by Cody Troyer

Created on: January 18, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Communication Breakdown

In the novel, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the most central component of the book is the clash between the European culture and the culture of African tribes. Achebe illustrates that the two different cultures cannot communicate with each other through language, but only through violence. This is particularly evident in the passage in which Okonkwo slays an emissary of the European church. The imagery in this passage shows this is true through a stark contrast of inactive villagers and Okonkwo's murder. The voice explains this using changes from unattached expository narrative voice to abrupt dialogue. With the structure in this passage Achebe describes the absence of verbal communication between these two cultures dividing the passage the same way as the voice, with a harsh contrast between a disengaged narrative voice and dialogue.

The imagery in this passage shows the lack of verbal communication on the part of both the European missionaries and the African tribe members. First, Achebe uses an image of silence before conflict: "The men of Umuofia were merged into the mute backcloth of trees and giant creepers, waiting." Before Okonkwo tries communicate orally with the messengers, silence is all that is occurring, and after he speaks with the messenger and kills him the silence only continues: "The waiting backcloth jumped into tumultuous life and the meeting was stopped." The backcloth that is present before and after the killing is an embodiment of the communication breakdown between both cultures. When the silence of the backcloth is broken, the result is nothing so violence must be used and the backcloth is put back in order. Next, after Okonkwo comes to realization that the village will not come to his aid in protecting the old ways of the tribe, "He wiped his machete on the sand and went away." Achebe uses the bloodstained machete to represent the need to violently resolve of a conflict, and uses the blood on the weapon to represent the ending of that conflict, but instead of using it as a metaphor, the image is literal because the two factions could not communicate and a brutal death was the result. Finally, when the messengers are first spotted the crowd turns to look at them: "there was a sudden stir in the crowd and every eye was turned in one direction." Here synecdoche is used to foreshadow what the tribesmen are going to do, when talking fails they will look on nonchalantly and accept the violence that ensues

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