Shmoop - Things Fall Apart

From its very title, Things Fall Apart foreshadows the tragedy which the novel depicts. We don't mean to be downers, but can a book about things falling apart really have a happy ending? The novel documents the falling apart of the Igbo tribe due to the coming of the Christian missionaries and the rule of the English government.
The only point in the book in which the title is referenced is Chapter Twenty, when the main character, Okonkwo, and his friend, Obierika, are discussing the invasion of white men into their community. Obierika says, "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." This passage clearly ties the destruction of the Igbo people's way of life to sneaky, divisive action on the part of European missionaries and imperialists.
The phrase "things fall apart" is from a poem by W.B Yeats, which Achebe quotes more extensively in the epigraph (see "What's Up With the Epigraph?" for more detail).

It doesn't take much to notice that there's something interesting about the way Things Fall Apart is written. Although Achebe writes in English, he captures the cadence of the Ibo people, particularly noticeable in the book's dialogue. In the narration, Achebe keeps it simple, directly to the point, and centered on nature. His goal is to use language to depict how the Ibo view their world. You'll also see a bunch of Ibo words and phrases pop up here and there. (Use the glossary in the back of the book when needed.)
In addition to the cadence and content choice, Achebe also uses a ton of proverbs - which is indicative of the Ibo's traditional oral culture - as well as lots of tiny stories shared people and well known in certain villages, used to discuss everything. These stories are how the people communicate with one another; they're used to explain acts of nature, traditions, history, why people act a certain way. Keeping all that in mind, let's take a look at this interaction, a few paragraphs into Chapter 12:
Some of the women cooked the yams and the cassava, and the others prepared vegetable soup. Young men pounded the foo-foo or split firewood. The children made endless trips to the stream. [...]
"The market in Umuike is a wonderful place," said the young man who had been sent by Obierika to buy the giant goat. "There are so many people on it that if you throw up a grain of sand it would not find a way to fall to earth again.
"It is the result of great medicine," said Obierika. "The people of Umuike wanted their market to grow and swallow up their market and their neighbors. So they made a powerful medicine [...]
"And so everybody comes," said another man, "honest men and thieves. They can steal your cloth from off your waist in the market."
We've got sparse description, an Ibo word (foo-foo), some cadenced dialogue, a mini-story about medicine to explain why the Umuike market is so crowded, and men finishing each other's thoughts and explanations. If you ask us, Achebe did an amazing job capturing the spirit of his native Igbo language in his second language, English.

Achebe narrates events pretty objectively, without many embellishments. Readers are left largely to impose emotion on the text and decide for themselves whether characters are admirable or justified in their behaviors. However, towards the end, Achebe begins showing sympathy towards the Umuofia by describing the brutalities inflicted on the people by the white government. The last paragraph of the book in particular shows a purely pretentious and self-satisfied District Commissioner with an inflated sense of Western superiority.

Though most of the novel is focused on Okonkwo, the narrator generally provides insight into the thoughts of most characters. There are times when the narration is focused around different characters - namely Ikemefuna, Nwoye, Obierika, and Ekwefi. The multiplicity of voices allows the reader to see different characters through a variety of lenses. Access to the internal thoughts of a variety of characters also gives dimensionality to the Igbo people as a whole - Achebe never lets the reader assume that the Igbo people are homogenous and could be summed up in one single character.

To Okonkwo, folktales - especially those featuring animals - are a symbol of femininity. To him, the stories seem to show a childish love for escapism and provide few useful values or morals. Mothers and daughters in the novel have a tendency to share folktales, but they are also one of Okonkwo's son Nwoye's favorite forms of entertainment. Because Nwoye prefers folktales over bloody war stories, Okonkwo fears that his son is too effeminate. Yams are a crop grown exclusively by men. Growing yams is labor intensive, and the size of a man's fields and harvest say much about his work ethic. Yams are grown to gain wealth and also to feed one's family. They are a symbol of masculinity and ability as a provider.