Paper 2 Practice #1: Social status in Things Fall Apart

Discuss the significance of social status in Things Fall Apart, and comment on its contribution to characterization.

Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, takes place in a fictional group of Igbo tribes known as Umuofia. Despite being a creation of Achebe, Umuofia’s society stays true to the vast majority of the Igbo social and cultural elements. Among these is the great importance of social status within the Igbo society. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe uses the element of social status in Igbo culture to enrich his characters and place them into the context he is writing them into. Three clear examples in which Achebe does this in his novel are when he uses a low social status to give a negative view of a character, when he uses high social status to create a positive view of a character, and when he represents the constant struggle to achieve high a social status in Okonkwo, the main character of the novel.

In the first chapters of the novel, Achebe tells the story of Okonkwo’s father, who was a man of low social status that spent his days being lazy and worried more about his music rather than gaining wealth and climbing the social ladder. It is important to remark that in Igbo society the achievement of a high social status through hard work was what most men would dedicate their lives to, and men who did poorly in this aspect were often looked down upon and thought of as weak and feminine. By giving Okonkwo’s father an extremely low social status and complimenting that with the description of him as a lazy person, Achebe effectively creates a negative image of this character in the reader’s mind. This in turn allows the reader to sympathize more with Okonkwo, who deeply resents his father’s paradigm, which in turn allows the audience to emotionally engage with the novel more easily since they will now be able to feel sorry for Okonkwo’s tragic occurrences. This is shows how Achebe can use a low social standing to create a negative image of a character.

Achebe, however, also uses high social statuses to create positive perspectives of characters, as is the case with Ogbuefi Ezeudo, one of the leaders of the tribe. Ezeudo is one of the most revered men in all of Umuofia and he is also meant to be a very wise character who always speaks the truth. It is for this reason that Achebe gave this man a very high position in the social ladder, with three of the four great titles that a man could have in Umuofia. Ezeudo’s high social standing immediately creates an image that portrays him as a man of honor, as a hard-working man who is worth looking up to. Even though Ogbuefi Ezeudo is a rather flat character, his high social standing allows the reader to quickly understand how important he is in his community, apart from creating such a positive image of him.

The entire hegemony of the Igbo society is portrayed clearly through Okonkwo. Similarly to Ogbuefi Ezeudo, Achebe grants Okonkwo a relatively high social standing and describes how he has got there through hard work, which creates a positive image of him for the reader. However, the fact that Okonkwo is still trying hard to climb up the social ladder gives him a drive to carry out most of his actions. At the end of Things Fall Apart Okonkwo is forced to take his own life due to the circumstances he was in, however most of the actions that led him there were typically related to climbing the social ladder. Throughout the novel, it is seen how Okonkwo works hard to attain wealth in order to obtain titles, which in Igbo culture can only be obtained when a man has enough wealth to pay for the initiation rites. We also see how Okonkwo strives to behave as manly as possible in order to be perceived positively by the community of Umuofia. Okonkwo’s constant attempt at looking manly is what often leads to many of his wrongful decisions, such as participating in Ikemefuna’s sacrifice. Okonkwo’s constant attempt to look manly has also had an influence in the way that he expresses his emotions, and he thus becomes less comprehensive and more violent, since imposing authority through violence is a trait that is considered to be manly in Igbo culture. This is what leads to Okonkwo breaking the week of peace by beating his wife and to him beheading the missionary at the end, which was the final mistake that led to his demise. This shows how Achebe not only uses social status to express specific traits, but also how he uses the hegemony in the Igbo culture to drive his characters, especially Okonkwo, in a specific direction. In Okonkwo’s case, his tragic end might suggest that Achebe wanted to show how detrimental the social hegemony was for the Igbo people, since the search for this eventually lead to Okonkwo’s demise.

In conclusion, Chinua Achebe is able to use a social structure, very resembling of that of the real Igbo tribes, to quickly convey traits of a character due to the clear views of social positions in Igbo culture. Achebe also uses the search for social status to drive his characters, most specifically Okonkwo, whose demise is eventually caused by this constant strife to be perceived positively in his society.