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meanings and thoughts thrown up by the actions and inactions of 
Umuofia clan in their encounter with the white missionaries which 
invariably inflamed the destruction of their cherished cultural 
values. The paper draws a conclusion that the mission of the white 
men should not have been a complete success if not for the 
complimentary actions of the people of Umuofia as the study 
reveals.

Keywords: Hermeneutics, culture, disintegration, society, 
values.

Introduction
 Chinua Achebe (1930 – 2013) is probably both the most 
widely known and the most representative African novelist. He is 
regarded as the father of modern African literature, and he came to 
canonical prominence owing to the impact of his first novel, 
Things Fall Apart (1958) - the best-known work of African 
literature in the world. His indictment of colonial discourse in the 
essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Joseph Conrad's Heart of 
Darkness,” originally delivered as a lecture at the University of 
Massachusetts in 1974 created awareness about true African 
identity contrary to the European view of Africa.

 While Things Fall Apart was neither the first African novel 
nor the first to capture the trauma of the colonial encounter, 
Achebe's transliteration of the Igbo language - its beauty, 
philosophy, and cadences of speech - in clear, eloquent prose, and 
his intimate knowledge and subversion of the Western literary 
tradition moved literary critics around the world, and inspires 
generations of African writers. He further helped shape the 
direction of African writing in editorial roles - most notably as the 
founding editor of Heinemann's African Writers Series - and 
through his manifold critical and biographical essays, many of 
which preempt ideas at the core of postcolonial theory, with a 
more accessible and mellifluous idioms.

The Enemy Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua 

Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD
Department of English

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam
Email: asikaikechukwu@yahoo.com
Mobile phone: +2348038679214

&
Ewuzie, Olisa Felix

Department of English
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam.

Email: olisaco4u@yahoo.com
Mobile phone: +2348038173828

Abstract
This paper examines Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart using the 
theory of hermeneutics to establish the point that the cultural 
disintegration which the Umuofia people suffered during the 
imperialistic conquest of Africa arguably succeeded not because 
of the determination of the white men to upturn the cultural values 
of Umuofia but owing to insensitive and preposterous attitude of 
the Umuofia people. While many critics have often noted that the 
white men caused the disintegration of Igbo society and values, 
this paper elects to take a contrary dimension through a 
hermeneutical re-reading of Achebe's classic, Things Fall Apart. 
The study contends and through hermeneutical lenses, offers 
critical explanations and justification that the Umuofia people 
should be blamed primarily other than the white men for the 
culture disintegration and subjugation which their society went 
through during the colonial incursion. The paper, through a 
hermeneutical re-reading of Things Fall Apart via historical, 
cultural and intellectual contexts of the text, engenders a critical 
position on the novel through a decoding of some underlying 

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2024
Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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mailto:asikaikechukwu@yahoo.com
mailto:olisaco4u@yahoo.com


 Achebe was determined to take the modern African 
Literature to greater heights as well as to prove to the Europeans 
the value of the African culture. The novel was published during a 
period when a lot of writers emerged from Nigeria; among them 
are Wole Soyinka and Ben Okri. These writers all play an 
influential role in modern African Literature, both in their 
countries and internationally. However, Achebe was the most 
successful writer of the lot because he “has been critical of the role 
of Christianity in Africa, his criticism has been regarded generally 
as moderate and his creative work has won almost universal praise 
for its objectivity and detachment” (Sharma 85). In fact, he is “one 
of the writers of his time with fluency in the English language” 
(Jiffynotes.com 1). 

 Based on the descriptions of Africa and its people by both 
Conrad and Cary, it comes as no surprise that Achebe and other 
African writers began to emerge and tell their story of Africa and 
its people. Not only were Conrad and Cary's novels a 
misrepresentation of Africa, they were also humiliating to its 
people. It is through the insights of Things Fall Apart that the 
world became more appreciative of Africa and its people and at the 
same time the truth surrounding the stereotypical ideas that once 
existed about Africa which began to appear in a much clearer light.
According to Alimi, Things Fall Apart is all about the “collapse, 
breaking into pieces, chaos, and confusion” (121) of traditional 
Igbo culture that suffers at the hand of the white man's arrival in 
Umuofia along with his religion. The views about life that the 
white men have are totally different from the views that the Igbo 
have. What seems utterly appropriate and acceptable in 
traditional Igbo culture does not appear so to the white 
missionaries. They are quick to want to change certain elements 
of traditional Igbo culture which according to them are 
inappropriate and unacceptable. However, in so doing, the white 
missionaries fail to see that these inappropriate and unacceptable 
elements of traditional Igbo culture are what keep the Igbo 
together. The white men subtly engaged the support of many Igbo 

