Technology, Cognition and Education
Fall Quarter 2000
Workshop on Reading Things Fall Apart
Thad Curtz

This workshop asks you to look closely at some particular issues and passages in the novel. I think there are a number of interesting and useful things you can say about most of the questions; try not to assume that you're done with each question as soon as somebody comes up with what seems like a reasonable idea - stick with each question for a while and see what else you can do with it. We have time tomorrow rto talk about things we don't get to today. A group of four or five is probably about the right size to share a variety of ideas and still be small enough so that people can hear each other in this room.

Part 1: The opening -

The narrator goes back twenty years to start the story. Okonkwo has many "solid personal achievements"; why begin with this one?

A. First, let's approach the question from a cultural point of view. Wrestling seems to be a pretty central activity in Ibo life - see how many ways you can think of in which Ibo wrestling is different from baseball, which was for a long time the central sport of the American people... Take each difference you can think of and see what you might infer from it about Ibo life and values, and how they are different from American life and values. Exactly what counts as winning your wrestling match, and what counts as losing? What does it take to be a great wrestler, like Amalinze the Cat, in comparison with what it takes to be a great baseball player?

B. Next, let's try a more personal approach. Why might this be the achievement that matters the most for the story? What exactly are its personal consequences for Okonkwo? What's the place of those consequences in the story? Suppose they weren't there, that everything else were the same, but that this episode and its particular consequences for him were left out... how would that change how you felt about Okonkwo and what happens to him?

C. Lastly, let's approach it figuratively

1. Suppose you assumed that this moment in which we first see him, this little story, might somehow encapsulate Okonkwo's whole life, the essence of what he's like. In what ways might you read it like that?

2. There are a number of other moments later in the part we've read where the narrator uses language like one phrase in his description of this scene - "stretching to the breaking point." For example, the sentence on the top of page 49 beginning "The drummers took up their sticks," and the first sentence in the last paragraph on page 59 beginning "As soon as his father walked in," and then another sentence later in the paragraph beginning "It was after such a day at the farm..." Take a look at those sentences.

These repetitions bring two wrestling matches into some relation with two moments in Nwoye's life. Start by looking at the description of the first day on which Nwoye had this sensation - how does what ends that day and produces this feeling relate to the experiences earlier in the day that lead up to the final moment? Next, what things do that day and the day Ikemefune is killed have in common? Lastly, how would you compare or contrast these two pieces of Nwoye's experience to the two wrestling matches described in the related language we started this question by hunting for?

3. The narrator follows this opening match between Okonkwo and Amalinze almost immediately by a long scene between Unoka and Okoye. How are those two scenes alike? How are they different?

Part 2: Gender structures

Get a piece of paper and divide it the long way to make two columns; label one masculine and one feminine.

1. In many ways, Ibo society (and the novel) are structured around the relationships of these two terms. For starters, spend a few minutes putting whatever you can think of in the book that belongs in one or the other of these columns into its place. Each time you put something in, take a minute to talk about whether there's something corresponding with or related to it that ought to go into the other column. Unless it's really obvious, talk a little about why the items might end up in the columns they go in...

2. If you haven't already, take a look at the passage on page 52 where the narrator describes the stories Nwoye's "mother used to tell." Take a close look at these stories. What can you infer from them about the lives and values of Ibo women? Add whatever seems appropriate to your columns.

3. If you haven't already, try to figure out how the gods and spirits go in these columns. If some of you have already read ahead, you might consider how the episode with the egwugwu in Chapter 10 and the episode with Agbala in Chapter 11 relate to each other. (It's also interesting to look up agbala in the glossary in the back.)

4. If you haven't already, discuss where to put Nwoye and Enzima.

5. If you haven't already, discuss the position of the agadi-nwayi described in the last paragraph on page 15. What do you make of the difficulties in placing these last items?

Part 3: Ibo childhood

What are the relations of Ibo boys and their mothers like? What sort of people are Ibo boys supposed to be while they are young?

What are the relations of Ibo men and their wives like? What sort of people are Ibo men supposed to be?

How do you think Ibo males make the social and psychological transition they have to make to get from being the sort of people they are supposed to be as boys to being the sort of people they are supposed to be as men? What are the implications of this issue for understanding Okonkwo and the novel? In particular, how's he feel about mothers? What's his relationship to the earth goddess? What's this have to do with the first scene in the book and losing at wrestling?

Part 4: To think about for tomorrow -

Food. Fire.

Here's an Ibo story.

Once there was a great wrestler whose back had never known the ground. He wrestled from village to village until he had thrown every man in the world. Then he decided he must go and wrestle in the land of spirits and become champion there as well. He went, and beat every spirit that came forward. Some had seven heads, some ten; but he beat them all. His companion who sang his praise on the flute begged him to come away, but he would not. He pleaded with him, but his ear was nailed up. Rather than go home, he gave a challenge to the spirits to bring out their best and strongest wrestler. So they sent him his personal god [his chi], a little wiry spirit who seized him with one hand and smashed him on the stony earth.

How would you compare Okonkwo's relations with his chi to Odysseus's relations with Athena? To Socrates's relations with his daimon?

In what ways is this an oral-traditional work? In what ways is it literary?