'There is no story that is not true'

Observations from re-reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

‘There is no story that is not true’ said Uchendu. ‘The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their ways to a land where everybody is like them?’

The Parents’ book club I attend handed out Things Fall Apart as our January read. It has been more than three decades since I last read it and, beyond the general outline of the story, I did not remember too much of the story’s details (Fola and I discussed it briefly when we were writing Formation because one of the sources we used in our research - Among The Ibos of Nigeria (George Thomas Basden) - read a lot like it had been an inspiration for Chinua Achebe’s writing).

DALL·E Prompt: Imagine a young Chinua Achebe, his face full of mischief, as he writes Things Fall Apart in a quiet room alone

Rereading the work renewed my appreciation for its profound influence on Nigerian language and popular culture. Consider William Tyndale, who—after the Bishop of London refused his plan to translate the Bible—ventured to the Netherlands and Germany and, in doing so, ‘made a language for England’. Tyndale introduced phrases like "the salt of the earth", "the powers that be", "apple of his eye", “let my people go” and "flowing with milk and honey"—all borne of his insistence on simplicity and fidelity to everyday speech. In much the same way, Achebe’s unadorned prose in TFA has reshaped the Nigerian use of English. It struck me that even a Nigerian who has never cracked the book open would find its voice remarkably familiar.

A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.

What struck me the most, however, is a theme that has stayed with me from when we were writing Formation: the role of the marginalised in exposing a society’s vulnerabilities when outsiders show up i.e. marginalisation not only betrays a society’s inability to care for all its members but also creates openings for external influences to reshape its cultural and social fabric.

In advance of visiting Japan a couple of years ago, I read Mark Ravina’s To Stand With The Nations of the World. Perhaps my mind is simply overactive—rest assured, I am not indulging in any substances—but the parallels were too striking to ignore. Both in Igboland and Japan, the embrace of external influences by marginalised groups can be seen as not just a matter of religious or political conversion, but as a strategic retreat from a society that has consistently failed to offer them dignity or a voice.

In Igboland, aside from the emblematic figures of the osu outcasts and Nwoye, one can observe how the rise of Christianity provided a counter-narrative to the established order. For many who found themselves ostracised by traditional hierarchies, Christianity was more than a new faith—it was an end run around the old prejudices that could now be left behind. It offered the marginalised a chance to reimagine their identity outside the confines of a rigid caste system, one that had long stigmatised them. By aligning themselves with a faith that preached equality and personal salvation, these individuals were able to articulate a vision of society where merit, rather than the immutable circumstances of their birth, began to count for something. And the new religion was also much cheaper to adhere to!

In Japan, while the historical context differs, a comparable dynamic can be teased out. Mark Ravina’s work illustrates how the arrival of Western modernity and the ensuing transformation during the Meiji Restoration exposed the underlying fissures in Japanese society. Traditional hierarchies had long marginalised certain groups – notably, the burakumin, who were relegated to the margins and forced to live with a persistent social stigma. When the tides of modernisation swept through Japan, these marginalised communities sometimes found that aligning themselves with the new order offered not just a pathway to escape their long-standing ostracism but also a means to assert their worth in a rapidly changing world.

It takes no great genius to observe that when a society’s internal cohesion is lacking, even the most unlikely of outsiders can become attractive allies. In Igboland, the adoption of Christianity by those ostracised underscores the allure of a fresh start free from the burdens of an age-old caste system. In Japan, the modernisation process – forced upon the nation by external pressures – inadvertently opened up spaces for those previously consigned to the periphery to reimagine their roles in a new society.

‘The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act as one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’

To misquote Achebe himself: let no one be fooled by the fact that he wrote in simple English, for he did unheard-of things with it. His writing always harboured a cheeky, subversive streak, much like Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which had us all convinced it was a tirade against detestable rich Koreans, when in truth it slyly skewered the nastiness of poor people.

Here’s a passage that really stood out to me:

These outcasts, or osu, seeing that the new religion welcomed twins and such abominations, thought that it was possible that they would also be received. And so one Sunday two of them went into the church. There was an immediate stir; but so great was the work the new religion had done among the converts that they did not immediately leave the church when the outcasts came in. Those who found themselves nearest to them merely moved to another seat. It was a miracle.

The church members soon ‘came to their senses’ and were about to drive out the osu before the intervention of Mr. Kiaga. Here, Achebe does a Thucydides who, when questioned as to the veracity of some of the speeches he attributed to certain characters in his account of The Peloponnesian War, replied: where he knows what a man said, he quotes it; where he does not, he puts in his mouth what he ought to have said, given the occasion and its demands.

In convincing the osu to shave off their hair, Achebe puts the following words into Mr. Kiaga’s mouth:

‘You fear that you will die. Why should that be? How are you different from other men who shave their hair? The same God created you and them. But they have cast you out like lepers. It is against the will of God, who has promised everlasting life to all who believe in His holy name. 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. Only the word of our God is true.’

None of this is unique to Igboland. The practice of abandoning twins is particularly personal for me—as I wrote when my father passed away a few years back. Equally noteworthy is the case of the Ogbanjes, for which my grandfather was named ‘Tugbogbo’ after several roundtrips between here and the afterlife. These customs are symptomatic of societies that sacrifice anything and everything on the altar of tradition, often with little regard for those paying the price.

And here is the point I have never stopped trying to make: In the final reckoning, both Igboland and Japan offer us a cautionary tale: when the outcasts of a society find refuge in the arms of an outsider, they reveal an inconvenient truth about the society they are attempting to leave behind. Marginalisation is not merely a personal tragedy; it is an indictment of a system that prioritises tradition over tolerance, exclusion over inclusion. It is as if the margins have decided that, rather than suffer in silence, they would rather expose the fragility of the centre.

And so, as we reflect on these historical narratives, we are left with a wry reminder that if a society’s worth is measured solely by the success of its dominant culture, then it is doomed to crumble when its neglected peripheries choose to rewrite the story.