In 1958, Chinua Achebe –a Nigerian writer–
wrote the novel Things Fall Apart. During the time he wrote this novel, Nigeria
was still under the rule of the British, however the story is placed during the
beginning of the XIX, during the first attempts of colonializing communities in
Nigeria. Through this novel, Achebe
focuses on the Igbo culture, their beliefs and customs through the story of
Okonkwo. Though many of these traditions may seem barbaric to some, Achebe
depicts them as a way to reserve values and morals. This novel was a response
to how Africa was represented by the colonialists.
This novel can be read
through several different perspectives varying from gender, culture or race.
Throughout this essay, the specific perspective explored will be a TOK –Theory
of Knowledge– perspective through the question to what extent should we accept
knowledge from authority? Before exploring this knowledge issue, there are two key
terms to define. First of all, knowledge is considered any justified true
belief and secondly, authority is a person or group of people who hold power
over others. Throughout Achebe’s narration of the novel, he shows how authority
passes on knowledge, whether it is an Elder, the Oracle or a religious figure.
First and foremost,
who is it that we consider authority, and why do we accept knowledge from them
so easily? As young children, the biggest authority figures are parents, older
siblings and teachers. We accept knowledge from them because we are taught that
they know better and have lived through more experiences than we have. As we
grow up, several more authority figures appear in our lives, like friends and
doctors, and finally when we are old enough to get into politics and religion,
they also become major authority figures. Two main things portray authority
figures in Things Fall Apart: the Elders and the Oracle of the Hills, the
Oracle more so than the Elders. In many occasions, Achebe makes it clear that
the Oracle has the final saying in many scenarios, for example in the following
quote it is solely the Oracle who can decide whether or not the community goes
into war. “And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it never went
to war unless its case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its
Oracle – the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves.“ This quote shows how dependent
the community was on the Oracle, and how it was only the Oracle who possessed
enough knowledge to make such powerful decisions, like war. This shows that the
Igbo people trusted and depended on the Oracle’s knowledge in a similar way in
which we depend in our authorities, like the government or our God.
Even though we rely on
our biggest authorities for the important and pivotal moments of society, we
need to understand that our governments may be tricking us and manipulating
their words to make us think otherwise. The government may take advantage of
people with poor education and manipulate their decisions through the use of
language, making policies that could potentially hurt them sound reasonable and
in their favor. In parallel, the Oracle used its “divine knowledge” to make
decisions that are for the good of the community yet hurt others, like the time
that Ikemefuna was sentenced to be killed: many felt hurt and were negatively
affected by this decision yet they all followed it because the Oracle said it
was the correct thing to do. This can
teach the reader a very important lesson: that one should not trust higher
authorities solely because of their title as they may be using different techniques
to trick you into what benefits them, rather than you.
In conclusion,
authorities can be helpful in the passing on knowledge; yet can be tricky and
make you believe that you will benefit from their decisions when in reality you
are not. Furthermore, one must be careful when listening or obeying authorities
as they may have manipulated their language in order the manipulate you to do
what is best for them. In order to avoid such situations, one must carefully
listen and weigh this knowledge. Chinua Achebe shows how decisions made by the
higher power have affected the community, and has also showed how dependent on
the Oracle the community can be. To finally respond the question “to what
extent should we accept knowledge from authority?” the final conclusion is that
we definitely receive a good amount of knowledge from authority, given that the
term “authority” is quite broad. However, one must use different ways of
knowing, like reason and perception in order to evaluate if this knowledge
passed on is reliable or not.
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