第二 十二期
2011 年
秋 冬
Colonizer or Rescuer? A New God and Good Changes in Things Fall Apart
邱亞琦 Often placed as a counter discourse of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which depicts Africans as savages,1 Achebe’s Things Fall Apart2 presents the story of Igbo society with a perspective adopted by a narrator who is “from within” (Walder 10):3 the customs, the belief, the way of life of the community, and the voice of the people are narrated by the voice that belongs to them. Here, the natives are no longer characterized by trivialization and exaggeration; they no longer suffer from discrimination and oppression due to the ideology of the only legal speaker of the story—the white superiority. According to
1. Achebe accuses Conrad; he says, “Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist” (343). This is quoted from “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text. Contexts and Criticism. Ed., Francis Abiola Irele. New York & London: Norton, 2009. 2. 1958. 3. Dennis Walder. Post-Colonial Literatures in English: History, Language, Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. p.10.
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the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Things Fall Apart, “an insider’s understanding of the African world and its history, depicts the destruction of an individual, a family, and a culture at the moment of colonial incursion” (2616). That is why the novel is classified in the category of Postcolonial literature. Besides, the introduction of the NAEL states that the protagonist, Okonkwo, is regarded as “other great tragic heroes,” one who falls through lack of balance, and indeed the novel is about Okonkwo’s “tragedy” and that of “tribal society” (2616-7). In what proportion does the novel show the incursion and exploitation of the colonizer? Who is the colonizer in the novel? Is it fair to say that all the whites are colonizers? What have the whites done? What are the causes of the downfall of Okonkwo? Can we say this novel is a tragedy? And is it correct to say that Okonkwo is a tragic hero? Is it true to say that the Black man has only one destiny, as according to Frantz Fanon, and that “it is white” (10)? What have the missionaries done? What are the “things” that falls apart? And finally, what’s wrong with the change in the natives’ lives? In this paper, I intend to investigate the representative figure, Okonkwo, of the African world in the novel, and I will examine African customs, culture, and religion—through “an insider,” and explore the decisive cause of the destruction of the 180
Colonizer or Rescuer?
protagonist; meanwhile, through the examination of the cause of the destruction, the sober truth will be revealed, and we will discover whether Okonkwo is a tragic hero or not and whether the story can be termed a tragedy; furthermore, I will observe how the concept of “colonial incursion” is intertwined with the missionary work as well as the deeds done by them; consequently, I hope to find out who the colonizer is and what are the “things” that fall apart. I. Hatred for the Weak: Okonkwo, the Representative Figure
Okonkwo was never meant to be portrayed as an admirable character. The only admirable characteristic of Okonkwo was, perhaps, his fame, which has grown like “a bush-fire in the harmattan” (Achebe 3); however, this characteristic may turn out to be a shortcoming of Okwonkwo because his fame was based on warfare with others—Okonkwo was a man of war who “drank his palm-wine from his first human head” (8)—and whenever he was angry, he had a slight stammer, so he would use his fist; thus, he was popularly called the “Roaring Flame” (88). Okonkwo was rich but arrogant:4 he had no patience with
4. According to I Corinthians 13, love is not arrogant. Bible: New Revised Standard Version. United States: Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, 1989.
