History Literature / ThingsFallApart

* FiringInTheAirALot: Okonkwo's gun exploding when he tries to do this ends up killing someone else. The elders convict him of manslaughter and he is sentenced to seven years in exile (per the customs of the village).

* [[PolarOppositeTwins Polar Opposite Sisters]]: Okonkwo's daughters, Ezinma and Obiageli. Ezinma is sensible and otherworldly, while Obiageli is spoiled and childish.

* ParentalFavoritism: Ezinma is clearly Okonkwo's favorite child. He does [[WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent wish she were a boy]], but it's because he thinks that a boy with Ezinma's personality would be an ideal son to [[FollowInMyFootsteps mold in his image]], but gender roles in this society are far too strict for him to do this with a girl.
* PolarOppositeTwins: Okonkwo's daughters, Ezinma and Obiageli. Ezinma is sensible and otherworldly, while Obiageli is spoiled and childish.

* DesecratingTheDead: When Ekwefi's children keep dying at birth, the medicine man comes to believe that all of these children are manifestations of an ''ogbanje''--an evil spirit that repeatedly dies and is reborn to torment its mother. The body of her final dead child is mutilated with a razor by the medicine man and buried in the Evil Forest [[DeaderThanDead so that it will not return]]. When she gives birth to a living child (Ezinma) shortly thereafter, this confirms for them that they were correct about the situation.

* DesecratingTheDead: When one of Ekwefi's children dies as a baby, it is thought to be an ''ogbanje''--an evil spirit that repeatedly dies and is reborn to torment its mother. Its body is mutilated with a razor by the medicine man and buried in the Evil Forest [[DeaderThanDead so that it will not return]].

* DomesticAbuse: Okonkwo regularly beats his wives and children, even his favorite ones. Even the rest of the village is uneasy about this.

''Things Fall Apart'' is a 1958 Nigerian novel (written in English) by Creator/ChinuaAchebe. The events depicted take place in the late 19th century. An allusion to historical events seems to date the story to the 1890s.

* TopWife: Of Okonkwo's three wives, his second wife Ekwefi is shown to be his favorite. Unlike with Nwoye's mother and Ojiugo, for whom we don't get a lot of insight into their relationships with him, Ekwefi has several chapters where she and her daughter Ezinma get some CharacterFocus, and we get her backstory and how she and Okonkwo came to be together (revealing that, while he was too poor to pay her bride-price initially, she ran away from her first husband after a couple of years to be with him), confirming that they married out of love or at least desire for each other. Despite not being able to give Okonkwo as many children as the other wives due to her many miscarriages, their one child together, Ezinma, is Okonkwo's [[ParentalFavoritism favorite]].

** His first wife and Nwoye's mother is the Wife; despite the occasional friction with the two junior wives, she is unremarkable, steady, and is kind to the other wives' children. She refers to Ezinma, Ekwefi's only living child, as "The Good One," and not only takes care of Ojiugo's children when Ojiugo forgets to come home in time to give them their supper, but tries to protect Ojiugo by claiming that Ojiugo asked her to.

%%zce* SpiritualAntithesis: To Conrad's ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness''.

* UnbuiltTrope: ''Things Fall Apart'' was one of the first novels in English to deal with African society from the viewpoint of Africans (contrasting the traditional Eurocentric viewpoint), and it played a major role in popularizing postcolonial literature. However, its conflict is far more [[GreyAndGrayMorality gray-shaded]] than one might expect. In his portrayal of the pre-colonial Igbo people, Chinua Achebe doesn't hesitate to tackle [[DeliberateValuesDissonance cultural practices that can seem disturbing to modern readers]]--like abandoning newborn twins in the forest to die, executing adopted stepchildren on the advice of village elders, exiling an entire family for the crime of one person (even if the crime was an accident), the large amount of misogyny and physical abuse towards females, and ostracizing any man who doesn't live up to traditional Igbo ideals of masculinity. He also doesn't depict the British colonizers as being all {{evil colonialist}}s, with the British culture of the era being depicted as having both virtues and flaws, much like the Igbo. This is best demonstrated through [[GoodShepherd Mr. Brown]], one of the British missionaries. While his ultimate goal is to get the Igbo to convert to Christianity, Mr. Brown is full-heartedly willing to learn about the Igbo culture instead of automatically dismissing it as evil and doesn't want the Igbo to lose their cultural identity and autonomy to British colonialism. Unlike other missionaries in this novel and future postcolonial novels, he takes the time to personally meet and befriend villagers, from clan leaders to outcasts, and actually listens to their stories, opinions, and beliefs. Mr. Brown also does things that genuinely help benefit the Igbo, such as setting up a hospital to decrease the death and disease rate in Umuofia and setting up a school to teach English literacy so the villagers would be better equipped in their dealings with the European colonizers. All of this, combined with Mr. Brown accepting converts unconditionally, is why several of the Igbo, especially outcasts, willingly become Christians through him, and even some Igbo who don't convert come to respect Mr. Brown. One of the major themes of the novel (and most of Achebe's bibliography) is that, while colonialism of Africa during the period of New Imperialism was hardly all sunshine and lollipops for those being invaded, some of the criticisms the colonizers had of precolonial Africa [[JerkassHasAPoint were at least partly valid]], and there were good reasons why so many Africans were willing to adopt at least some aspects of European society and culture.