'Viewing the Western predicament from a non-western viewpoint' Achebe, discuss?

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'Viewing the Western predicament from a non-western viewpoint' Achebe, discuss?

This essay will argue that the phrase 'viewing the Western predicament from the non-western viewpoint' has become central to Post-Colonial critique. In addition, it will outline the significance of the phrase within Achebe's Things fall Apart (158), showing that in avoiding the Eurocentric writers such as Ahebe must still evaluate the importance of Colonialism in their Post-Colonial countries.

Albert Chinualumogu Achebe is a Nigerian who writes about the Nigerian experience. However, he was educated in London University and has spent his time in exile from the military Nigerian government teaching throughout America. He has consequently been able to see both the West and Nigeria after Empire. Moreover, Achebe has been positioned so that he is able to research some of the deep impacts of colonialism on both the periphery and the centre. In his own word he describes this experience as being 'at the crossroads between two cultures.'

Part 1 of Morning Yet on Creation Day (175), a collection of Achebe's critical essays, opens with 'Colonist Criticism' that challenges eurocentric notions of plot and formulates the premise for 'viewing the western predicament from the non-western viewpoint'. By this phrase Achebe means that rather than supply the Westerner's opinion of themselves and their society, which is both irrelevant and false from the Post-Colonial standpoint, African writers should structure their values, characters and plots so that they have relevance to their own cultures and socio-political issues therein.

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As the title Morning Yet on Creation Day suggests Post-Colonial writing is a new genre, that has only just come into its' own since the end of Empire about fifty years ago. In consequence, the idea of understanding and questioning the west from the outside is quintessential, allowing Post-Colonial countries to examine their prolonged need of the centre. (The centre can be loosely defined as the colonising countries.). This is the very foundation of Achebe's novel Ant Hills of the Savannah (187). Yet the approach also appears in Things fall Apart (158).

The title Things fall Apart derives from the Irish poet Yeats' The Second Coming (11). In this poem the next line is 'the centre cannot hold'. Again, Achebe uses this to refer back to the central question of defining a Post-Colonial identity without the Colonists. He is arguing that the systems of the colonists currently in place cannot hold.

In The Second Coming Yeats was reflecting on the sense of chaos induced by the First World War. The poem is both pessimistic and ironic describing the second coming of Christ with angst and uncertainty about the modernist period. As with Things fall Apart it is Christianity that truly acts as a force for evil. Through this use of intertextualisation, Achebe is able to juxtapose the First World War with the Colonialisation of Africa. This a good, strong comparison because, as Yeats' depicts in The Second Coming the sheer force of the First World War, 'a war like no other,' severely damaged the fabric of European culture. Likewise, as G.D Killam affirms 'The conflict of [Things fall Apart] , vested in Okonkwo, derives from a series of crushing blows that are levelled at traditional values by an alien and more powerful culture, causing, in the end, the traditional society to fall apart. '

The beginnings of appropriation is scrutinised in Things Fall Apart. The missionaries have brought British colonial government with them. Missionaries were often viewed as agents of imperialism and were therefore representative of the West. Here colonial dominance is portrayed by the institutionalism of courts, Christian churches and even shops. The trading store illustrates this. Due to its trade for the first time palm-oil and kernel become financial assets and Umofia develops into a centre of wealth. However, the new form of religion and decision-making are both male-dominates and pragmatic, upsetting the balance of Ibo culture by marginalizing the role of the matriarchs.

Anthropologically, as Achebe maintains, Ibo society was stabilised through balancing masculine and feminine values. This exemplified in the divorce proceedings where one sees the legal system of Umofia as feminine, notwithstanding the trail's revelation around a male dominated marriage. As David Caroll affirms

'Despite the ancient formulae, the ritual exchanges, the apparently inflexible ceremony, this is a very fluid system of negotiation. No attempt is made to extract a true version of events. '

The Ibo lifestyle is upheld through inquiring, changing and acclimatising. Consequently, the colonist's concrete pragmatism is one of the strongest catalyst to the society's collapse. This is shown in Chapters 1 and through the discrepancies between Akunna, Brown and Smith. Akunna is the gentlest and the most receptive to the differences between their cultures, Brown only accepts the elements of Akunna's style that symbiotically aid his own aims, while Smith is entirely pragmatic and incapable of debating. It is in this need to debate and dominate shown by both Brown and later Smith, that one sees the first signs of the Ibo culture crumbling. To reiterate, this is mainly because pragmatism, (a masculine quality in Ibo society) replaces spirituality (a female element of Ibo society).

Akunna, Brown and Smith are representative of the process of colonisation, which begins softly but becomes progressively harsher, moving from say, the 'colonising of the mind' to the forceful arrests of the 'natives'. During the arrest, the phrase 'we will not harm you' becomes emblematic of the absolute Colonial dominance as it implies a need for total compliance, (in other words, if one obeys, they will not be hurt). By showing the persecution of these people, Achebe is able to relate his attitude that Colonialism was overwhelmingly a destructive force. As Achebe explains 'The success of [Ibo] culture was the balance between the two, the material and the spiritual...Today we have kept the materialism and thrown away the spirituality that should keep it in check. ' Through these lines, Achebe implies that he views the role of both women and the ritualistic within contemporary Western/ Westernised societies as limited.

