Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

In my quest of thoughtful fiction, my most recent read has been Achebe's Things Fall Apart. It is an intriguing tragedy of cultural ignorance, set within a penetrating look at the colonization of Africa.

The book focuses on Okonkwo, a well-regarded warrior and leader in Unuofia, a village in the lower Niger valley. Okonkwo is a hard man who has made his way in the clan and the world through hard work. He leads his house with a heavy and unyielding hand, and is driven by the desire to be recognized and titled in his clan. He especially values the traditions of his fathers and their gods.

The people of Umuofia believe in a god above the gods who made the world, and who also made gods to interact with the people of the world. These gods are the gods of the land and sky. Umuofia has an oracle who is said to interact with one of these gods, and her word is highly valued. As part of their belief, twins are always discarded in the woods when they are born, and an entire class of people are considered outcasts because they are "set apart" to the gods.

The book opens with the murder of a woman of Umuofia by some men from a neighboring village. The men of Umuoafia gather for war and send an emisary to the neighboring village, and to avoid war, the village agrees to send a virgin and a young man as the price for the lost life. The girl is given to the man whose wife had been murdered. The boy was given to Okonkwo to keep in his house until his fate was decided. After three years, the clan decided to have the boy killed, even though he had become like a son to Okonkwo. And despite advice to the contrary, Okonkwo had a hand in his death.

Then one day, while celebrating a burial feast in the town square, Okonkwo inadvertantly killed a man when his gun exploded. As punishment for this offense against the clan and the gods, Okonkwo was banished from the clan for seven years, and he went off to the home of his mother. While there, he began to hear news of white men who were appearing the area. In one town, a white man was killed and then many white men came in and wiped out the village. And now white men had come to his mothers home and also to Umuofia.

When Okonkwo returned to Umuofia, he found that the missionaries had started a church and a school, and had also set up a District Comissioner's office and a trading post. They were bringing not only religion but also the sovereignty of the queen of England to this part of Africa. The church was growing, especially among the outcasts, but it began to gain more and more adherants. But clashes were inevitable. Some of the converts felt the need to not only accept a new faith but also to denounce and mock their old beliefs, a position that some of the missionaries shared. And when a new pastor came that believed there was no room for any accomodation or compromise, things quickly unravelled. When one man comitted what was viewed as a high abomination by unmasking a sacred dancer during a feast, the clan was deeply offended, and burned down the church building. The district comissioner responded by capturing six leaders of the clan, humiliating them, and holding them for ransom to punish the clan for their violence. After the paying of the ransom and the release of the men, the clan gathered to discuss open war with the white men. But when a messenger and guards came to break up the meeting, Okonkwo, who was set on war, murdered the messenger. But he quickly sensed that the village was not set on war, so he went out and hanged himself.

Achebe has written a vivid account of African life, and a penetrating critique of a colonial attitude toward cultures. The influence of the Western culture truly causes the fabric of Umuofia to begin to fall apart. In part, that can of course be viewed as a necessary influence of the grace and truth of the gospel, a putting off of the old wineskins for new wine. But Achebe also calls into question the enculturation that often comes with the message. Too often we attach our own cultural norms to the gospel message, when the relationship should be much more nuanced. And Achebe's book artfully brings this idea to the fore. I highly recommed it. It is a penetrating book that helps those of us in the dominant Western culture to see things from a different perspective.

The Inferno of Dante (trans. Robert Pinsky)

Dante's Inferno is definitely a classic of world literature. And since I'd never read it, I felt compelled to give it a try. I found it worth the time. This verse translation by Robert Pinsky makes it manageable and enjoyable reading. He has preserved a poetic tone and given it a vivid imagery that makes this spiraling journey an almost cinematic experience.

In the Inferno, the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy, Dante is led by the poet Virgil through the nine circles of Hell. Dante is led, the only "weighty" living soul among the shades of the dead, down into the depths of the earth. He passes through the great gate of Hell, into the realm of lost hope and eternal punishment. The first group he ecounters is the unbaptized, those like the ancient poets (of whom Virgil is one) who died ignorant of the gospel. From there, he continues to spiral down through the circles of Hell, encountering the lustful, the gluttons, the spenders, and the heretics. At each level, sinners receive a punishment that fits their crimes. For instance, as Dante reaches one of the lowest portions of hell, the ninth pouch of the eighth circle of Hell, he encounters the Schismatics, those who sought to divide the faith, and their punishment for such a crime is to be forever split open by the sword, as they march around the ring of Hell.

Along his journey, Dante encounters figures from the Greek epics and myths, such as Narcissus and Ulysses, major figures from history, such as Brutus and Cassius (who reside in the lowest pit of Hell), and quite a number of people from thirteenth-century Italy. As he encuounters sinners doomed to punishment, he often speaks with them of their crimes.

Dante has a flare for brutal punishments. He describes sinners variously imprisioned in boiling tar and picked at by vultures, buried upside down with only feet protruding above ground, or forever bombarded by a rain of fire. And in many circles, tormenters, whether demons or giants or beasts, dole out added suffering at their whim. Hell certainly isn't an inviting place.

