African colonization was a time of shattered men. Minds were fractured and the human psyche was sent swirling into oblivion. Such devastation is to be expected when outsiders come to one’s land and seize families, wealth, resources, culture, and freedom. This time period was split cleanly in two: the self-righteous colonizers and the African natives. What one group saw as human progress was perceived by the other as the greatest of wrongs. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness make an especially interesting comparison because one is told from the perspective of a native man and another is told from the perspective of a white outsider. With these two texts it is possible to glimpse—if however narrow—the human
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The tide of change always begins with the arrival of white men. For Okonkwo, the change begins when white Christians come to Nigeria on proselytization missions. For Marlow the change begins when he, a white foreigner, reaches the Congo. There exists a tree of opinions in response to change that characters within a given situation can possess. There are some Umuofians in Things Fall Apart who shuck their mother heritage in favor of Christianity and the ways of white men, there are Umuofians who tolerate and/or adopt a minimal amount of Christian customs and do not particularly mind the presence of the white men as long as they keep to their place, and there are the Umuofians who will defend the integrity of their culture to the death. In Heart of Darkness, a similar tree of opinions can be derived: white men who fully support colonization, white men who are not particularly fond of colonization and won’t participate in it themselves, and white men who fight tooth and nail against colonization. In Things Fall Apart the strongest example of a man who completely sheds his culture in favor of another is Enoch. When Enoch unmasks an egwugwu, or Umuofian spirit, the whole clan is thrown into uproar. Achebe says, “That night the Mother of the Spirits walked the length and breadth of the clan, weeping for her murdered son…It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept…”() In Umuofian culture, the unmasking of an egwugwu is synonymous with murder. By unmasking an egwugwu Enoch literally killed a part of the Umuofian religion. Desecration of the mother is the farthest one can get from one’s origins. And that is exactly what Enoch
The tide of change always begins with the arrival of white men. For Okonkwo, the change begins when white Christians come to Nigeria on proselytization missions. For Marlow the change begins when he, a white foreigner, reaches the Congo. There exists a tree of opinions in response to change that characters within a given situation can possess. There are some Umuofians in Things Fall Apart who shuck their mother heritage in favor of Christianity and the ways of white men, there are Umuofians who tolerate and/or adopt a minimal amount of Christian customs and do not particularly mind the presence of the white men as long as they keep to their place, and there are the Umuofians who will defend the integrity of their culture to the death. In Heart of Darkness, a similar tree of opinions can be derived: white men who fully support colonization, white men who are not particularly fond of colonization and won’t participate in it themselves, and white men who fight tooth and nail against colonization. In Things Fall Apart the strongest example of a man who completely sheds his culture in favor of another is Enoch. When Enoch unmasks an egwugwu, or Umuofian spirit, the whole clan is thrown into uproar. Achebe says, “That night the Mother of the Spirits walked the length and breadth of the clan, weeping for her murdered son…It seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept…”() In Umuofian culture, the unmasking of an egwugwu is synonymous with murder. By unmasking an egwugwu Enoch literally killed a part of the Umuofian religion. Desecration of the mother is the farthest one can get from one’s origins. And that is exactly what Enoch