RAMAN SINGH

NO LONGER AT EASE: TRADITIONAL AND

WESTERN VALUES IN THE FICTION OF CHINUA ACHEBE

We commonly think of literature as the written worM. The written word, however, is relatively young. Long before man sat down to write a play, novel, or poem, he either performed it with his body or recited and sang it with his voice. We may ob- serve this "non-literary" form of literature especially in those modern societies which still retain closer links to the past than most industrialized Western societies. Thus, when we study the literature of, say, an African or Asian country, we may observe not only the inevitable theme of the clash of values, but also make some observations about the conflict between the written and spoken word. In turning to the noted Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe, we see unfolding before us a pattern that expos- es the intricate weaving of historical, cultural, religious, social, and aesthetic forces at work.

Achebe is, therefore, not exclusively a narrator of a nation's course through history and its individuals' personal destinies, but he also delightfully, if thoughtfully, offers us an insight into the inevitable relationship between folklore and literature, be- tween African and European-specifically, Nigerian and Brit- i sh - values, and the tragic consequences of such a relationship. For those individuals who are caught up in this conflicting relationship, life offers no ease; for them, things fall apart. The Center cannot hold.

The clash of traditional and modern values is easily plotted in Achebe. What is less evident, and therefore needs our focus, is that for Achebe's characters, the tragic choice between op- posing values inevitably turns out to be a conflict between the

Neohelicon XVI/2 Akaddmiai Kiadr, Budapest John Beajamins B. V., Amsterdam

160 RAMAN SINGI-I

spoken and the written word, between the folklore of the clan and the literature of the foreigner. This clash does not result in a simple victory or defeat. Achebe is too sensitive to the general ironies and ambiguities of life to offer a clear black-and- -white solution. The conflict produces, instead, something akin to Greek tragedy: the rise and tragic fall of an individual caught between two impossible choices.

To elaborate on the above thesis, I have concentrated on two major novels, Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease. The exigencies of time and space force one to be selective, but there is another and better justification for this limitation. In no other novel is folklore so generously displayed and made an integral part of the theme as in Things Fall Apart; and, together, these novels portray the saga of the Okonkwo family over three gene- rations and, therefore, provide us with a comparative perspec- tive between the old and the new.

Part One of Things Fall Apart establishes the tribal and folk background against which the future actions of the clan and the hero, Okonkwo, will be measured. Here we are immersed in traditions that form the basis of the dan's past, present, and future conduct. There is the yam harvest, the Week of Peace, the Feast of the New Yam, the wrestling contest, the settling of domestic disputes by the elders disguised as ancestral spirits (egwugwu), the mysterious initiation of Okonkwo's favorite daughter, Ezinma; and there are betrothals, deaths, funerals. The dramatizing of traditional life provides the background for the personal story of the great warrior, Okonkwo, who is too often too close to the brink of disaster. Two major incidents affect him the most.

The first concerns the young boy, Ikemefuna, who had been gifted to Umuofia by the village of Mbaino in exchange for a child the latter had murdered. Okonkwo and Ikemefuna have become like father and son, and the young boy is especially close to Okonkwo's oldest son, Nwoye. But personal attach- ments take second place in the decisions of the tribal elders who have decreed that Ikemefuna must die. When the young boy is

THE FICTION OF C H I N U A ACHEBE 161

struck the first blow, he runs towards Okonkwo, calling for help. The mighty warrior, "afraid of being thought weak, ''1 draws his machete and kills the young boy.

The second incident is the accidental killing of another young boy during a funeral ritual. This results in Okonkwo's seven- year exile to Mbanta, the home of his mother's kinsmen.

Part Two covers the years of Okonkwo's exile, during which we see the coming of the missionaries and the conversion of Nwoye to Christianity. Now the stage is set for future tragic results. Nwoye, is given the Christian name of Isaac, eventually leaves his father; his story is followed up in No Longer at Ease and, therefore, need not concern us here. However, the arrival of the white man sets in motion the disruption of traditional values and, on an individual level, the tragic demise of Okonkwo.

Things literally and figuratively fall apart in Part Three. Okonkwo, returning after his years in exile, finds the village changed. The missionaries and the white administration, with the aid of converted tribesmen, have wrought changes in the

�9 areas of religion, education and government. One thing leads to another; the head of the church is replaced, the church de- stroyed, Umuofia leaders arrested and humiliated. Upon their

�9 release, the leaders speak up for revenge, but they too have been diminished in spirit. When a messenger arrives from the white court, only Okonkwo stands in his way. This is his last stand; in fact, the last stand of a whole way of life. In a scene that dra- matizes brutally the confrontation between the old and the new, the African and the foreign, the strong and the unstoppable, Okonkwo beheads the messenger and seals his fate. Okonkwo has learned that he could only rely on himself to commit the final act of passionate revolt; his destiny has been shaped by his chi, his personal God, which is similar to the Greek concept o f arete, the impulse that propels a man to greatness in order

1 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Fawcett World Li- brary, 1969), p. 59.

