• Ikenna Paschal Okpaleke

How did things come to fall apart in Umuofia? We thought that Mr. Brown was already learning a lot from Chief Akunna, such that he should have found a way of living peaceably with the people of Umuofia. Well, I think things started falling apart when Umuofia got a replacement for Mr. Brown; a new ‘Pharaoh’, a ‘Reverend’ who saw things differently, and was never prepared to listen to anybody or to learn from anybody. For this new missionary, nothing is to be compromised. It’s either you take it or you leave it! Christianity has to be forced down their throats, as a matter of necessity. Achebe in Things Fall Apart narrates thus:

Mr. Brown’s successor was the Reverend James Smith, and he was a different kind of man. He condemned openly Mr. Brown’s policy of compromise and accommodation. He saw things as black and white. And black was evil. He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness. He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophets of Baal….

   There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him. Mr. Smith danced a furious step and so the drums went mad. The overzealous converts who had smarted under Mr. Brown’s restraining hand now flourished in full favour. One of them was Enoch, the son of the snake-priest who was believed to have killed and eaten the sacred python. Enoch’s devotion to the new faith had seemed so much greater than Mr. Brown’s that the villagers called him the outsider who wept louder than the bereaved…. It was Enoch who touched off the great conflict between church and clan in Umuofia which had been gathering since Mr. Brown left.

   It happened during the annual ceremony which was held in honour of the earth deity. At such times the ancestors of the clan who had been committed to Mother Earth at their death emerged again as egwugwuthrough tiny ant holes.

   One of the greatest crimes a man could commit was to unmask an egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated. And this was what Enoch did…. Enoch had killed an ancestral spirit, and Umuofia was thrown into confusion.

Rev. Smith and Enoch reflect the attitude of most of us today – in our fundamentalism, our fanaticism, our intolerance, our ignorance of the other, our lack of forbearance, and our insistence that it MUST be our way. Often you hear people offer a wrong interpretation of 2Cor. 2:14, and on that basis become violent towards the other. Yet they wear daily the Prada and Mascara that might have been produced by an atheist. Irony. Right? Sounds like a joke anyway. Lols!

But on a serious note: Was everything in our traditional religion perfect and worthy to be upheld? Well, I haven’t said that. Achebe also showed how each religious tradition could be limited, and therefore advocated for some carefulness before declaring any perfect. For instance, Okonkwo’s son, Nwoye, found peace in Christianity which provided an answer to some of his inner agitations:

But there was a young lad who had been captivated. His name was Nwoye, Okonkwo’s first son. It was not the mad logic of Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul – the question of twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye’s callow mind was greatly puzzled.

On the other hand, Christianity shattered the peace and unity in Umuofia, tearing apart her culture and religion. While Mr. Brown came with dialogue and understanding having learnt from the people of Umuofia, the violence of Christianity was championed by fanatics like Reverend James Smith and Enoch. Okonkwo’s friend, Obierika laments this violence in these words of lamentation:

The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.

Things fall apart when we opt for intolerance against tolerance.

Things fall apart when we fail to be humble enough to learn from others.

Things fall apart when we insist on having it the way we understood it instead of dialogue.

And when things fall apart, the center can no longer hold, and mere anarchy would be unleashed upon the world. Isn’t that what we are experiencing today, even among Christians?