Things Fall Apart: The Man Who Built His Life Around One Word 

One of the books that I remember left a great impression on me was the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

I read that book when I was in 11th grade, when I used to live in Lee, Maine. It was Mr. Koch’s English class.

BTW, a couple of words on Mr. Koch.

I really liked him. We were friends. We used to have these endless discussions about life outside of class, but he was fighting some demons inside.

He was a really cool dude. He used to live in our dorm as well, but at some point, I think he relapsed. He had a big alcoholism problem. We could notice when he was under the influence. He started missing classes, and then we got this long email he sent to everyone in school at like 1 a.m. about how he hated the school and the place.

Right away, the police were called by another dorm parent, and they escorted him out of the building. After that, he was fired from the school.

I still liked Mr. Koch very much. I found his brain and humor pretty unique.

Even though he was kicked out of school, he hung out near town for a bit in one of the hotels. Like two weeks later, when one of our dorm parents took us to Walmart for our weekly shopping, we saw Mr. Koch hanging out nearby.

I went to him. He was still drunk, though, but he came to me, hugged me, and told me:

“Niko, you will do great in life.”

Back to the Book

Things Fall Apart is a book written by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian writer. It is a fictional novel, but some of the dynamics in Igbo culture, I would guess, mirror actual facts.

The novel is about tribal life in Nigeria and how things change when Christian missionaries arrive and start to test their beliefs.

I am not gonna write a summary of the whole book. I just want to talk about the main character.

Okonkwo is the character that the whole story is built around. He is a very strong, hard-working man who struggles with impulsive decision-making.

He has a childhood insecurity. His father was perceived as agbala, which could mean a man without titles and was also a word for a woman. Since childhood, he decided to take this masculine role in the family, built his own farm, and harvested his own crops. Soon, Okonkwo becomes a very notable man in their culture.

They have their own religion and believe in an Oracle that people consult for decisions. They had a spiritual leader, like a priestess, and in this case, her name was Chielo. She was like a messenger.

So these divine forces influenced decisions such as killing a kid who had lived with Okonkwo’s family for three years and whether to start certain wars. Everything is surrounded by the beliefs and culture they formed over the years.

Also, there is an Evil Forest where people believe terrible things will happen to those associated with it.

Okonkwo was a terrible human being by all means. He beat his wives and kids and killed people, but he was shaped by the environment around him. Even though he was a really bad man, throughout the novel you see this human side. When his daughter falls ill, he spends the night trying to save her. When he kills that boy, he stops eating for days.

At some point, Okonkwo has to flee from his village for seven years after accidentally killing a clansman. When he comes back, he sees that Christian missionaries have arrived and are spreading Christianity among his clan members.

They set up the church in the Evil Forest. People waited for something bad to happen, but that forest turned out not to be that evil after all. Everyone survived. They set up schools, hospitals, and trading opportunities, completely challenging the culture.

After seven years, when Okonkwo comes back, he sees his son converted to Christianity, like many other village members. People are not that keen to start a war against the missionaries.

Okonkwo’s life was so consumed by this tribal culture, the religion, and being this warrior who guards those things that his whole existence became challenged.

Okonkwo, this man of steel, can’t take this status quo and hangs himself.

My 2 Cents

Even the worst people in our history had a humane side. It’s just that society never rewarded them for that. They were rewarded for being strong, smart, and powerful, but not for good deeds.

It’s crazy how one word you tell a kid can shape their whole life.

When Okonkwo heard somebody call his father agbala, he created his whole life around never being called agbala himself.

Even though we learn one language to speak, you still have to speak as many languages as people exist.

You never know what to say to people or how it can completely change their lives with just one word.

It took me a while to get used to it. I used to talk to people the same way I wanted to be spoken to, but then I realized that things that do not bother me might bother others, so I am always careful there.

I don’t really care what people say to me. Never did, even as a kid. I don’t have a single example of somebody saying something that shaped my life.

It’s not because I was a cool kid. I was everything but a cool kid. I just simply did not care.

Also Always question everything in life, whether it’s your religion, culture, history, ways of working, or societal norms.

If you don’t ask those questions in life, you just live the blueprint that somebody already created, never fully experiencing life.

If Okonkwo had gone to that Evil Forest and stayed there for a couple of days, who knows, he could have had a completely different approach to life.

BTW, questioning something does not necessarily mean you have to disagree.

It means that you are not blindly following everything.