 When Things Fall Apart was first published, Achebe 
announced that one of his purposes was to present a complex, 
dynamic society to a Western audience who perceived African 
society as primitive, simple, and backward. Unless Africans could 
tell their side of the story, Achebe believed that the African 
experience would forever be mistold, even by such well-meaning 
authors as Joyce Cary in Mister Johnson. In an interview 
published in 1994, Achebe explains that his anger about the 
inaccurate portrayal of African culture by white colonial writers 
does not imply that students should not read works by Conrad or 
Cary. On the contrary, Achebe urges students to read such works in 
order to better understand the racism of the colonial era.

 Beyond using literature to correct misconceptions formed 
by foreigners about Africa, Achebe kept in mind his own Nigerian 
people as an audience. In 1964, he stated his goal for writing thus: 
“to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the 
complexes of the years of denigration and self-abasement. . . . I 
would be quite satisfied if my novels . . . did no more than teach my 
(African) readers that their past — with all its imperfections — 
was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans 
acting on God's behalf delivered them.”

 This is to say that Achebe's primary purpose of writing 
Things Fall Apart is because he wants to educate his readers about 
the value of his culture as an African. Things Fall Apart provides 
readers with an insight into the Igbo society right before the white 
missionaries' invasion on their land. The invasion of the 
colonising force threatens to change almost every aspect of Igbo 
society; from religion, traditional gender roles and relations, 
family structure to trade. Nothing was spared. Consequently, 
Achebe blames the white missionaries for colonial and post-
colonial subjugation of Igbo culture; this subjugation can be seen 
in terms of the oppressed social coherence between the individual 
and their society. 

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2024
Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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 In view of the foregoing, M.H Abrams opines that 
“hermeneutics originally designated the formulation of principles 
of interpretation that apply specifically to the Bible; the principles 
incorporated both the rules governing a valid reading of the 
biblical text, and exegesis…. Since the nineteenth century, 
however, “hermeneutics” has come to designate the theory of 
interpretation in general – that is, a formulation of the principles 
and methods involved in getting at the meaning of all written 
text.…”(127). Chris Baldick adds that hermeneutics “involves 
basic problems such as the possibility of establishing a 
determinate meaning in a text, the role of the author's intention, 
the historical relativity of meanings, and the status of the reader's 
contribution to a text's meaning.” (112). 
This theory also seeks to uncover issues beyond what the author 
might not have intended in his text but they are embedded 
especially when looking at different parts of the text as against the 
whole vis-a-vis cultural and historical background of the text. 
Rodney Frey buttresses this point that:

 To hermeneutically interpret is to first dwell in the words 
of the text, as if, as an archaeologist, you are using your 
trowel and brush to bit-by-bit remove the earth encasing an 
ancient shard...  A hermeneutical interpretation of a text 
can thus reveal more clearly the meaning of the words of 
the text, as well as the cultural and intellectual contexts in 
which it was formed, providing a means to better 
understand and share the original experiences and ideas of 
the author of the text.

 Gadamer further adds to this view well when he writes that 
“… to understand an author was not the same thing as 
understanding writing and speech perfectly. The norm for 
understanding a book is not the author's meaning. For, 'since men 
cannot be aware of everything, their words, speech, and writing 
can mean something that they themselves did not intend to say or 
write.” (190).

people in the disintegration of Igbo culture and values. At the time 
the Igbos realized that their culture has been disintegrated, it was 
too late.

Hermeneutics: A Theoretical Clarification 
 The term hermeneutics is an interpretative concept which 
a reader uses to dig into author's intention in any given text for 
both verbal and non-verbal meaning using some established 
principles of interpretation. In the general sense, it is simply an art 
of interpretation and understanding. According to Guilherme 
Figueiredo “If we look at its etymological roots, we can see that 
the name 'hermeneutics' comes from the Greek word 
hermeneuein (which means 'to interpret') and the noun hermeneia 
(interpretation).” (1). Palmer collaborates this view when he 
notes that  “traced back to their earliest known root words in 
Greek, the origins of the modern words 'hermeneutics' and 
'hermeneutical' suggest the process of 'bringing to understanding,' 
especially as this process involves language, since language is the 
medium par excellence in the process.” (13).

