Unit 12

English 203: Literature of the NonWestern World

Introduction:
Reading: Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 2995-3030 (part 2).

A list of Characters, Places, & Terms in Things Fall Apart:

Unlike Son-Jara, Okonkwo is devoted to yang values.  His rehabilitation by living in his mother's village of Mbanta is too little too late.  Even if the yin therapy could solve Okonkwo's personal problems, it could do nothing to preserve his society from destruction.

Colonization itself seems to be a yin process.  The yang military & judicial components lie in the background.  The foreground is occupied by church, school, clerkship jobs, & imported consumer goods -- all of which seem either innocuous or frivolous, hardly an enemy to be actively opposed.  The new institutions attract the worst elements of traditional society, which makes them seem even more innocuous.

How can you accommodate to an enemy who says, "We shall not do you any harm . . . if only you agree to cooperate with us" in your cultural destruction (3023)!  Everything the British do harms Nigerian culture.  The English are in Nigeria to conquer it; to make money out of it.

Again we see the 2 irreconcilable views.  The British dedicated only (they think) to personal values.  Okonkwo & his culture knowing only tribal solidarity & identity.  Neither can comprehend the other's view.

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Explication