History is written by the victors

I think that one of the main ideas that Achebe expresses in Things Fall Apart is that of who is going to tell the story. This is portrayed in the character of the District Commissioner.

Towards the end of the novel after Okonkwo hanged himself, the District Commissioner started pondering on the idea of writing about this event. The Commissioner had been planning on writing a book about his experiences in Africa and thought that “The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading”. This is the image that he and most of his colleagues would have about Okonkwo. I found disheartening to read that because as a reader I know better. I read about Okonkwo's father and how Okonkwo aspired to be everything that his predecessor was not; I read about his struggle to succeed and represent the values of his culture; I read about him losing almost everything and being exiled; I read about how he perceived the new culture of the white man and how it changed his culture; I read about how he deemed necessary to fight against these intruders who were stomping on his values and beliefs.

But all of Okonkwo's hardships and beliefs are ignored and all his life is reduced to two lines. A man who killed someone and then himself. Not even his name is important. Sadly this is the only thing that people reading the Commissioner's book would know as he is not planning on writing more than one or two paragraphs on Okonkwo. And he is completely free of doing so, it is not like someone from Okonkwo's tribe is going to read that book and say “Hey! That's not all there is to it!”. Why? Because: One, most of them were just learning how to read. And two, who would listen to them?.

Another aspect that is important to consider is the name the Commissioner chose for his book “The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger”. The choice of words and their meaning is baffling. This title suggests that the tribes of the lower Niger were uncivilized and aggressive and thus had to be saved and controlled through domination. This for me is all wrong. These tribes built their own civilization that lived in peace with nature and had its own laws, and just because it was not the same as the white man's does not mean that they were uncivilized. Also these tribes were in peace when the white man approached them and only attacked when they felt in danger, so to talk about pacification is a fallacy. Moreover, even though Catholicism took an oath to teach about God and the Good News of Jesus, the white man had no right to interfere with these tribes' lives and impose their culture.

Victors do not reflect how those who lost really were. They carry with them their prejudice and are most of the times outsiders to the cultures they conquer. It is almost impossible to understand those cultures in depth when the only source are victors like the Commissioner.