Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: Full of Hidden Meanings

To begin with, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a very simple and easy read. It should only take maybe a day or two at the most to read. However, for more advanced readers who look deep inside the sentences and phrases of the book, Things Fall Apartis full of hidden meanings. This book is full of metaphors, irony, and similes. In this blog I will analyze the metaphors, irony, and also give an overview of the book.
There are many metaphors throughout the novel and they all aid in the description of a specific event or task in order to enable the reader to fully grasp the concept that is being told. The first metaphor that I’d like to touch base on is when Chinua Achebe is describing the wrestling matches between the nine Ibo villages “The sound of the drums was no longer a separate thing from the living village. It was like the pulsation of its heart.” This metaphor is depicting how large an ordeal the wrestling matches were to Ibo society. The village is no longer separate living breathing people. They are now one being, one beating heart that’s anticipating the match to come. Achebe showed the power of the egwugwu court in a very creative and interesting way. “The wave struck the women and children and there was a backward stampede”. This is potraying a picture in the reader’s mind of a tsunami coming to shore and as the women and children see it they turn on their heels and run like a “backward stampede”. So even though the women in the tribe knew that the egwugwu court were their menfolk, they were still afraid of them and their powers. This is because once the men put on their egwugwu masks they became the spirits of the nine Ibo clans and ceased to exhist as men. There is a variation in the types of irony used by Achebe in this book. The first type of irony I’m going to analyze is tragic irony. After Okonkwo is exhiled he is visited by his friend Obierika. Obierika has been taking care of Okonkwo’s finances and when Okonkwo begins to thank him Obierika replies with a statement full of tragic irony. “Go kill yourself” is the response that he gave to Okonkwo. This is tragic irony, because Okonkwo does eventually hang himself at the end of the book. The next example of just plain irony is when the Christians come and are given land in the evil forest. In Ibo culture it stated that no one shall last seven market days in the evil forest, because of the spirits that live there. By giving the Christians this land the Ibo people believed that they would die and the Ibo’s could go back to living their lives. However, when the Christians didn’t die after seven market days the Ibo people were struck with surprise and awe that their plan didn’t work.
Overall Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was very interesting. This book tells of an old African society that was faced with the emergence of the modern age of technology. The story is told through the life of Okonkwo, who is a man of high title or status in the clan. Okonkwo is the main character who represents the old ways of the Ibo people. He fights the new religion of Christianity, and he fights the new modern age. In the end Okonkwo dies just as the Ibo people and their culture and old ways di3es out.