As Virgil and Dante reach the center of the earth, the very pit of Hell, they find the betrayers, those who have betrayed family, country, or benefactors. Here Lucifer himself resides, an aweful giant creature with three faces and grotesque teeth. And in his mouth he holds the three most vile betrayers, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius (who betrayed Julius Caesar, and apparently, to Dante's mind, therefore betrayed civilzation and also the church). These sinners are forever gnawed at by Satan's vile teeth, and scratched at by his razor-sharp claws, tormented eternally for the greatest of sins.

As Virgil and Dante pass through this pit of hell, they climb down Satan's body, and when the reach his midsection, they turn 180 degrees while still going in the same direction, and begin climbing. That is, they reach the center of the earth, the point where all gravity is centered, so their journey goes from a descent to an ascent, and the hour becomes twelve hourse earlier. They then resume their journey, climbing out of the center of the earth and emerge in the Southern Hemisphere. (It is hard to imagine a clearer image to combat the myth that Columbus was the first to really believe the Earth was round. This idea had been around a lot longer, and here, almost two hundered years before Columbus's voyages, Dante pictures a journey through the core of the planet.)

Dante's classic portrayal of Hell pictures a world of extreme punishments and eternal torment. He devises a heierarchy of sins, layering the mildest offenders near the top and relegating those most severe to the very pit of Hell itself. It is a great picture of the Medieval conception of the world and morality. I'm glad to have read it, so I'm not so much in the dark now when people make reference to this important work.

This edition is beautifully illustrated by Michael Mazur. The haunting illustrations convey the mood and setting in an effective way, without giving too much detail to detract from the imagination. Here you can see an image from the eight ring of Hell, where one lier gnaws on another. The book also includes helpful annotations and commentary in the backmatter, to give valuable insight into the many literary and historical allusions that would otherwise be opaque to modern readers.

Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory

Miroslav Volf is an evangelical theologian and professor at Yale Divinity School. He also grew up in the former Yugoslavia and its communist rule. And it is precisely his experiences in Yugoslavia during his year of mandatory military service that provide the focus for this book, a sustained reflection on the meaning of memory and grace with regard to wrongs committed against us.

Volf sets up his reflections by recounting his memory of the sustained interrogations to which he was subjected by "Captain G." during his year of military service. Because of his training in America, his background in theology, his critique of Marxism, and his marriage to an American, he was a person of suspicion. This resulted in sustained interrogations, threats of detainment, and psychological torture. This background leads him to the question, What does it mean to remember these wrongs done against us?

The first stage of his argument deals with the question of if we should remember. In today's culture, especially in the wake of the Holocaust and other attrocities of the past century, the answer seems an obvious yes. And Volf echoes this answer, marshalling the call of such people as Elie Wiesel, who rally around the cry, Remember! It is important to acknowledge wrongdoing, and to recognize both those who are wrong and those who have been wronged. But, he also turns us to wrestle with the question of how we should remember.

Memory is important, but it is also ambiguous. Memory can be put to many uses. It can help us to prevent further wrongs or atrocities, but it can also lead us to perpetrate wrongs out of self-interest (say out of the desire to not be a victim again ourselves). So the first facet of memory that Volf emphasizes is that we must remember truthfully. This means honestly seeking as complete an understanding of events as possible, admitting the points of view of others than ourselves, and acknowledging the complexities that are often inherent in these situations. It is often easy in situations where we have been wronged to make out the perpetrator as the "evil" party and ourselves as the "good" or "innocent" party. But the facts often reveal a more complex picture. While the evil can still be named as such, there is often more to it, such as the fact that Captain G. was operating within a system that condoned and encouraged his behavior toward Volf and other suspects. A second important facet of our remembering is that it is to be in service of reconciliation. We are to strive to bring a full and accurate account of events to mind so that we can fully acknowledge the situation, along with the perperatator, and then offer forgiveness and grace to that person, and, when it is received, enter into a new and reconciled relationship with them, beyond the roles of perpetrator and victim, where the wrong is forgotten.

This brings us to the third major theme of Volf's book. Beyond memory, and beyond a certain type of remembering in service of grace, comes forgetting. We should strive toward and look forward to a grace-filled world in which wrongs are fully acknowledged and then forgotten. In light of Jesus' death on the cross, a death which dealt with all evil, we look forward in hope to a time when that grace will embrace our situation. Volf is careful to remind that this forgetting is always on the other side of acknowledgement, forgiveness, and reconciliation, but it is still an end. We should (though it is not easy) long for a time when perpetrator and victim can come together without those labels, when a new and reconcilied relationship has forgotten completely those earlier roles, and draws them together as friends and companions. This is Volf's vision of the life to come, on the other side of the final judgment, a life that we can begin to experience here and now through a drive for reconciliation (as opposed to retribution).

Volf's End of Memory is an honest wrestling with the true nature of Christianity, the atonement, and grace. It helps paint a fuller picture of grace by looking beyond what grace means for me personally to a look at what grace should mean for my enemies, as well. He makes a convincing case for the importance of memory, a truthful and just type of memory, but then qualifies this memory as provisional. We instead look toward the end of memory, that time when all things will be made new, all wrongs remembered and then forgotten, and all eyes turned from past hurts to fulfillment and joy in Jesus Christ. It is a great and challenging vision of a grace-filled life. And is also a deep reflection what shapes our identity (hint: it's not our history, though that plays a role; who we are is ultimately grounded in God.)