11

162 RAMAN SINGH

to realize his internal law. If we think of the self-blinding of Oedipus and the suicide of Othello with awe and wonder, then we must think of Okonkwo's suicide in the same way and ac- cord him the same high status in literature that we reserve for the great tragic heroes.

The role of folklore in all this is crucial. One need not simply catalog the numerous folktales the men and women recount, or itemize the magic and the rituals that sustain the clan. As stated earlier, the folklore paraphernalia and the clash of values is too evident to warrant more space and time; however, the peculiar way in which folklore operates in the novel must be affirmed.

When Achebe portrays the conflict between the old and the new, he uses folklore as the vehicle for carrying it through. The spoken word and song are the antagonists of the written word and song. Indeed, it is the weakness for song and poetry that allows the harbingers of the Christian God's written word to infiltrate the hearts, and subsequently the minds, of the tribes- men.

The first coming of the white man leaves only a negative and ridiculous impression; we are informed that the polite name for leprosy is "the white skin." Not much attention is given to him. But the next mention rings an ominous note; Agbala, the pow- erful and prophetic Oracle of the Hills and the Caves, warns the clan about the white strangers. When the white man tells the men of Mbanta that their gods are harmless artifacts ~of wood and stone, he is met with derisive laughter and some ,of them start to walk away from the gathering. Thus, no inroad has been made into the consciousness o f the tribe. It has been a mere contest of word against word. Had the missionary simply kept on talking, nothing might have been gained. But, inadver- tently, the missionaries burst into song: "It was one of those gay and rollicking tunes of evangelism which had the power o f plucking at silent and dusty chords in the heart o f an Ibo man : . . the audience . . . now stood enthralled. ''2 A responsive chord

2 Things Fall Apart, p. 136. My underlining.

THE FICTION OF C H I N U A ACHEBE 163

has been struck; the enemy has sneaked into the camp through the backdoor of the unconscious.

It is, perhaps, a small enough point but I think an essential one. The missionaries have been able to reach the audience only through the vehicle of song. The Ibos in the novel are a simple folk, in the best sense of the word, and are very vulnerable when the medium is the message, or at least when the message comes through a medium that is close to their traditional ways.

When the missionary starts to talk about the Holy Trinity, Okonkwo thinks the man is mad and departs to tap his after- noon palm-wine. But his son, Nwoye, is captivated. Not by the words or the logic but by something quite mysterious, quite indescribable, something we call poetry when words and rational- ity fail us. Again, Achebe, is very clear on this: "I t was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him [Nwoye]: He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, some- thing felt in the marrow. ''3

After the white man's administrative system has established itself, the prison starts to fill up. Men of title are set to doing work above their occupation. The prisoners wonder how best to express their feelings of resentment and revolt. They do not send up written petitions to the higher authorities; instead, Achebe makes clear, "as they cut grassin the morning the young- er men sang in time with the strokes of their machetes: �9 white man has no sense,/He is fit to be a slave. ''4 And, again, it is the power of song as a vehicle of communica- tion of the deepest feelings that Achebe recounts later when Okonkwo lies awake on his bed one night, thinking of revenge and war. Okonkwo lets his mind slip back to the past: "The noblest, he thought, was the war against Isike. In those days Okudo was still alive. Okudo sang a war song in a way that no other man could. He was not a fighter, but hisvoice turned every man into a lion. ''~

3 Things Fall Apart, p. 137. Things Fall Apart, pp. 160-61.

n Things Fall Apart, pp. 183-84.

11"

164 RAMAN SINGH

In sharp contrast to the clan's dependence on the word-as- song is the white man ' s obsession with the written word. For the white administrator, the written word is the law. I f the native clan uses song as a liberating force, the white man uses the written word as his measure of arriving at and maintaining truth, justice, civilization. Achebe devotes the last paragraph of the novel to this subject:

As he walked back to the court he [the Commissioner] thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man [Okonkwo] who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a. whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had al- ready chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification o f the Primitive Tribes o f the Lower Niger. ~

The irony of the noble warrior 's reduction to a paragraph, the irony of the Commissioner 's perception of subjugation as pacification, is not the entire key to this passage. More to our purpose, the end of the novel clearly demonstrates the thesis tha t indeed this has been a clash of the spoken and the written word, between the song and the book, between the inheritors o f a rich, traditional folklore and the missionaries of a Western booklore. And the final tragedy is two-fold: it is the tragedy of a great folklore hero and warrior, Okonkwo, and it is also the tragedy of the overwhelming of an unwritten culture by the impersonal force of a written one. The pen, indeed, has proven mightier than the machete.

The destruction and corruption of Ibo life that is recorded in Things Fall Apart is continued in No Longer at Ease. B u t this t ime there is a difference; whereas the former novel is about the unfortunate demise of an old native tradition, the latter is abou t the incapacity of the foreign tradition to cope with the problems an individual must inevitably face when his heritage

6 Things Fall Apart, p. 191.

THE F I C T I O N O F C t t I N U A ACFIEBE 165

is neither one nor the other; or, perhaps, when his inheritance is a mixture of opposing traditions. Achebe turns the novel into a complete triumph of he written word, with little of the her- oism carried over from the previous novel. Obi Okonkwo, the grandson of the folklore warrior and son of the converted Christian, Nwoye, is engaged in a conflict, but it is not fought on the same level as his grandfather's. Whereas the old man Okonkwo was never for a moment tempted by the principles and values of the Christian word, Obi, instead, is torn between the demands and attractions of the old and the new.