The shift at the end of the novel from inside to outside the main plot is where one really feels the absolute Colonial dominance, as even Things Fall Apart assumes a different man with a new voice, starting with the title of another book. By ending in this way the nineteen-fifties reader would not only realise, as Carroll affirms, that they had read the book from an unusual perspective, (that of the 'negro'), but also receive the impression that the novel had been colonised and undermined, Okonkwo is only worth a long paragraph, the District Commissioner has already chosen the title of his novel, 'The Pacification of the Lower Tribes of the Lower Niger.'

Okonkwo, the main protagonist of Things Fall Apart, is unable to adjust to the practices of colonialism. His insights are revealing not only of the antipathy he is feeling towards the colonisers, but also of how the Ibo people he represents are reacting. G.D Killan affirms 'Okonkwo was one of the greatest men of his times, the embodiment of Ibo values, the man who better than most symbolised his race. ' The fact that Okonkwo murders a missionary and then commits suicide may derive from his gradual inability to accustom himself to the Westernisation; yet, it also represents the extreme repulsion and then death of Ibo culture caused by Colonialisation. Indeed, at the end of the novel the narrators tone implies that suicide was not uncommon amongst the colonised African tribes.

In the many years in which he had toiled in bringing civilisation to Africa he had learnt a number of things. One of them was that a distract commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting down a hanged man from a tree.

In many ways this is a deeply moralistic and prescriptive novel, using symbolism to tell the reader how to react. This becomes more apparent when one compares Okonkwo with Achebe's quote that

Without prescribing to the view that Africa gained nothing from her long encounter with Europe…she suffered many terrible and lasting misfortunes. In terms of human dignity and human relations, the encounter was almost a complete disaster for the black races.

In this respect Okonkwo's suicide, which is considered both dishonourable and a sin against the mother earth tradition to which he holds so reverently, appears almost symptomatic of the loss of a clear black identity in which to take pride. Moreover, he becomes symbolic of the displaced individual within the new society.

The novel relies on misunderstandings as Okonkwo demonstrates by his inability to adapt to Western culture, especially the religion. This is ironic, as to begin with Okonkwo perceives that although the missionaries are 'other' they are harmless and as he sees them, insane. In this description Achebe is subverting the paternalistic attitudes of Colonists who saw Africans as less evolved, and therefore mad, to show Africans perceiving Colonists and Christianity as absurd. Such behaviour remains throughout Things Fall Apart. Indeed, his friend Obierika relates oral narratives that show that Colonists are treated with extreme otherness. The Ibo begin by treating the English language as just a noise and Obierika even discloses that 'they say, they have no toes'. All of this mirrors how white missionaries perceived Africans as 'not quite human' and incapable of language. Moreover, White men have already featured in many of their narratives and are thought to be Albino, devilish and diseased. This is shown when the white man are compared to a local Leper, Amadi, as 'the polite name for leprosy, is 'the white skin.' Likewise, Eurocentric notions held that black races were fiendish, 'forces of darkness'.

The missionaries were also aware of their otherness and often used locals, such as Akunna, to express their opinions; yet, as the novel shows these were often disenfranchised individuals, of low caste in the clan, consequently they were insignificant, if not a hindrance, in creating followers. One, convert was Nwoye. Unable to accept the death of Ikemefuna, who had adopted a fraternal relationship with him, he too, was disenchanted with Ibo culture. The narrator explains

The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague question that haunted his soul- the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. (p10)

Throughout the novel Achebe aims for the readers acknowledgement that Ibo culture had a validity of its own. This also culminates in the stories about white mans arrival related by Obierika. The worst of these stories is that of the massacre at Abame. Here, the reader is forced into the realisation that in many ways the Ibo were more civilised then the Colonists. While, the people of Abame had acted too rashly in their killing of the white man, they had much insight into the significance of Colonialism's arrival, and their actions therefore hold some justification. Even, the sacriface of Ikemefuna was supposedly utilitarian. Conversely, the scale of the massacre at Abame seems unfair, irrational and ultimately, uncivilised.

In conclusion, as Achebe maintains, in the past Ibo society was stabilised through balancing masculine and feminine values. Now, that Nigeria is dominated by the West, Nigerians must evaluate and criticise the West, to determine its importance. Achebe has begun this process in many of his novels including Things fall Apart, Morning Yet on Creation Day, and Ant Hills of the Savannah

Bibliography

Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London Routledge, 15)

Caroll D, Chinua Achebe Novelist, Poet, Critic (Basingstoke, MacMillan, 10)

Iyasere, S, Understanding Things Fall Apart Selected Essays and Criticism. (New York Whitson Publishing, 18).

Killam, G. D. The Writings of Chinua Achebe. (London Heinemann Educational, 177).

Okoye, E. The Traditional Religion and its Encounter with Christianity in Achebes Novels. (New York P. Lang, 187)

Bibliography

Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London Routledge, 15)

Caroll D, Chinua Achebe Novelist, Poet, Critic (Basingstoke, MacMillan, 10)

Iyasere, S, Understanding Things Fall Apart Selected Essays and Criticism. (New York Whitson Publishing, 18).

Killam, G. D. The Writings of Chinua Achebe. (London Heinemann Educational, 177).

Okoye, E. The Traditional Religion and its Encounter with Christianity in Achebes Novels. (New York P. Lang, 187)

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