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A review by dnandrews797
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
2.0
I was severely underwhelmed by this book that many people consider a classic or foundational literature. While some of the cultural norms and depictions of daily life were interesting as vignettes, the whole book felt like more of a situation than a story with no real overarching narrative structure. I also disliked the main character Okonkwo intensely and found him completely unsympathetic because of his character. It seemed every other page he was either beating his wife, threatening to beat his wife, spoiling for a fight, or criticizing his existing children. He typifies the type of misogynistic and violent men that are too often glorified as heroes in literature.
The main conflict of the christians missionaries changing tribal society also didn’t enter the story until well over the halfway mark and felt rushed in fully explaining how deeply this changed tribal culture and the emotional impact on the people.
Overall, if the purpose of the book was to make me angry at the missionaries for corrupting African society, it failed. Both the missionaries had good (mr brown) and bad (James smith) among their ranks and in their value and understanding of another culture, but African society also had good and bad people and practices that made the whole novel feel more like watching two flawed ideologies battling each other for control of a population more so that the emotional lost of identity and cultural transformation I had assumed it was going to be going in.
The main conflict of the christians missionaries changing tribal society also didn’t enter the story until well over the halfway mark and felt rushed in fully explaining how deeply this changed tribal culture and the emotional impact on the people.
Overall, if the purpose of the book was to make me angry at the missionaries for corrupting African society, it failed. Both the missionaries had good (mr brown) and bad (James smith) among their ranks and in their value and understanding of another culture, but African society also had good and bad people and practices that made the whole novel feel more like watching two flawed ideologies battling each other for control of a population more so that the emotional lost of identity and cultural transformation I had assumed it was going to be going in.