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Research in African Literatures 31.2 (2000) 163-173



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Commentary

Theoretical Construction and Constructive Theorizing on the Execution of Ikemefuna in Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Study in Critical Dualism

Emeka Nwabueze


Wherever Something Stands,
Something Else stands beside it.

--Igbo Proverb

The use of proverbial lore is a prominent conversational feature in the Igboland of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. So important is the use of proverbs in Igbo conversation and orature that Achebe describes it as "the palm oil with which words are eaten" (5). The proverb quoted above is concerned with the concept of duality in interpretative reasoning and can be seen as a philosophical pedestal on which Achebe's Things Fall Apart stands. It is apparently the recognition of the importance of this proverb in Achebe's art that prompted Bill Moyers to seek the interpretation of this proverb from Achebe himself (333). In the interview, Achebe states that it is important to examine an issue critically in order to reveal a second point of view. Achebe, it appears, advises critics to seek a second point of view in interpreting his life and art. Stressing this concept of duality in his essay "Chi in Igbo Cosmology" in Morning Yet on Creation Day, Achebe states:

Wherever Something Stands Something Else will stand beside it. Nothing is absolute. I am the truth, the way and the life would be called blasphemous or simply absurd for is it not well known that a man may worship Ogwugwu to perfection and yet be killed by Udo. (94)

One of the major causes of the misinterpretation of Achebe by critics, it appears, is that they sometimes seek meaning from historical and sociological data that are so apparent in Achebe's novels.Hence, they sometimes fail to recognize the importance of a more critical view from what the historical and sociological data reveal. As Simon Gikandi has pointed out:

Achebe has suffered the misfortune of being taken for granted: the intricate and deep structures that inform his narratives are rarely examined, except on an elementary introductory level, and the ideologies that inform his narratives and his theoretical reflection rarely seem to have the influence one would expect from Africa's leading novelist. Clearly, Achebe has been a victim of that kind of [End Page 163] "first" reading which Roland Barthes condemned as the consumption of the text, a reading which erases the problematics of the text and its contradictory meanings in its quest for the artifice of continuity. (2)

Duality seems to appeal to Achebe because it produces a multiplicity of meanings and indeterminate zones of representation that generate narrative invention. In another sense, I believe, duality allows the author, like his Igbo ancestors, to contest the dependence on reason in interpretation and analyses of facts and situations. The problem of establishing fixed taxonomy among people that do not thrive in fixed taxonomies, it seems to me, is partly the cause of the misinterpretation of Achebe's work by some critics. Furthermore, recourse to sociological taxonomies causes the critic to have fixed expectations about the behavior of a fictional character, judging him or her from the sociological beliefs of his or her people rather than from the narrative viewpoint. As Lekan Oyegoke has pointed out, "in the realm of textual strategies there are no permanent questions and no permanent answers, let alone permanent solutions" (66).

One of the episodes in the novel where the concept of dualism seems very apparent is the execution of the young lad, Ikemefuna. The episode is so crucial to the development of the novel that it has been subjected to much interpretation by critics. The conclusion most critics reach from the analysis of this episode is that because of his participation in the execution of the boy "that calls him father," Okonkwo's life faced a negative trend, and finally steered to the horrendous denouement.

G. D. Killam (20), Charles E. Nnolim (58), Robert M. Wren (44), David Carrol (42), and Emmanuel...

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