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the weak and the gentle—the unsuccessful men, the “agbala,”5 the men who resembled his father, Unoka. Unoka was “lazy and improvident”; he was a debtor, a failure, and often drank wine to make merry with neighbors, but the man always succeeded in borrowing money and piling up his debts, and had taken no title at all when he died (4-6). The one thing Okonkwo feared most was to be found to resemble his father. Okonkwo was not a virtuous figure; he was not a “noble figure” (NAEL 2616), not a hero, not to mention tragic hero.6 He was irritable and rude,7 and he ruled “his household with a heavy hand” (10); he transgressed custom and beat his wife for cutting a few banana leaves during the week of peace and actually shot at his wife. The worst deed he did was that he
5. Agbala was “not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion—to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness” (10). 6. The elucidation of the terms “tragedy” and “tragic hero” are quoted from my master thesis, On Two Tragic Theologies: A Comparison of Oedipus Tyrannus with the “Book of Job”, which was supervised by Dr. Stephen Ohlander and Dr. Chih-Ming Ke: In tragedy, in short, “the essential plot pattern is: the virtuous protagonists who possess enough freedom to be able to determine their own actions; nonetheless, they are so unable to determine their fate that they fall victim to catastrophe unexpectedly on account of divinity, whether wicked or indifferent” (19). “I can’t share Aristotle’s opinions that the tragic character is not preeminently virtuous and just”; on the contrary, I think “the tragic figure must be particularly virtuous” (14). If the tragic hero is not virtuous, “the story will not be tragic anymore because, with his down fall, he gets what he deserves” and suppose “the tragic hero doesn’t have freedom; his morality will be a moot point. Suppose the tragic hero is able to determine his fate, and he has led himself to his own tragedy, people might feel pity for him over his unwise decisions, but this is not as tragic as a story in which things happen beyond human control. Suppose the misery is not caused by the wicked divinity; the tragic event will not be inevitable and inescapable. If the misfortune is not inevitable and inescapable, the plot will no longer be as tragic for it is avoidable. 7. According to I Corinthians 13, love is not irritable and rude.
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killed his own adopted son: Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna was a doomed
lad—his
father
had
killed
a
daughter
of
Umuofia—sacrificed to Umuofia by neighbors to avoid war. The act of “sacrifice” of Ikemefuna—often associated with the sacrifice of Isaac—was an act of murder. Though Ikemefuna is ordained to die by the Oracle of the “dark and dreadful” Hills and the Caves as a ritual performance, Achebe rendered it to look like a performance of ruthless murder done by a father to his son.
Murder or Sacrifice?
Why is it termed a sacrifice for Abraham to slay his son? Why is it justified and even commendable for Abraham to perform the act of killing his son? But why is it condemnable for Okonkwo to kill his son—which seemed like the same kind of deed that Abraham had done? Why is Okonkwo’s obedience reduced to murder? 1) Okonkwo’s obedience was not in obedience to the demands of the Oracle, but in obedience to the demands of his own honor. Okonkwo was fond of Ikemefuna, however, he never showed his affection; he killed him—despite the fact that Ikemefuna called him father and asked him to come to his rescue—for “he was afraid of being thought weak” (38). The
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largest proportion of the reason for him to kill his own adopted son: he was afraid of being thought weak! 2)
Okonkwo
was
told
that
Ikemefuna
had
to
be
killed—“Umuofia” has decided to kill him for the “Oracle of the Hills and the Caves has pronounced it” (35). Okonkwo was asked not to interfere in the killing for he called him father.8 Obierika argued that it was not that Okonkwo shouldn’t be concerned about the Oracle, but the Oracle did not ask him to carry out its decision; what he was trying to say is that, Okonkwo didn’t have to fulfill the command of the oracle himself. Obierika chastised him: “If I were you I would have stayed at home. What you have done will not please the Earth. It is the kind of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families” (41). Besides, “Rather than having the community strengthened and renewed because of the sacrifice,” as Njeng rightly puts it, Okwonkwo was “plagued with feelings of guilt and remorse” (4)—but his uneasiness, as he thought about Ikemefuna and shivered, only lasts for three days. 3) The God of Abraham and Isaac is the God of creation, life, hope,
9
and love; meanwhile, He is the only God. God says
8. “Umuofia has decided to kill him. The Oracle of the Hills and the Caves has pronounced it. They will take him outside Umuofia as is the custom, and kill him there. But I want you to have nothing to do with it. He calls you his father” (35). 9. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. . . .” (Romans 15.13).