 Hermeneutics is initially developed as a religious tool with 
which Bible scholars conduct exegesis of the scriptures for 
critical explanation in their quest to arrive at the intention of 
biblical texts. Its origin could be traced to the Greeks. The word 
itself derives from the Greek god, Hermes, the son of Zeus and the 
nymph Maia. Hermes is the herald of the Olympian gods.  One of 
his roles is to get messages from the gods and convey and interpret 
for the people who find it difficult to understand the language of 
the gods. This is to say that hermeneutic theory seeks the 
interpretation of a text using determined approaches to achieve a 
maximum understanding in line with the author's intentions. This 
approach to uncover author's intended meaning involves delving 
into the cultural, historical and intellectual contexts of the world 
of a given text.

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2024
Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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fact that the Umuofia people were basically responsible for the 
cultural disintegration they suffered in the hands of the white men 
other than the white men being the sole cause of the cultural 
subjugation that Umuofia town went through during their 
incursion. Therefore, this paper will explore several aspects of the 
text through the lenses of hermeneutics, highlighting the cultural 
implications of certain actions of Umuofia people to prove this 
point that the umuofians are the architect of their own downfall.

Umuofians as Architects of the Cultural Pollution of Umuofia
It is a popular perspective in Achebe's Things Fall Apart that the 
Whiteman who introduced his religion and Western system of 
government caused the disintegration of the traditional Igbo 
society. Many aspects of the novel favoured this perspective that 
the Whiteman overpowered the Umuofia people and imposed his 
religious beliefs and culture on them. Many who held this view 
believed that the Umuofia people had little or no option in 
defending their land against the invasion of the Whiteman in that 
the Whiteman came with superior fire power to subdue anyone 
that rises in opposition against them in their imperialistic quest to 
take over Africa at all cost.

 It was against this background that many readers and 
critics justifiably quote Obierika in Things Fall Apart that the 
Whiteman “…has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act 
like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and 
we have fallen apart.” (141).

 One of the critical questions Achebe's Things Fall Apart 
continues to raise is whether it was the colonial invaders who 
caused the disintegration of the Umuofia society. A close 
hermeneutical reading of the text, Things Fall Apart, reveals that 
even though the Whiteman may have put a knife on the 'things' that 
held Umuofia people together and made them fall apart, 
nonetheless, the argument holds that the Umuofia people had 
given the Whiteman the said knife with which he used to tear them 

The key proponents of hermeneutics are Friedrich Schleiermacher 
and Wilhelm Dilthey and they shaped the thoughts around 

th th
hermeneutics during the 19  century. In the 20  century, Martins 
Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer added their thoughts to 
widen the theory of hermeneutics.

 Heidegger coined the expression 'Hermeneutic circle' 
which he used to describe the process of deep understanding of a 
text. Hermeneutic circle therefore, refers to the notion that one's 
understanding of the text as a whole is derived by reference to the 
individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part is 
derived by reference to the whole. Not even the whole text nor any 
individual part can be well comprehended without reference to 
one another, and hence, it is a circle. 

 Nasrulla in his critical study of Friedrich Schleiermacher, 
explains that Schleiermacher offers a “formula” for interpretation, 
whereby we can identify with the author's overall situation, a 
formula which includes: objective historical reconstruction, 
which considers how a given utterance relates to language as a 
whole, and how the knowledge in a text is the product of language; 
objective divinatory reconstruction, which conjectures how the 
utterance or discourse itself will contribute to the language's 
development; subjective historical reconstruction, which 
examines a discourse as a product of an individual writer's mind; 
and, finally, subjective divinatory reconstruction, which assesses 
how the process of composition affects the writer.

 Nasrulla further captured the thoughts of Schleiermacher 
as having asserted that the task of hermeneutics is to understand 
the text or utterance “just as well and then better than its author.” 
(1).

