Abstract
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart appears to attract significant criticism for its seemingly negative offerings to human rights than for contributions to that cause that could be considered positive. My goal in this chapter is to reconstruct this image of that popular novel using the law and literature framework. I will do so at two levels. As an initial concern, I will demonstrate that Things Fall Apart offered positively to the human rights discourse contrary to persisting criticisms. Secondly, my analyses will add to the debate regarding the existence or otherwise of human rights values in Africa’s pre-colonial cultures. Despite having what could be regarded as neo-patriarchal characteristics (in spite of its ‘transformative power’), I will argue that the Things Fall Apart narrative is indeed a valid and credible refutation of the view that human rights is not an African value. And while it is possible to present a human rights content analysis of the book through several themes, I will place special emphasis on its treatment of the right to life, the rights of women and the right to fair hearing and a fair administration of justice.
Ugochukwu is Legal Process Instructor and PhD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada. He had his early legal education in Nigeria and received an LLM degree in human rights from Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Ugochukwu is also a fellow of the Open Society Justice Initiative and winner of the Osgoode Hall Law School Walter Williston Essay Prize in Civil Liberties. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Central Michigan University International Conference on Human Rights, Literature, the Arts, and Social Sciences in the fall of 2011. I am very grateful to Professor Maureen Eke and the other organizers for inviting me to that conference and to fellow panelists John Pfeifer, Esther Mulusa, Nigel De Huan Hatton and Eric Njeng. The paper was also presented at the spring 2012 Emerging Scholars Workshop of the Critical Research Laboratory in Law and Society at Osgoode Hall Law School. I extend my gratitude to Sujith Xavier and Igor Gontcharov for inviting me to the workshop and to Patricia Hania, Shanthi Senthe, Faisal Bhabha and Igor Gontcharov for their very helpful comments.
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- 1.
This approach is similar to the new historicism which draws extensively from critics of the 1920–1950 generation whose works focused on ‘historical content [that was] based [on] interpretations [of the] interplay between the text and historical contexts (such as the author’s life or intentions in writing the work)’.The new historicism critics are also ‘less fact-and-event-oriented than historical critics used to be, perhaps because they have come to wonder whether the truth about what really happened can ever be purely or objectively known. They are less likely to see history as linear and progressive, as something developing toward the present, and they are also less likely to think of it in terms of specific eras, each with definite, persistent, and consistent zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Hence they are unlikely to suggest that a literary text has a single or easily identifiable historical context’. See ‘Critical Approaches: Definition of the New Historicism’ online: http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_newhist.html.
- 2.
Notice how the Nigerian Evidence Act, for instance, defines Custom as a ‘rule which in a particular district, has from long usage, obtained the force of law’. See C 112, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 1990, s 291.
- 3.
See further Morison and Bell (1996, p. 1) (‘We share the belief that key legal issues can be not only brought to life in literary texts but explored there in ways that orthodox legal materials cannot rival. Notions of justice or injustice, the social creation and policing of concepts of difference and deviance or even standards of ethical lawyering are not ideas that can be fully explored by looking only at statutes, law reports, official crime figures or even Bar Council reports on standards. The proper mission of the Law and Literature movement is to read literature, not as (‘wannabe’) literary critics but as lawyers seeking to pursue the legal themes of power, authority, order, adjudication, penalty, justice and so on which occupy us all’.)
- 4.
Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart though initially appearing as novels have been described as ‘authentic culture objects’. To convey this understanding more meaningfully, there are annotated versions of Things Fall Apart which ‘has transformed the novel by mediating the experience of reading it so that now the reader is no longer free to imagine meanings, but is presented with the informed answers to whatever cultural questions he or she might put to the text. The frame insures that the authenticity of the noel as a cultural artifact is protected [and] safeguarded against deviant understandings’ (Harrow 2007, p. 136).
- 5.
For example Gavigan (1989, p. 336): ‘From 1351–1790, English law provided that a woman who murdered her husband was liable to be convicted of “petit treason” and to suffer the fate of female traitors: to be burned at the stake. The official justification for the offence was the duty of subjection and obedience owed by English wives to their husbands; the penalty was defended in the name of the natural modesty of the female sex – it was better to be burned at the stake than to be drawn and quartered, the official penalty for treason’.
- 6.
Ejidike (1999, p. 78) This practice, along with the Osu caste system, slavery and human sacrifice, is often supplied as evidence of the ‘egregious violations of human rights’ by the Igbo society. Yet the writer asks: ‘But does the existence of such practices … imply that rights were totally disregarded in the Igbo society to the extent that present-day practices cannot be culturally legitimized?’ While not justifying the derogations, he argues further that ‘In considering these derogations it is important to differentiate between the spirit of the Igbo culture as distinct from its manifestations. While the former is more or less static, the latter is largely prone to the negative influence of the times’.
- 7.
This is, however, a little different than the story of these elders told by Equiano about growing up in a different Igbo society. He states: ‘Those Embrenche, or chief men, decided disputes, and punished crimes; for which purpose they always assembled together. The proceedings were generally short; and in most cases the law of retaliation prevailed’ (Brooks 2004, p. 7).
- 8.
See ‘Transcript: A Dialogue between Professors Frank Sander and Mariana Hernandez Crespo: Exploring the Evolution of the Multi-Door Courthouse’ (2008) 5 University of St Thomas Law Journal 665 at 668.
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Ugochukwu, B. (2014). Unpacking the Universal: African Human Rights Philosophy in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart . In: Onazi, O. (eds) African Legal Theory and Contemporary Problems. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7537-4_10
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