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in the Bible:
I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things. (Isaiah 45.5-7)
It is written in the Bible that the God of Abraham is the God of creation: He creates everything, and He is the Lord of all things. When humans think that God has created such a wonderful and miraculous world, could it be said that God has the power to make a dead person come alive again? That is, God is able to make those who are killed come alive again since God is the God of everything, and He creates everything. For a creator, all things are possible: “for mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible” (Matthew 19.26). In addition, God says in Deuteronomy, “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand” (32.39). God overcomes death. According to Paul: “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has 185
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dominion over him” (Rom. 6.9). Jesus, the incarnated God, says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11.25-26). Paul writes in Romans: God “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (4.17), and “Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living” (4.19). Furthermore, John Calvin declares, “Creation and providence [are] inseparably joined” (1:16-1); he resolutely affirms that, “After learning that there is a Creator, we must forthwith infer that he is also a Governor and Preserver,” “by a special providence sustaining, cherishing, superintending, all the things which he has made, to the very minutest, even to a sparrow” (1:16-1). In the view of Calvin, because God governs “heaven and earth by his providence, he so overrules all things that nothing happens without his counsel” (Calvin 1:16-1). What I am trying to clarify is even if Isaac were killed, Abraham’s God could have made him come alive again. Besides, Abraham’s God is also a God of love—“God is love” (1John 4.8). According to Dr. Ke, “Love determines the existence of substance. God is love. God loves the whole of creation so He created the whole of creation” (“AAGI” 242).10 10. The abbreviation of Immanuel C.-Ming Ke’s （柯志明） ，“Affliction and the Alterations of God’s
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God loves the whole creation, so all He does is for the sake of love—He has a good purpose that is beyond our comprehension. If the God of Abraham and Isaac is the God of creation, life, hope, and love, if the God of Abraham and Isaac is the only real God, who is faithful and promises to bless those who obey His law,11 and gives us the promise of eternal life,12 humans will be very willing to present their bodies as “a living sacrifice”13 to God, in spiritual worship. On the other hand, the goddess of the clan, who pronounced the Oracle to bid them to kill Ikemefuna, was not the only goddess; there were many gods and goddesses. Thus, what the goddess said could have contradicted what other gods and goddesses said; if she was not the only, supreme god/goddess, what she said could not be counted as the supreme law. The goddess of the other clan might say the child should be released and the child’s father should be the one who must suffer from punishment; if this did happen—if there were other gods/goddesses who pronounced different oracles, but the child
Image: By Means of the Reflections by Ricoeur” (〈苦難與上帝形像之更迭：取道呂格爾的反 思〉)，Theology and Church.（ 《神學與教會》 ）. 11. “If you will only obey the LORD your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you” (Deuteronomy 28.1-2). 12. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 2.16). 13. Romans 12.1.
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had already been murdered, would it be possible for the goddess of Umuofia to make the child come alive again? NO! There were no clues of the possibility of resurrection! And not to mention eternal life. Besides, we can hardly see their goddess showing her love; instead, she revealed her immorality and cruelty by making them kill the innocent twins and creating a merciless rule to cast out innocent people. Here, we are not going to discuss at length the goddess (later, we will elaborate more on the theme of the native religion). What I intend to clarify is: the point is “who”—which god/goddess, or God—asked them to kill their son, and what kind of gods they are. If the order is not based on the supreme law, then whoever killed his son is to be called a murderer; if the order stems from the supreme law, those who refuse to obey lack confidence in God’s word.14
Hatred for the Weak
Perhaps, we can say, ironically, Okonkwo’s weakness was
14. Dr. Ohlander comments, “Remember that even human law allows some humans to kill others in defense of themselves and society, as in war or in legal executions to put to death violent offenders.” This is true, but this idea cannot show that my contention—if the order is not based on the supreme law, then whoever killed his son is to be called a murderer—is wrong. According to Exodus 20.13, one should not murder; Dr. Chih-Ming Ke states in his Love Ethics, humans shouldn’t murder, but humans can be killed by God’s representative (93); that is to say, one should obey human law which is founded on God’s law, and one should obey law executors who represent God.