 It is against this background that this paper examines the 
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart with a view to establishing the 

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2024
Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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in the internal and external dimensions of Igbo culture. 
Though many scholars blame more the external (white 
men) agency in the change that pervades Igbo culture, the 
internal agents who are Igbo natives are potently more 
active. Of course, no culture crumbles from without but 
from within. In other words, no society falls on its own for 
there must be prior internal condition hatched by internal 
agents, which makes the culture vulnerable to external 
pressure. (1).

 Recall that in the novel, Things Fall Apart, the earliest 
town the Whiteman invaded was Abame, a neighbouring village 
to Umuofia. As it was the custom, the Abame elders consulted 
their oracle and were told that “the strange man would break their 
clan and spread destruction among them.” (111). The oracle 
further warned that “other white men were on their way. They 
were locusts…and that first man was their harbinger sent to 
explore the terrain.” (111). These revelations, arguably, are 
demonstrations of clear insights the gods offered to the Abame 
people which significantly was early enough to elicit collective 
action and resistance from them against the onslaught of colonial 
conquest. The saying “to be forewarned, is to be forearmed”, 
which finds equivalent in the Igbo people proverbial thought that 
“eme ngwa ngwa emeghalu odachi- if one acts fast, one can 
prevent a tragedy”, ought to have applied here in the case of 
Abame people and their outcome of their consultations with the 
gods. The gods played their parts by revealing the invasion of the 
white men early enough. But Umuofians, on hearing the news did 
not take any action until when it was too late. Their actions further 
collaborate the popular Igbo proverb that Igbo people do not hurry 
to take shelter when they notice signs of rain until their bodies are 
drenched. 

 So many Umuofians out of bewilderment, threw their 
doors open to the Whiteman to come and settle among them. And 
this infiltration began the process of their downfall. Achebe 

apart by embracing him and his religion without discretion. This 
resonates with Obierika's admittance that the Whiteman has won 
[his] brothers. “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 like one. He has put a knife on the things that 
held us together and we have fallen apart.” (141). Umuofia people 
were not united to confront the Whiteman when he was 
conducting his evangelism throughout the length and breadth of 
Umuofia. They abandoned their belief system and their gods to 
embrace the strange teachings of the Whiteman. Obierika also 
observes that “Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of 
the stranger. They joined his religion and they help to uphold his 
government. If we should try to drive out the white men in 
Umuofia we should find it easy. There are only two of them. But 
what of our own people who are following their way and have 
been given power?”(140-141).

 Some people of Umuofia who joined the white man's 
church emboldened him towards realising his mission of 
imposing his own culture and values on Umuofia clan. Umuofia 
people aided the white man to succeed. They upheld his 
government. Just like the Igbo proverb rightly observes that the 
domestic rat informed the wild rat that there is fish in the basket in 
the roof. Without the various assistance rendered to the white men 
by the people of Umuofia, white men would not have succeeded in 
the incursion of Umuofia and by extension Igbo land. Obierika 
further notes in the novel that some people of Umuofia joining the 
church of the white men made it difficult for the Umuofia as a town 
to consider the idea of fighting the white men for fear of 
endangering the lives of their own brothers. In other words, 
Umuofia opened the door for the white men to invade them and 
settle comfortably which adversely affected their cultural values. 
Chinwuba and Ezeugwu collaborating this view, observe that: 

A critical study of Igbo cultural change reveals the reality of 
Agents as change catalysts. These Agents are in fact replete 

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2024
Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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their land. “The Missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had 
built their church there, won a handful of converts and were 
already sending evangelists to the surrounding towns and 
villages…But many of them believed that the strange faith and 
white man's gods would not last.” (115).
It was this assumption that the white man's god would not last that 
made the elders and warriors of Umuofia not to rise to tackle the 
advances and excesses of the white men. Okonkwo appeared a 
lone voice hence could not resist the white men alone. 

Chris Shepherd agrees with this view when he opines that 
“…we witnessed the challenge and weakening of Igbo 
spirituality, as well as the death of the tribe's livelihood. 
…their own religious doctrine and passivity played a 
significant role in allowing the initial infiltration of an alien 
religion, and the final dissolution of a once prosperous 
culture.” (1)

 Chinweuba and Ezeugwu add to this view when they 
classified the role of Umuofia people that enabled the white man to 
successfully upturn their cultural values as internal agent role 
while that of the white man they regarded as external agent role. 
According to them:
 …change is one of the basic facts of human experience, the 

internal agent first made it significant in Igbo culture. They 
were the first to challenge the status quo. This internal 
significant role is what Taiwo calls 'a crack in the wall, 
which ushers in lizards.' (Taiwo, 2008:1) For such internal 
role opens, the door for the external Agents who cashes 
into the existing cultural rift and opportunistically operate 
successfully.(1).