Obi has been to England; he is, in a sense, the new Nigerian, educated and intellectual. His problem is coming to terms with his "double heritage." The conflict is dramatized in two ways. The first concerns his beloved, Clara, one of whose ancestors was dedicated to serving a god and is, therefore, now an osu, the equivalent of an outcast; even his father, Nwoye (now Isaac), who considers himself a good Christian, cannot accept an osu as a daughter-in-law. The second concerns the choice between accepting or refusing a bribe. Where the first conflict tests Obi's devotion to the past, the second one tests his loyalty to the present and future.

Achebe presents the clash of values through a structure which in itself is a lucid comment on the state of affairs and how they have changed since the time of the old warrior, Okonkwo. Things Fall Apart is basically built around the folkways of the clan; its narrative progress is measured by seasons and har- vests, No Longer at Ease, on the other hand, records the triumph of the written culture and, therefore, is loosely structured around a narrative from the West's most revered book, the Bible. In presenting Obi's dilemma in the form of a court-trial, Achebe has rewritten the story of the Prodigal Son. Indeed, the Umuofia Progressive Union, which had sent Obi abroad in the first place, refers to him as their "prodigal son." The novel is, simply the trial of a prodigal son who has gone astray, and it ends with the young man's complete disillusionment with the new values he has adopted. Neither a true Ibo, nor a Christian of strong con-

166 RAMAN SINGH

victions, Obi is carried away to prison in a police van, an image that suffices to show the devastation of minds that are the in- heritors of the double vision. Unlike his archetypal model in the Bible, Achebe's prodigal son is not the simple victim of sins of the flesh. To be fully at ease, he must choose between tradi- tional and Western values. Since he cannot belong to b o t h - a balancing act that few can p e r f o r m - h e finds no peace at nov- el's end.

In presenting the dilemma that Obi confronts, Achebe never loses sight of the linguistic dimensions of his theme. Language is ever-present as the touchstone by which we measure Obrs loyalties. The difference between the song and the word is here, too, but it has progressed into something new. Unlike his an- cestors who expressed their emotions in traditional song, Obi resorts to written poetry instead. But it is not poetry in the Ibo idiom, and it is not poetry that upholds the old values. In his sitting room, he has A. E. Housman's Col lec ted Poems; tucked inside it is one of his own mediocre poems, the subject matter of which is his native land, but which expresses the wish that in building the nation, tribal traditions might be forgotten: "G o d bless our noble countrymen / And women everywhere. / Teach them to walk in unity / To build our nation dear; / Forgetting region, tribe or speech, / But caring always each for each. ''7

This sentiment is especially surprising in view of Obi's earlier profession of love and respect for his native language and cus- toms. In England, he had resented speaking English with other Nigerian students; he had wished that they had visited Umuofia. He says: "Let them come to Umuofia now and listen to the talk of men who made a great art of conversation. Let them come and see men and women and children who knew h o w to live, whose joy of life had not yet been killed by those who claimed [i. e., the British] to teach other nations how to live. ''s

7 No Longer at Ease, (New York: Fawcett World Library, 1969), p. 10 I. s No Longer at Ease, p. 53.

THE FICTION OF C H I N U A ACHEBE 167

But Obi is a victim of history, of the colonization of one na- tion by another. He has not the will power to overcome the tremendous forces that tear him apart, and at the end he gives in to them. Everyone wonders why he took the bribe. "The learned judge, as we have seen, could not comprehend how an educated young man and so on and so forth. The British Council man, even the men of Umuofia, did not know. ''9 These learned men of the written law are baffled because they have believed in the power of their word to enforce change and loyalty; what they have not fully calculated is the dormant but abiding power of the traditional values, and they have not calculated the de- vastation opposing values causes sensitive minds. Obi is their victim. He is also the victim of his own illusions: his belief in his own incorruptibility, and the illusion that he could depend on an alien language to comfort him through its peculiar magic. In giving up Ibo songs for Housman's poetry, he gives up his very essence; in forgetting his folklore and his tongue, he gives up the language that a Self uses as defence against foreign en- croachments.

Abdul R. JanMohamed, in his recent study, Manichean Aesthet ics: The Polities o f Li terature in Colonial Africa, 1~ concludes that a basic ideological function of African literature is to negate European influences and thus restore the old culture. Achebe, in my opinion, does this by juxtaposing the two cul- tures in such a way as to reduce them to their most basic l eve l - the word either sung, spoken, or written. The final word on the clash of cultures is not yet in, and may never be in; meanwhile, Achebe shows, that those who must make peace with the past and the present and the future, must not lose sight of the word. For, in the beginning was the word. And in the end too.

No Lonoer at Ease, p. 159. le Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa

(Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1983).