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his hatred for the weak. Eric Njeng15 attempts to point out that Unoka—the weak—represented the Christians; this is definitely a mistake to interpret weakness in this way. Okonkwo’s “weakness” referred to his flaws, shortcomings, whereas “the weak” he hated encompassed those who showed the laziness and uselessness of his father as well as the feminine characteristics, such as patience, endurance, kindness, gentleness/meekness, submission, love, and peace—which happen to be the image, the qualities, of a good Christian. 16 That is to say, Okonkwo’s weakness—the reason for his failure—was his hatred for the weak, including to be or be deemed one of the weak, in terms of patience, endurance, kindness, gentleness/meekness, submission, love, and peace. The weakness Okonkwo hated was not only laziness and idleness, but also all the characteristics of a weak, peaceful, or womanish inclination; “the weakness” he hated and his intransigence to a change for the better led him to his own destruction. However, the diviner and the deity who took care of the spirits and who banished him were both female, and also there were the priestess of the Oracle Agbala and the earth
15. Eric Sipyinyu Njeng. “Achebe, Conrad, and the Postcolonial Strain.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 10.1 (2008). pp.1-8. <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol10/iss1/3>. 16. “Love is patient; love is kind” (I Corinthians 13.4); “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” and “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5. 5 & 9). The Bible praises and admires the gentle/meek people, and this was refused by Okonkwo fervently. The explanation of the word “meek” can be found in Dr. Ke’s Love Ethics, pp.144-149.
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goddess, all of whom stood in contradiction to his perception of woman as inferior and the weak beings he hated; besides, also contradictory, his favorite child Ezinma was a female; and even when he was abandoned he went to his mother’s clan for refuge. Achebe created an opposition of the feminine and the masculine, the good and bad; that is to say, it was shameful to be feminine and commendable to be masculine. The displaying of the polarization of femininity and masculinity seemed to create a strong tension between Nwoye and Okonkwo—between the local religion and the Christianity. Although it was found that Achebe put so much emphasis on Okonkwo’s hatred of femininity, what he intended him to identify with was femininity. This is not to say that Achebe considered masculinity should be abandoned, and man should be womanized, but this indicates the inclination to admire some feminine characteristics—even “the weakness”. Nwoye joined “the weak” his father hated most; he was captivated by the song—“a story of brothers who lived in darkness and in fear, ignorant of the love of God”—sung by the missionaries; this seemed to relieve the young soul that was haunted by fear and confusion—“the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed” (85). When Okonkwo knew that Nwoye had joined the 190
Colonizer or Rescuer?
Christians, he choked him in his grip and threatened to kill him. Okonkwo disowned him before his children by saying, “he is no longer my son or your brother. I will only have a son who is a man”; meanwhile, he showed his hatred of womanish behavior: “If any one of you prefers to be a woman. . . . I will visit you and break your neck” (98). Nwoye had strong faith as Saint Francis had, he left his home—he was happy to leave his father, the constraints of tradition, and fear—and joined the Christians to teach young Christians to read and write; this not only indicated that Nwoye was fond of the Christian belief, but also showed that he realized the importance of education. Okonkwo couldn’t tolerate any weakness but he couldn’t prevent himself from sinking into the mud of his own weakness. He killed someone accidently this was his ill-fate, but he committed suicide this was the result of his weakness. Since Okonkwo was not a virtuous hero, the misfortune that fell upon him could be interpreted as the result of a bad person falling into misfortune. Later, a messenger ordered the meeting to stop, and he was beheaded by Okonkwo. People began to wonder, “Why did he do it?” (116). Okonkwo realized no one would stand on his side and fight against the whites, and all had turned into “the weak” he hated most in all his lifetime. Consequently, he hanged himself—suicide is a taboo—in order to resist the change, and 191
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turned out to be an abominated man whose body was evil which only strangers may touch.17 His death was even worse than his father’s, who was carried to death in the evil forest; this expresses that Okwonkwo lacked the ability of reflection, flexibility, adaptability, and the most fatal of all showed “weakness”—in terms of lacking patience, endurance, kindness, gentleness/meekness, submission, love, and peace.
A Collective Failure
Okonkwo’s downfall seemed to indicate the failure of African tradition, a collective failure—for Okonkwo was the representative figure; when Okonkwo died, what Obierika said—he “was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be buried like a dog. . .” (117)—reinforced that Okonkwo was the representative of the failure of African culture. The protagonist Okonkwo, who was not virtuous, and the underlying centrality of the African religion, which is not admirable, seem to “debase African religion” in order to justify its supplanting with Christianity (Njeng 4). Njeng claims, Achebe “disparages African values” and “veils” the desire of embracing the change—the Occidental influence (2). However, I think Achebe didn’t “debase” the
17. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, p. 117.
