Theme Of Imperialism In Things Fall Apart

The fin de siècle was a period of rapid change in Europe, with new technologies that increased contact between Europe and other continents like Africa. Europe’s subsequent Scramble for Africa was justified by new sciences and theories, such as social Darwinism and degeneration. However, both the justifications for imperialism and the act itself often ignored native voices. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (TFA) provides an African view on imperialism; although his novel appears to support some of the justifications for imperialism, the book ultimately rebuts these by showing how harmful imperialism was to Africans. During the fin de siècle, Darwin’s theory of evolution claimed that humans descended from primitive ancestors and evolution did

Okonkwo spends his life ensuring that he will not be agbala (woman/title-less man) like his father (Achebe 10). His hypermasculinity manifests in his aggression and his refusal to show emotions because “to show affection [is] a sign of weakness” (Achebe 20). Like the Europeans, Okonkwo is concerned that physical and mental weakness in inheritable, which is why he is so afraid and angry that his own son, Nwoye, is “degenerate and effeminate” (Achebe 108). Okonkwo’s fear of degeneration is toxic. His hypermasculinity hurts everyone around him, most obviously through his killing of Ikemefuna. Although Okonkwo does not want to kill his “son,” he does it anyway because he does not want the other men to see him as weak (Achebe 43). Okonkwo’s hypermasculinity also hurts himself. He falls into a depression after Ikemefuna’s death and (Achebe 46). In the end, Okonkwo’s failure to convince Umofia to go to war leads him to hang himself (Achebe 46, 144). Likewise, European imperialism’s attempts to combat degeneration were usually incredibly harmful to the Africans, as shown throughout

Through a modern lens, imperialists seems either incredibly naïve, like Chamberlain who genuinely though he was saving the Africans, or malicious like Kidd, who thought whites were destined to “exterminate” inferior races like the Africans (Kidd, in Armstrong 229). Yet, as seen in TFA, the realities of imperialism were much more ambiguous. Imperialists like Mr. Brown were benevolent, though not necessarily beneficial. Likewise, not all Africans were victims or saw imperialism as a negative development. Imperialism benefitted certain Africans like Nwoye and the osu. In the end, Achebe’s message about imperialism is best summed up by Obierka’s observation: “[the white man] does not even speak our tongue [.] But he says that our customs are bad” (Achebe 124). TFA shows that one of the main reasons imperialism was so harmful to the natives is the sometimes unintentional, sometimes deliberate lack of understanding of by the Europeans. Because they assumed that Africans were incomprehensible and inherently different, they decided that Africans needed outside help to become