Jonathan 1 RATIONALE (Rationale: 296 Words | Written Task: 998 Words | Total: 1294 Words)
As I was reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart , I noticed that on several occasions, it seemed as if Chinua Achebe was not completely for Igbo culture and customs. As I began to draw the lines between these observations, I began to find that instead of portraying Igbo culture as a treasure worth keeping, Achebe showcased it as lacking in humanity and in logic. This observation has spawned an interest directed towards the second learning outcome of Part 4, which is to “analyze elements such as theme and the ethical stance or moral values of literary texts.” The question being raised here is “Is it possible to find evidence for and draw the conclusion that Chinua Achebe was actually against the continuation of Igbo culture?” I have decided to explore this question in the form of a formal legal judgment on the basis of defamation by a Nigerian Federal Judge found in the archives of the Nigerian Supreme Court. The audience of the text would be legal practitioners in Nigeria, and the purpose is to inform these legal practitioners of reasons why Chinua Achebe was either found guilty or acquitted of the crime of defamation defamat ion so they are able to use the ruling on their own cases. One reason I chose to write the text in the form of a formal legal judgment is to allow me to cite textual evidence e vidence in the book without hindrance. A court case is very specifi c in its citation that it will cite phrases or sentences from a book, past judgment, or a witness statement word-by-word. Also, a court case would allow me to analyze these citations in greater detail, like what a court would usually do.
Jonathan 2 Michael Jonathan Mr. James Springall 11 IB English Language and Literature SL 1 17 March 2014 Luke Okonkwo Achukwu V. Albert Chinualumogu Achebe IN THE SUPREME COURT OF NIGERIA
On Wednesday, the 17th Day of June 1961
Before their Lordship
Adetokunbo Ademola (Chief Justice of the Federation) Unsworth (Federal Justice) John Idowu Conrad Taylor (Federal Justice)
FSC 137/1961
Between
Luke Okonkwo Achukwu (For himself and on behalf of the Igbo ethnicity)
…. Appellant
And
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe
….
Respondent
Jonathan 3 Judgment of the Court
Delivered by Adetokunbo Ademola, C.F.J.
The following question has been referred to this Court by the appellant in accordance with section 108 of the Constitution of the Federation:
“(1) Whether the provisions of 24 (2) (b) of the Constitution of the Federation— in so far as they allow Albert Chinualumogu Achebe the freedom of writing and publishing a work, namely Things Fall Apart , deemed defaming by the Igbo ethnicity — have been invalidated by the same provisions of the same article due to their genuine defamation of the Igbo ethnicity.”
After a thorough investigation of the material deemed defamatory by the appellant Mr. Achukwu, I fully accept his submission to this court. I shall thus endeavour to explain my reasons for acceptance through summarizing his argumentation as follows:
(i)
The novel, Things Fall Apart , includes defamatory descriptions of tribal customs.
(ii)
The novel, Things Fall Apart , includes characters whose questions and actions contradict the tribal customs of the Igbo, thereby presenting the customs as being illogical and unethical.
I uphold the legitimacy of submission (i). The plaintiff cited a portion of the novel on its 18th page, which describes the Igbo custom of burial. In this portion, the respondent describes the death of the character Unoka, in which “[Unoka] died of the swelling which was an
Jonathan 4 abomination to the earth goddess…He was carried to the Evil Forest and left there to die…[and] was not given the first or the second burial.” I find this a clearly negative portrayal of the Igbo customs because it depicts Igbo custom as inhumane for leaving Unoka to “rot away above the earth,” which is a humiliating form of “burial”. The plaintiff then continued his submission by citing another portion of the novel in question on its 32nd page, which portrays the Igbo custom with a sense of irony. In this portion, the men of the Umuofian clan comment on the relative mildness of Okonkwo’s punishment when Okonkwo had beat his third wife, Ojiugo. One of the men, Ogbuefi Ezeudu, describes a custom in another fictional village, Obodoani, where those who die during the Weak of Peace are thrown into the Evil Forest. Ogbuefi Ezeudu remarks that this only leaves “their clan…full of the evil spirits of these unburied dead, hungry to do harm to the living.” According to the plaintiff, this is ironic, since the Umuofians also threw away many corpses into the Evil Forest, as is evidenced by the four sets of twins that were thrown away by the tribe on the 151st page. I fully agree with the plaintiff ’s assertion that this irony serves to show the capricious nature of Igbo customs, which applauds and deplores the disposal of the dead in the Evil Forest, undermining the Igbo culture in the process.
As regards to submission (ii), I agree that the novel Things Fall Apart contains characters who, through the nature of their questions and actions, contradict or aim to contradict the tribal customs of the Igbo. On the 61st to 62nd page of the novel, the respondent includes a description of Nwoye’s thoughts on the killing of Ikemefuna and the custom of throwing twins away into the Evil Forest. In this portion, when Nwoye passes the Evil Forest and hears the cries of babies, “A vague chill descended on him…[and] something… [gave] way inside him. It descended on him again… when his father walked in…after killing Ikemefuna.” I find the respondent’s description of Nwoye’s reaction towards both these Igbo customs appalling,
Jonathan 5 as it presents them both as being startling even to an Igbo person, which means it was meant to be startling to the reader. This clearly puts the blame of defamation on the respondent. A further example the appellant cited comes from a portion of the text from the 125th page of the novel. In this section, the character Obierika questions the reasoning behind the Igbo justice system’s punishment of exile for inadvertent murder. Besides asking “Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently? He remembered his wife’s twin children, whom he had thrown away. What crime had the y committed?” I accept the appellant’s argument that these questions serve to spark further questions in the readers’ minds on the legitimacy of Igbo laws, portraying them as being inhumane. I find that this is clear defamation. I also find the appellant’s closing argument on this submission to be true. In his closing argument, the appellant refers to the repetition of the motif of the inhumanity of throwing twins away. The plaintiff argues that Nwoye’s doubts in the 62nd page are repeated in the 147th page. In this section, Nwoye has just finished hearing a hymn sung by the Christian missionaries. The hymn “seemed to answer…the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.” I accept the plaintiff’s reasoning that in portraying the Christian hymn as life giving and good, it portrayed the Igbo customs of thr owing twins away and killing innocent boys as evil. I find this contrast reasonable, and thus find this section a clear showcase of defamation.
Without hesitation, I accept the submission of the appellant to prove the defamatory nature of Albert Chinualumogu Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart . On the grounds of negatively describing Igbo tribal customs and the inclusion of characters who question or feel strongly against Igbo customs, I hereby find the respondent, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, guilty of defamation.
Jonathan 6 Judgment delivered by Unsworth. F.J.
I concur.
Judgment delivered by John Idowu Conrad Taylor. F.J .
I concur.
Jonathan 7 Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart . New York: Anchor, 1994. Print. Brett, Lionel. "J.S. Olawoyin versus Commissioner of Police." Supreme Court of Nigeria Judgment Information System. Web. 13 Mar. 2014. .