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Colonizer or Rescuer?
African religion; he just told what it was from the insider’s point of view. II. A Religion of Fear The religion of the natives in the novel was a religion of fear. An atmosphere of horror pervaded the world of Umuofia. It is depicted that “[d]arkness held a vague terror for these people, and even the bravest among them” (7); the horror of “darkness” might have been aroused by the darkness of the night, the scary demons of the night, as well as some horrific punishment or unknown up-coming occurrence. People lived in fear—in fear of blemishing and agitating the spirits: “Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits” (7); they were also in fear of the animals—which might be possessed by evil spirits: “Dangerous animals became even more sinister and uncanny in the dark. A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string” (7). Their fear did not indicate that they were uncivilized, uneducated, or savage in contrast to Western civilization, but indicated that the religion they devoutly believed in was not able to provide its believers peace and consolation—it seemed “the wooden symbol” of their “personal god” and their “ancestral spirits” were not able to protect them (10). The other case about
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the belief of the clan was that, Ekwefi bore ten children and nine of them had died in infancy, and the medicine-men, who was also a diviner of the Afa Oracle proclaims that Ezinma is “ogbanje”—the wicked child who, when the child died, entered her mother’s wombs to be born again (47). Ezinma, a weak child, was regarded as the wicked child. Their religion taught them, if one is at peace with God, one’s “harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm” (12); meanwhile, someone could be described as an “ill-fated man” or one who has “a bad chi” (12). It seemed contradictory that the divines did not interfere in the harvest, and the harvest was based on one’s strength, but at the same time, the divines dominate one’s fate. The conception was meant to be a warning to the clan to fear their god, and if one’s can’t harvest after one’ all out efforts, it was because one has agitated the divines. However, if one’s harvest counts on ones’ strength, then, how do we explain those who are strong, but gain no harvest? Yes, one might say they, probably, have done something wrong to agitate God, but how could we explain those who are without strength, but have a plentiful harvest? In other words, if one’s prosperity relies on one’s own effort, then, how do we interpret the virtuous person who has made all efforts, but still remains poor? How do we explain the futility of 194
Colonizer or Rescuer?
the efforts of a virtuous person? And how do we interpret the prosperity of a wicked person? My view is: if humans are allowed by the gods to boast of their own strength, efforts, and prosperity, then how is it possible for them to worship the gods? The vain Oracle was pronounced which functions as proving the power of the goddess, just as the Oracle in Oedipus Tyrannus. The first time a white entered a clan (not Umuofia), he was killed immediately for the Oracle predicted that “the strange man would break their clan and spread destruction among them” (80). As the case stands, the white man was friendly and harmless: he was riding an iron horse, and even though the first people who saw him ran away, he stood beckoning to them; because of the white man’s friendliness, and thus some people went near and touched him. What a relentless divinity, who provoked the villagers to kill the unknown stranger, a new visitor! What cruel and ignorant villagers, who killed the innocent white even though they thought the white was not harmful and had been going to Mbaino and had merely lost his way. This led the whites to come to kill everyone in the market after they saw the iron horse, which was tied up by the clan; the divinity must have felt glad to see that the prophecy was fulfilled: “A great evil has come upon their land as the Oracle had warned” (81). However, the Oracle did not prevent 195
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the occurrence of the catastrophe; the Oracle of the divinity didn’t help in anything, even though Okonkwo believed their god would not permit it, i.e., that the Oracle and the killing of the
white
person—“they
have
paid
for
their
foolishness”—would cause the destruction of the whole clan (81). There was a sacred python, which was addressed by them as “Our Father”, and which was “the god of water” (91). It is contradictory that they were in fear of speaking the name of a snake, but they called a python “Our Father.” They deemed the python—a monster—to be their god and allowed it to go wherever it chose, even into one’s bed, and eat rats as well as hen’s eggs in the house. Enoch, the convert, whose father was the priest of the snake cult, has killed the python. In addition, to unmask an egwugwu in public, which means to kill an ancestral spirit, was one of the greatest crimes a man could commit in the clan; Enoch was stroked by an egwugwu when he boasted that they would not dare to touch a Christian, and he tore off his masks.18 The Egwugwu, who had the right to judge on right or wrong, and who was the spirit, could be slain by the unmasking. Besides, the egwugwu gathered together and burned down Enoch’s house. Their judge was a ghost-like spirit, an egwugwu,
18. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, p. 105.