 Besides, many people in Umuofia perceived western 
education as the basic tool for survival hence they competed to 
send their sons to school. Their exposure to western education 

captured this thus: “They were talking excitedly among 
themselves because the white man had said he was going to live 
among them.” (117). The Whiteman in his characteristic manner, 
was not violent at first. He was busy engaging those the society 
rejected as 'efulefu' thereby gaining ground in Umuofia. The 
Umuofia people laughed at the foolishness of the Whiteman for 
engaging the inconsequential people in their society but little did 
they know that ideology spreads like a wild fire. Those regarded as 
efulefu were not banished by the society. They were only regarded 
as unserious set of people due to their laziness and laissez-faire 
attitude to life but they still mingled with the rest of the society. 
Thus, by not ostracizing those that went to listen to and embrace 
the Whiteman's religion early enough, Umuofians were corrupted 
by these first set of people that interacted and commingled with the 
white men. (139). 

 Umuofia did not consult their gods for guidance on how to 
tackle the invasion of the white men. They assumed that their gods 
would naturally wipe out the white men. On their own, they 
allocated the evil forest to the white men to build their church 
without consulting the Oracle thereby allowing a foreign god to 
compete with their own ancestral gods in their land. Umuofia 
committed a sacrilege but never saw it as such. Thus, one could 
assert that their gods they abandoned for a 'foreign god' equally 
abandoned them to sort out themselves in the hands of the white 
men whom they welcomed without consultations. No Igbo man 
survives a fight without his chi or personal god fighting along his 
side to defeat the enemy.

 The gullibility of the people of Umuofia made the settling 
down of the white men so easy for him. The unsuspecting Umuofia 
was busy laughing at the gullibility of the white men while the 
white men were strategic in their approach, planting churches and 
schools and embarking on serious evangelistic works. These were 
captured in the words of Obierika when he narrates to Okonkwo in 
exile, the extent the white men have established themselves in 

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2024
Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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the Umuofians with the Whiteman and desecration of their land 
with the preaching of a strange god must have provoked the 
neglected gods and ancestors who left them to fight for 
themselves.

 Achebe captured the mood of the gods Umuofia people 
abandoned through the speech of Okika in the village meeting. 
“All our gods are weeping. Idemili is weeping, Ogwugwu is 
weeping, Agbala is weeping, and all the others. Our dead fathers 
are weeping because of the shameful sacrilege they are suffering 
and the abomination we have all seen with our eyes.” Okika went 
further to add that “… our brothers have deserted us and joined a 
stranger to soil their fatherland.”(162).  

 The people of Umuofia did not consult their gods in the 
matters of the Whiteman hence various gods in Igbo land left them 
to their fate to face the Whiteman alone. Mere accepting the 
religion of the white men amounts to desecration of the land hence 
their gods were weeping and turned deaf ears to Umuofia clan 
when they needed their help. A warrior like Okonkwo could not 
restrain his son Nwoye from following the ways of the Whiteman. 
The implication of this is that Okonkwo had already lost the battle 
in his own house and should not expect to win the white men who 
armed themselves against the rebellion of Umuofia people. The 
clan did not act as one and they were fighting alone without the 
support of their gods. The white men divided the people of 
Umuofia made them disregard their gods.

 In the course of evangelism and preaching of the 
Whiteman, he had told them that 'All the gods you have named are 
not gods at all. They are gods of deceit who tell you to kill your 
fellows and destroy innocent children.”(117). This was part of the 
scheme the whiteman deployed to destroy the psyche of an 
average Umuofia person in order to introduce his own god to them. 
The Whiteman had earlier told them that his own god killed his 
only son to save mankind yet he accused the gods of Umuofia of 

brought about hybridity and complexities in the lifestyle of 
Umuofia people as an average Umuofia person that experience 
western education sees Umuofia culture as being inferior to the 
western culture and values. Many joined the white man in 
upholding his religion and government in Umuofia while 
betraying the Umuofia culture. The egwugwu was considered the 
peoples ancestors who have risen as immortals to visit the 
mortals. This masquerades are revered and should not be 
unmasked publicly, but during an egwugwu festival, Enoch who 
had joined the white man's religion, boasted that the egwugwu 
dare not touch a Christian, a boast that brought scuffles between 
him and the egwugwu where he unmasked one of them. (149). 

