Center Can No Longer Hold

“My weapon is literature” - Chinua Achebe

            I first met Achebe in the late 2006. I was a jeune homme of 17 years. Naïve and untested in the life after high school. Completion of high school the previous month meant I could now ‘face life’ as they taunted the shit out of us. With all time in my hands, I had to settle for something I loved. Having established a deep devotion and adoration for the written word in high school, I carried on with the habit. Old habits die hard anyway. I was meeting the famed Father of African Literature for the first time in his seminal work of Things Fall Apart. 

            As the Igbo saying goes: Akwukwo juru n'ohia, ma a baa a choba okazi meaning despite the variety of leaves found in the bush, people prefer to search only for okazi leaves. In other words, only a few are chosen among the multitude. Chinua Achebe was the chosen one. I enjoyed the simplicity with which he told his narrative about Okonkwo especially the first opening chapter. 

            “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honour to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat.”

            Achebe simply amazed because of his easy storylines especially in books such as Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease and Arrow of God. However, his last novel in my take was not a free ride. The previous year, I recall a friend lent me Anthills of Savannah because I was burning with zealousness to sample an Achebe book. I tried and failed. 

            Okonkwo has become a hero even beyond literary pages because of the book’s appeal to people of different ages. A venerated hero in the whole of Umuofia and even in Mbaino among other villages, the wrestling champion found it hard when British imperialists descended upon his country. Traditional culture and colonialism clash because the white man has come with trickery and deceit to win over souls. Achebe notes:

            “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.” 

            Later when Okonkwo comes from exile after a murder fiasco, he finds a changed community. The greatest tragedy is the hopes the protagonist comes with back to his village only to realize things will never be the same again. Bitterness and distrust of how the colonialists raped African cultures for their evil gain is well depicted. This statement sums up the haunting reality of change and ushering in of the white man into Africa despite his malevolent machinations:

            “Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women. 

            Chinua Achebe became the defining center of African literature at a time when no African author had stepped forward to tell our stories with clarity and evocation. He had been the first emblem of the African story who told it without fear or favor.  One commentator glorified him with sentimental adulation in the Vanguard magazine as “…one of the best things that ever happened to the Black Race.” 

            The final bow of Okonkwo – a frustrated former village champion demonstrates the enormity of disgust and confusion that afflicted the African soul. Achebe’s hero becomes the embodiment of the struggle between two opposing cultures. It’s like imperialism won over the African cultures. But unlike the dangling and dead Okonkwo whom the District Commissioner remarks – perhaps out of absolute mockery that “One could almost write a whole chapter on him”, Achebe is larger than a chapter.

             His narrative will unfold into infinity through his novels, short stories, essays, poems and children’s books. Achebe has earned himself among the pantheons of not only African Literature but beyond in the world stage. But again, William Shakespeare reminds us in his play As You Like It that “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances...” Achebe has played his part and exited. It is upon us especially literary lovers to climb the stage with our costumes and play our roles of taking Literature to the next level. 

            In his short story, The Dead, Irish-born writer James Joyce remarks: “Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die.” 

            Achebe is gone physically but his writings will live on. Go in peace, mzee.