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Colonizer or Rescuer?
a scary divinity, who needed a better translator—this was ridiculous—because he didn’t even know his translator was telling lies about what James Smith had said. The Egwugwu, who was cheated by his translator, claimed, “You can stay with us if you like our ways. You can worship your own god. It is good that a man should worship the gods and the spirits of his fathers” (109). As a matter of fact, a true divinity wouldn’t be cheated
by
translators,
and
wouldn’t
tolerate
humans
worshiping other divinities, unless he was one of the false divinities. Even though Umuofia was feared by all its neighbors—it was powerful in war and in magic—it was undefendable and was defeated by the Whites, not through weapons, or magic, but through
the
peaceful
persuasion
and
the
religion
of
peace—people no longer feared the Evil Forest. Nneka was the best example of the converts who suffered torments from a savage and unreasonable custom/religion: she had undergone four pregnancies and the births of twins, and had been immediately thrown away. When she fled to join the Christians, she was freed from the old custom/religion, freed from the tremendous fear of the Evil Forest. People of the clan became aware of the immorality of their belief/customs and decided to flee from the religion of fear. 197
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III. The Only Change: A New God Missionary Works
The village has undergone a great change due to the coming of missionaries. Here, let us examine what the missionary has done to the villagers. 1) The missionaries built a church in the Evil forest and sheltered “the weak” —those who had died of evil diseases were buried here, like leprosy and smallpox, and this place was “alive with sinister force and powers of darkness” which no one in his right sense would accept—and to their amazement none of them died; they “won a handful of converts,” although the villagers believed that the “strange faith and the white man’s god would not last” (86, 83). Those converts were not the reputed people; they were “mostly the kind of people that were called efulefu” (fool and idiot), “worthless, empty men”—those coverts are “the excrement of the clan,” said the priestess of Agbala, Chielo, “the new faith was a mad dog that had come to eat it up” (83). The church was in trouble on account of admitting and welcoming the outcasts, Osu—they were destined to be sacrificed to a god, and it was forbidden to mix with them19—twins, and abominations. For Christianity, there is no
19. “Wherever he went he carried with him the mark of his forbidden caste—long, tangled and dirty hair. A razor was taboo to him. An osu could not attend an assembly of the free-born, and they, in turn, could not shelter under his roof. He could not take any of the four titles of the clan, and when
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Colonizer or Rescuer?
slave or free men before God for all are children of God and those outcasts should also be received as our brothers and sisters; all are created by the same God, and they should not be cast out. Mr. Kiaga stated, “The heathen say you will die if you do this or that, and you are afraid. They also said I would die if I built my church on this ground. Am I dead? They said I would die if I took care of twins. I am still alive. The heathen speak nothing but falsehood” (91). Many Osu have shaved off their hair, to get rid of the sign of being a slave according to the dreadful belief, and become a Christian. 2) The missionary told the villagers about a new God, who is
the Creator of all the
world and all humans, and
all—including the black—are God’s children; he also told them what they worshipped were “false gods”—gods of “wood and stone,” and persuaded them to leave the “wicked ways and false gods” and turn to God so that they may be saved when they die (84). Any of those gods who are confined to a symbol of any hand-made—wooden or stone, etc.—idol are not the real God: “They are pieces of wood and stone” (84). The natives are polytheists; they have “the goddess of the earth, the god of the sky, Amadiora of the thunderbolt,” etc. Yet, they are not gods at all; they are “gods of deceit” who asked
he died he was buried by his kind in the Evil Forest” (90).