 Furthermore, people getting their children to study the 
white men's ways of life at school was seen as a thing of pride by 
the Igbo people without knowing that it was a direct attack on their 
own culture which they later realized but rather too late. One of the 
great men in Umuofia, Akunna, had given one of his sons to be 
taught in the white man's knowledge in the white man's school. 
(142). Afigbo collaborates this view when he noted that “…it was 
the quest for literacy that made many an African family send their 
children to school even after having sworn to live and die by the 
traditional culture. But literacy and school merely served to open 
the floodgates of many far-reaching social changes.”(141).

 Besides, in Things Fall Apart, the Igbo people were 
excited to have the white men settle among them. This excitement 
of seeing a man with a different skin colour and strange behaviour 
blinded the sense of judgment of Umuofia and all their 
neighbouring villages. According to Achebe, at Mbanta, the 
people were talking excitedly among themselves because the 
white man had said he was going to live among them.”(117). The 
Whiteman settled and preached and made them believe that their 
gods are false and should not be worshipped. They condoned the 
Whiteman's false teachings and blasphemy against the oracle of 
Hills and Caves and Amadioha and Chukwu. The romancing of 

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2024
Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
Within: A Hermeneutical Re-Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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white people.  The kotma equally took bribe to pervert justice as 
they served as both police and court messengers. This is to say that 
in decoding the text through the hermeneutical lenses, the Igbo 
man was actually the architect of his own problem as he yielded 
himself as a willing tool in the hands of the whiteman for the 
subjugation of his own people. The white men made him believe 
that everything about him was inferior and has to be rejected for 
western way of life.

 Who would believe that a warrior like Okonkwo will be 
put in prison, shaved and beaten with a stick by small boys whom 
the whiteman empowered as kotma. The Igbo society was silent 
when the whiteman began relegation of its culture and activities to 
the background. The Umuofia people lost their voice in fraternity 
and romance with the white men. Thus, it would be quite 
subjective to entirely blame the white men for the subjugation of 
the Umuofia society during their invasion.
The Umuofia clan was not united in purpose. They sabotaged 
themselves and by so doing undermined the Igbo spirit that 
advocates that one should be one's brother's keeper. The solidarity, 
oneness and synergy expected among brothers with a common 
enemy was lacking hence it was easy for the white men to take 
advantage of Umuofia people and upturned their cultural values.

 Further, it is noteworthy to point that one of the ploys of the 
colonial masters that made the religion of the white men to quickly 
flourish among Umuofians and beyond was the acceptance of 
twins and their mothers by the white men. Based on the custom 
and traditions of Umuofia, twin babies are taboos are not meant to 
live. But the white men changed the narrative by imposing 
sanctions on those that killed twins. The ignorance of Umuofia 
people and their open condemnation of such act made women who 
lost their twins to find solace in the new religion of the white men. 
Not only that the twins were killed, the society in its naivety did 
not placate their mothers and these women held grudges against 
them which they vented when the whiteman arrived. Achebe 

killing people. In trying to counter the argument of the Whiteman, 
one of the men of Umuofia asked the whiteman, “If we leave our 
gods and follow your god …who will protect us from the anger of 
our neglected gods and ancestors?” This is to say that they knew 
their gods were angry yet they did not pacify them by retracing 
their steps from following the whiteman.

 It is also important to observe that if the Umuofia and other 
neighbouring towns did not provide interpreters for the whiteman, 
the whiteman would have been powerless. Thus, the whiteman is 
his craftiness made western education look so attractive that 
virtually every family eventually wanted to send their sons to 
schools to learn the ways of the whiteman. In the Bible, the 
building of the Tower of Babel purportedly crashed immediately 
God confused their language, and that shows that language is a 
unifying force among people and that was the weapon the 
Umuofia people armed the whiteman with by providing him with 
interpreters. If the whiteman did not succeed in getting 
interpreters, he would have been frustrated and leave within a 
short time. It is noteworthy that the whiteman did not learn Igbo 
language but introduced and set up a school to make his language 
of oppression to flourish in a foreign land.

