and said, “Yeah. It made me cry when I read it in eighth grade. Really messed up, you know?” And I do. There are two types of stories that leave you feeling uncomfortable and repressed. The type in which the main character is accused and framed for something they didn’t do and at the end of the story is still believed to have done what they didn’t do, and the story where the main character, someone who is undoubtedly flawed and questionable but also noble and with great cause, dies in the end in disgraced circumstances. It is like what Obierika says at the end of the story: “This man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be buried like a dog…” The end of the era is always lamentable, and his death symbolizes not only the end of Okonkwo, but also the end of life as the Ibo know it, because the while colonists have come, and their era of pain and death is about to begin.
I cannot stress this enough: GO READ!!!
Happy Saturday!!
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