“No artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone,” argues T.S Eliot in his epic essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”
Nothing in literature reminds me of Eliot’s declaration with as much vivid clarity as the complexity woven into the character of Unoka in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart.”
Unoka is so cunningly constructed that he leaves the unwary reader wondering if Achebe had complete meaning of this character.
And this is why.
In no uncertain terms, Achebe tells us that Unoka is lazy, imprudent and incapable of thinking about tomorrow. That he is a spendthrift, a debtor, a failure and a loafer who could barely feed his family or pay his debt and perhaps, worst of all, a coward who could not stand the sight of blood.
He is described as a lover of “the good fare” who even as a boy often wandered around looking for a kite sailing leisurely against the blue sky which was regarded in Umuofia as a sign for the return of the dry season with its heady festivities and merrymaking.
On the surface, therefore, Unoka’s character appears simple; a pathetic loser who has chosen the less difficult path in a society where manliness is defined by rippling acts of courage and the strength of a man’s arm. To sum it up therefore, Unoka chose to be a failure where raw masculinity is the overarching identity of success.
Had Achebe left things that way, everything would have been just perfect. He didn’t. In fact, in a way that speaks more compellingly to his genius, Achebe redeems this effeminate character with the story of his adroit rescheduling of his pile of debt to Okoye, a fellow artist.
Lending nuance to this otherwise simple character, Achebe made Unoka remind Okoye with all the histrionics to boot, that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them. Gently, the reader is offered a rare insight into the labyrinth of Unoka’s mind… a character whose depth is concealed by the veil of laziness and love of the good life.
This privileged insight is masterfully re-enforced in the passage where Okonkwo is reeling from his first major setback as a hard working farmer. He had taken a hit from a general crop failure that year, and seemed done-in by the conspiracy of fate against his painstaking efforts and against the repeated affirmations of his destiny.
Unoka sidles up to him with his small talks. “You have a manly and proud heart,” he says. “A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”
The profundity of these presumably simple words of consolation combines effectively with his wise saying about the sun to bestow the toga of an unsung philosopher on Unoka, thus setting the stage for endless dialogue on his character.
The question is, who really is Unoka? A coward who dreads the sight of blood or a recondite philosopher who came ahead of his time to laugh at the foolish manliness of Umuofia? What side of Unoka should the reader take away? Is he a failure or a successful symbol of the imminent transition from a patriarchal society to a new order?
Deepening the complexity; Unoka is plagued with puzzling internal contradictions which reflect Achebe’s deep fascination with the concept of dualism. Nothing ever stands alone. Where one thing stands, another stands beside it.
A man who has no appetite for action might have a capacity for introspection.
A corollary to this, however, is the lingering anxiety that some unwary readers might be drawn to assume that an extraordinary mind like Achebe may not have had the complete meaning of his work alone. Is Eliot right then?
A further deconstruction of Unoka lays bare some aspects of his character that are often ignored. Regardless, they offer no easy answers as to whether Eliot is right or wrong.
Now, the flipside of Unoka shows us a courageous artist who lives on his own terms. Unoka is unimpressed with the dominant fascinations of his time; frenzied acquisition of multiple wives and wealth, blood-curdling manliness, showy title-taking, wars and stories of war.
Unlike his dangerously driven son, Okonkwo, Unoka is his own man. He listens only to his own voice. He has enough philosophical moorings to rise above the mundane obsessions of his time. He doesn’t allow the society to dictate to him and even when he died Unoka did so on his own terms.
Achebe tells us that “when they carried him away, he took with him his flute.” Presumably therefore, Unoka died with his flute on his lips, heralding his arrival at the pearly gates with a moving concerto to mark his own eclipse.
Contrasted against his son, Unoka died a more dignified death. He saw his death coming and prepared for it. Okonkwo had no time to contemplate his own death. His death was a blight on the earth and, sacrifices had to be made to cleanse the land he had desecrated. His burial was only fit for a dog!
Hauntingly, the careful reader arrives at the wakeful moment where Unoka begins to look like a counterpoise to Okonkwo. While one dies fastened to the tree trunk of his convictions, the other dangles from the sordid rope of overwhelming societal expectations and approval.
Where one turns a deaf ear to a directive from the gods to “Go home and work like a man,” the other shows a murderous zeal to obey the gods and mows down a boy that called him “father.”
- So, who is the hero?
James Eze is the author of “dispossessed” and “goosebumps.”
