Symbols and meanings in Things Fall Apart:

When reading this book, I realized the strong images and symbols presented during the story and the huge importance they represent. In order to fully understand the story, we as readers should understand the hidden meanings and for that it is necessary to go back to the roots, to go back to the African culture.

The first element to analyze is the language: Language is known to be one of the strongest elements within a culture. In Things Fall Apart, the mother tongue Igbo, is presented and integrated to the story, demonstrating to the reader that all languages in Africa are neither simple nor incomprehensible as the common stereotype represents: The image of African people as savages without a complex socio-cultural structure leads to a very basic way of communication.

The second element is fire: the fire is a very destructive element; it consumes rapidly everything around it. It is also associated to wrath, which is the kind of feeling that usually overwhelms Okonkwo: he has an intense and dangerous anger which exceeds his actions as represented when he kills Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s son, just like fire destroys dry wood. Furthermore, it can be appreciated that Okonkwo’s emotions are stronger than him, showing his real nature and ruling his actions until they destroy him.

Third elements are drums: music has an extremely fundamental role in African culture. Music in the story represented by drums show the deep relationship between the members of a community, symbolizing a physical connection in Umofia’s clansmen and uniting people. Music has many purposes within a culture: it tells stories, folktales; it represents joy as well as suffering; it is played in birth as well as death.

In addition to all previous analysis, when reading this book I could not stop thinking about a movie I watched many years ago. Kirikou or Kirikú (in Spanish), is an animated movie based on a West African folktale about a very smart and small child that unlike other villagers confronts adversity to fight against a Sorceress instead of accepting and fearing her authority. This movie shows an inner perspective of African culture in a tale: it shows a poor reality, the importance of family and of the community, the male and female’ roles, the harmony with the body, the importance of music. Also, I would like to point that the animation in this movie is inspired from “Negro Art” using the colors that characterizes it; and the soundtrack was made with traditional African instruments like the Balafon, the Ritti, the Cora, the Belon, etc.

I highly recommend you to watch this movie!

Finally, when talking about the “Negro Art”, Hughes in his work “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” states:

“One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning subconsciously, "I would like to be a white poet"; (…) And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America--this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.”

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/mountain.htm

With this idea, I immediately think about Achebe and that this was exactly what he did not want for his work. He wrote including symbolisms: music, fire; including the beauty of Igbo language, the traditions and the African culture just to let the world know the reality in Africa, to make the reader realize that American or European literature or even culture are not better and that no author should be ashamed to present his/her roots in his/her work. You cannot separate an identity of a person, or a community from a culture

Do you think, in this context that is it better to represent a highly recognized and valuated culture as the American rather to represent, for example, the African? Is it correct to try to simulate or pretend to be part of something that you are not part of, leaving aside your own roots? Would you like to be the White poet or the Negro poet?