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them to kill their fellows and destroy innocent children. For the missionary, there is only “one true God and He has the earth, the sky, you and me and all of us” (84). The clan people argued that, God appointed “the smaller gods to help him because His work is too great for one person” (102). God shouldn’t’ be considered as a person, replied Mr. Brown; God needed no helpers; those gods who needed smaller gods as His helpers were the false gods people created with their own hands. Mr. Brown rightly pointed out that we appear to pay greater attention to the smaller gods because they were afraid of the Master, Chukwe; for Christianity, Chukwe is the loving father and need not be feared by those who act according to His will.20 The missionary has brought the natives a great change, and that great change could be summed up as only one new thing, that is, a new religion—to be more specific, a new God. A new God has freed them from fear and unreasonable domination.
Superior
Dr. Ohlander said in his Postcolonialism class, while discussing Things Fall Apart, “Christians always thought their religion is superior to others’ and everyone who feels this way about the religion he/she believes in.”21 One must admit that it 20. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, p. 102. 21. November 22th, 2011.
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is true some of the missionaries are rather proud: they show their proud attitudes and look down on those of different races and cultures; besides, they cooperate with a government, the colonizer, to dominate the colonized. If a proud missionary makes a person feel uncomfortable, the missionary should be criticized, but not the religion. There is nothing wrong for a missionary
to
believe
in
“the
superiority
of
their
religion”—though Dr. Ohlander doesn’t like this kind of attitude—rather than “the superiority of their race, and status”; it is similar to saying that there is nothing wrong with believing in the superiority of one’s knowledge, wisdom, standpoint, as well as thought. A is inferior to B and B is superior to A; the necessity of judging inferior or superior makes knowledge possible, and makes education possible. Judging (things inferior or superior) makes people uncomfortable, but it is undeniable that truth—real wisdom—is superior to untruth, and a certain culture/religion is superior to other cultures/religions. For instance, a culture that abandons twins is surely inferior to a culture which takes good care of twins; the religion of a loving God who died on the cross for human sin is surely superior to the religion of the lascivious (who may enjoy watching striptease shows on their birthday), the gluttonous (who demand people prepare luxurious feasts), the covetous (who get money 201
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and food by telling their believers the numbers of lottery tickets) gods in Taiwan. Real Christians should be very humble, and shouldn’t mean to show superiority; real Christians should know they too are the sinners. Yes, it is possible that the religion is superior, but this doesn’t mean Christians themselves are superior. Here, the main point is: one should not only pay attention to the word “superior” or feel sick whenever he/she hears it, but should pay attention to what it means. What I am trying to elucidate is that: one should focus on the content of the religion—whether it is true that it is indeed superior, but not center on the attitude of the person who teaches the religion.
Government: The Colonizer
Not only did the whites build the church, they also brought a government and trading store, school and hospital, as well as a court where the District Commissioner replaced egwugwu and judged cases. They did not win acceptance as the missionary did; the court messengers were hated by the villagers on account of their arrogance and high-handedness.22 Also, it can’t be denied that the white colonizer was evil: they “made the powerful guns” and “took slaves away across the seas” (81). Some of the
22. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, p. 99.
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villagers were imprisoned and beaten—even those who had title—for they had away thrown twins, and some had molested the
Christians.
23
Besides,
six
leaders
were
imprisoned,
handcuffed and shaved after being accused of conspiring to burn down a house. Some of the bad deeds were done by the colonizers, but the colonizers appear only at the end of the novel and through their conversations. They were not an essential point of the novel; the narrator makes only little mention of the subject. Conclusion: The Missionary, not a Colonizer but a Rescuer
According to Ania Loomba, “colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods,” and “colony or neo-colony is the place which it penetrates and controls” (1101 & 1103). It is true that the colonizers have done many horrid things to the African, and their covetous, arrogant, and tyrannical attitude should be condemned;24 but this can’t obliterate the footprint of a humble, loving missionary. As a matter of fact, the missionaries were not colonizers, but rescuers—according to our examination, they have brought a 23. Ibid. 24. Césaire in his Discourse on Colonialism asserts that “between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses” (42).