 The second class place the whiteman placed the Igbo 
language from the period of colonization is still lingering till today 
and Igbo nation and Africa by extension may never recover from 
it. The Umuofia town aided and abated the subjugation of the 
African society by making everything about the invasion and 
operation of the white men easy.

 The kotma or local soldiers the white men used were the 
Igbo people and not white men. In other words, Igbo man arrested 
his fellow Igbo man during the reign of the whiteman in Igboland 
and in the other African society. They were used as instrument of 
oppression and led the way to the safest places where the Igbo man 
would have escaped to in the time of crises and conflict with the 

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Ikechukwu Emmanuel  Asika, PhD & Ewuzie, Olisa Felix: The Enemy 
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so one Sunday two of them went into the church.” (125). The 
whiteman was subtle in his invasion of Umuofia. He preached 
gospel of peace but held a gun in his hand.

 The warriors of Umuofia were indifferent as the white men 
polluted their land and culture out of fear of unleashing terror on 
them if they protested. The likes of Okonkwo made fruitless 
efforts to rouse them from their slumber to no avail. By the time the 
people of Umuofia realized that the white men have completely 
taken over the administration of their land and wanted to revolt, it 
was too late for them. When Okonkwo and some town's men were 
taken into detention was the time the Umuofia people realized that 
it could be any of their town's men turn any day to be humiliated 
but it was already late. Not even the spirit of all the masked 
egwugwu could change the narrative. When the town went with 
egwugwu to challenge the white missionary for the sacrilege the 
whiteman commits and to destroy his church, it was more or less 
an empty threat. The spirit of their ancestors had abandoned the 
Umuofia people. The Egwugwu roared “But this shrine which he 
built must be destroyed. We shall no longer allow it in our midst. It 
bred untold abominations and we have come to put an end to it.” 
(p.152). They never succeeded because they acted quite late.

 The instances abound in the text where the Umuofia clan 
did not think through their actions in their dealings with the white 
men. They sacked their gods by taking actions which ordinarily 
they should not have taken without proper consultations of the 
goods of their land. But their action of acting independent of their 
gods demonstrated the Igbo proverb that when a person outruns 
his personal god in a race, such a person will run into his death.

Conclusion
This paper examines Achebe's Things Fall Apart using 
hermeneutical approach. In this discourse, it was obvious that the 
Umuofia people were lukewarm in taking many actions that were 
to timely.

highlights the ignorance and hostility the Igbo society held against 
the mothers of the twins when he writes that, “Nneka had had four 
previous pregnancies and childbirth. But each time she borne 
twins, and they had been immediately thrown away. Her husband 
and family were already becoming highly critical of such a woman 
and were not unduly perturbed when they found she had fled to 
join the Christians. It was a good riddance.” (121). The white men 
used all the opportunities they had to divide the Umuofia people 
including taking advantage of the ignorance of the locals about 
killing of twins.

 Those that left the traditional religion for the white man's 
church left out of frustration, not knowing that this will have 
serious adverse effect on the Igbo culture and religion. Lame 
Maatla Kenalemang buttresses this point further when he opines 
that:
 The decision to follow Christianity by some members of 

the Igbo society is greatly influenced by the suffering they 
had incurred from their own culture. Because they are so 
eager to get out of the pain and misery that Igbo religion 
had put them through, they do not realize that by joining the 
white missionaries, they are actually making things harder 
for themselves in the long run.” (16).

 This is to say that the white men capitalized on the 
loopholes in the culture of Umuofia to introduce his own. They 
made the Igbo society look wicked hence succeeded in setting the 
women who lost their twin babies against the society. The action 
of the white men here no matter how good it seemed, was carried 
out with some ulterior motives to their advantage. The white men 
did not only put to an end to the killing of the twins but also 
welcomed the outcasts whom the society looked down on as 
second class citizens. In the novel, “These outcast, or osu, seeing 
that the new religion welcomed twins and such abominations, 
thought that it was possible that they would also be received. And 

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They did not consult their gods in their dealings with the white 
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acting slowly. Umuofia assumes that the strange happenings in 
their land will resolve themselves in the course of time. They were 
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