Criticism of the European Perspective

As we saw in Achebe's essay criticizing Heart of Darkness, Achebe is offended and enraged by the portrayal of African peoples in European colonialist and postcolonialist novels. In many ways, Europeans have almost always reduced Africans to grotesque caricatures of primitivity and moral deprivation. Things Fall Apart is a protest against this reduction of African cultures; Achebe shows the people of Umuofia as complex and developed and exposes the ignorance and violence of the European colonizers and missionaries.

Achebe takes almost half the book to set up the culture and environment that his characters live in. He describes their customs and lifestyles in great detail, using words in their language and showing a very clear picture of their lives. He shows their religion and its complexity, as well as its close relationship with nature and agriculture. The lives of the people of Umuofia is based around their ways of surviving, which are planting and harvesting and maintaining their image of strength and power. Therefore, their gods and spirits are either of nature or of war. The society itself is a complicated hierarchy, and Achebe shows the relationships between characters very clearly. He also shows the differences between one tribe to another; Okwonko remarks on them when he is banished for seven years to the tribe of his mother. In these ways, Achebe rebels against the idea of primitive or immoral Africans, and he also rebels against the idea of a single African culture, rather than the reality of many different cultures within Africa.

After establishing these things for the audience, Achebe introduces European missionaries and colonizers to show their ignorance and cruelty. As opposed to the enlightened and" heroic European image presented in Heart of Darkness, Achebe's Europeans are cruel and persistent and unwilling to learn about the cultures and societies that they are destroying. The missionaries refuse to listen to the beliefs of Okwonko's tribe without dismissing or condemning them. The exploitation of African peoples is also shown in the District Commissioner's deception. He calls them to his office to talk, then imprisons, tortures, and starves them until a fine is paid by their tribe. In the final paragraph of the book, the District Commissioner tells the audience that he is writing a book called "The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger." This completes the irony of Achebe's message; he is showing the Umuofia people as complex individuals within a tribe of complex rituals and beliefs, and the Europeans reduce them to one of many "primitive tribes" that need to be "pacifi[ed]."

This book is artfully created. It sets the scene for a long time, and then demonstrates the kind of actions described in Heart of Darkness from the other side, with the acknowledgment of the humanity of the peoples of Africa. Achebe is showing, rather than telling, the way that dehumanization looks from the side of the oppressed, rather than from the side of a European man who thinks that he is enlightened just because he recognizes that colonialism is bad. This novel clearly condemns generalization of African cultures, white postcolonialism, and ignorant oppression; and it does it in a very human and painful way, a way that forces its way into the conscience of any reader.