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new God and a good change for the clan. Even people of their own clan had taken up the whites’ religion and said their own customs were bad; Okonkwo couldn’t do anything to prevent the conversion, and he adamantly refused to adjust to the change. Homi Bhabha advanced the conception of “colonial mimicry,”25 which is “the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (122). That is to say, blacks’ mimicry only results in the final irony of partial representation, which produces an empty form of imitation of English manners, inducing them to remain subalterns. Here, Bhabha was pushing the change to ward development to an extreme—as blind imitation with ludicrous effect. The discourse is, in fact, more colonial than colonial discourse; it seems to mock those natives and say: you could never rise for you are subalterns! You can’t repeat!26 From our perspective as modern people, we are used to exchanging our cultures, customs, and knowledge, etc; it is convenient for us to change our cultural perspective and seek social mobility and we wouldn’t laugh at any one and said, you are not qualified to do the same thing. We all know this is a tendency of modern society: to change, to
25. According to Homi Bhabha mimicry is “the sign of a double articulation” and “inappropriate” (122); mimicry “repeats rather than re-presents” (125). 26. Ibid.
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improve, and to become better—these were all refused by Okonkwo. The village underwent a profound change; it was described by Obierika that the white men came quietly and peacefully with their religion, and now the clan could no longer act like one: they had put a knife to the things that held them together and they had fallen apart.27 The clan had fallen apart because of “the injustices that exist within” and “the outcasts see the white man as a source of redemption” and a place of refuge (Njeng 7). The white was so welcome, and it was so easy to cut the thread that held them together because they were, unconsciously, eager to get rid of the unreasonable fear that haunted them; and thus that “knife” was the knife that released them from the enslavement of belief in false Oracles and customs. That “knife” was something that was unfathomable for them before the coming of the white—and a new God, who embraces “the weak.” Consequently, I would like to conclude this paper by advancing the idea that the colonizer should be chastised, but the missionary was laudable and meritorious. But to what proportion does the novel show the incursion and exploitation of the colonizer? As a matter of fact, the colonizer was inconsequential in the novel. Who is the colonizer in the novel?
27. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, p. 100.
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We can’t name one of them; even though they do exist in the novel, they should not be considered one of the most important themes for discussion. In the novel, the whites did not cause the downfall of Okonkwo—a bad man who proceeds from good fortune to bad fortune; he deserved what he suffered. In consequence of Okonkwo’s hatred of weakness—in terms of gentleness/meekness, submission, peace, and love—he was not able to accept change; he was always raging with fire and ready for war. It is unfair to consider all whites colonizers; it is also unfair to identify all missionaries as colonizers. Most of the time, they appear one after another, but in the case of Things Fall Apart, missionaries and colonizers were two separated entities. What are
the “things” that fall apart?
It is their
unreasonable religion and their faith in it that fall apart. Missionaries have contributed so much to the clan and brought them a new change, a new religion, a new God, a new possibility and hope. The missionaries were their rescuers. * I must offer my thanks to Dr. Stephen Ohlander for his emendations.
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Works Cited Abrams, M. H.. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 2. 7th ed. 1962. New York & London: Norton, 2000. Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text. Contexts and Criticism. Ed., Francis Abiola Irele. New York & London: Norton, 2009. . Things Fall Apart. Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text. Contexts and Criticism. Ed., Francis Abiola Irele. New York & London: Norton, 2009. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London & New York: Routledge, 1994. Bible: New Revised Standard Version. United States: Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, 1989. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2nd ed. Trans. Henry Beveridge. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990. Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review P, 2000. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1967. Ke, Immanuel C.-Ming. （柯志明） ，“Affliction and the Alterations of God’s Image: By Means of the Reflections by Ricoeur.” 207
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〈苦難與上帝形像之更迭 ( ：取道呂格爾的反思〉)，Theology and Church.（ 《神學與教會》 ）Tainan: Tainan Theological College & Seminary. 25.1 (1999), pp.231-49. . Love Ethics. Taipei: Taiwan Christian Institute. 2011. Loomba, Ania. “Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan ed. 1998. UK: Blackwell, 2004. Njeng, Eric Sipyinyu. “Achebe, Conrad, and the Postcolonial Strain.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 10.1 (2008). pp.1-8. <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol10/iss 1/3>. Prisca, Ya-Chi Chiu. On Two Tragic Theologies: A Comparison of Oedipus Tyrannus with the “Book of Job”. Kaohsiung: NKNU. 2011. Walder, Dennis. Post-Colonial Literatures in English: History, Language, Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
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