Creativity as the hallmark of imagination challenges orthodoxy. In a warped social system therefore, the artist is emotionally disturbed. That appeared to be the state of mind of the novelist, Chinua Achebe, in the perverted social system in Igbo land – when Western religion and culture through the instrumentality of colonialism embarrassingly encroached on the people’s traditions. This thesis traces the several emotions of the artist that precipitated the trail brazier in Nigerian literature: Things Fall Apart.  The thesis insists that anger, rage, fear, panic, despair, anxiety and resistance that gave birth to the creative engagement manifest themselves in the book. It therefore concludes that emotional disorders are dependable allies in creativity.
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Our point of departure perhaps, may be the use of English language as the mode of communication. And that borders on resistance. Transfixed between the use of Igbo language and the use of English, the artist resolved his dilemma by choosing to communicate his emotions in English language, but not without resistance. In Things Fall Apart, “The language of Okonkwo and the other villagers is expressed in the idiom of the Ibo villagers as Achebe transmutes it into modern English.” (Killam: 13) Achebe’s approaches in this sense are two fold: language as an artefact reflects people’s culture. If English language imposed itself on the Igbo people through colonialism, the only form of resistance by the creative writer was to “Igbonize” English. This was a feeling “deep within himself” and is capable of allaying fears that the writer would imbibe Western culture without traces of his African traditions. The Igbo generations before Achebe probably were not conscious of this.  Achebe had to therefore “Igbonize” English lest he be considered a weakling like the past generations of Igbo men. This may be the source of resistance in Okonkwo who like the writer hates the gentility of his forefathers:

• It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. Even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion –to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. (Pp.9-10)

Achebe hated the imposition of English language on his people. It may perhaps, be the one passion behind the “Igbonization” of English at the levels of religion and culture to ameliorate the damage done to Igbo tradition.  Though things fall apart, “Ani, the earth goddess and the source of all fertility,” remains the “ultimate judge of morality and conduct. And what was more, she was in close communion with the departed fathers of the clan.” (p.26)  The lexicon has to reflect the culture of the Igbo people to ensure credibility of the story and that of the personal integrity of the artist. As Achebe puts it “…the past needs to be recreated not only for enlightenment of our detractors but even for our education.” (Achebe “The Role of the writer”: 158) Achebe’s temper before the creation of Things Fall Apart was that of an artist in search of truth obliterated by the colonial detractors. But emotion of defiance is impetuous to creativity.

In any emotion, there could be several acts that may include speech and imitation of nature called mimesis. Imagination as a mental operation may be in the visual form. In such a case, the artist may be involved in self-movement – kinematic imagery. It seems therefore, that Achebe’s inner feelings or linguistic thought on the submerged culture of the Igbo were automatically retrieved in his mind. The human mind according to Merlin Donald engages “self-trigger recall from memory in two ways: by means of mimetic imagination, and by the use of word symbols, either of which could be overt or covert.”  (Donald: 15) Achebe’s imagination on the conflict between Igbo culture and Western culture came in word symbols –hence the novel that chronicles the history of the Igbos under colonialism in Nigeria from 1850-1900.

As a novel meant to enlighten white people on the culture of the Igbos, Achebe’s characters display enough anger and rage on conducts that negate African tradition. Unlike the white man who could return from work, cooks food and wakes the wife from sleep to come and eat, Achebe clearly states in some episodes that the African culture differs from that of the West. Take the episode where, for instance, Okonkwo’s youngest wife leaves the house to plait her hairs. While Achebe acknowledges her right to do so, he deplores the unacceptable attitude of a wife who is not sensitive to the dictates of tradition. The lost of self-esteem in the male dominated society triggered the social withdrawal and irritability in the writer. That is why Okonkwo’s rage against Ojiugo is traditionally pardonable: “Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his youngest wife.” (21)

But in another breath, the writer further enlightens the white man that African religions are not in any way inferior to Christianity. This idea is highlighted in the Week of Peace during which all persons are expected to exercise restraint in actions against one another. Ezeani the priest of the earth goddess stresses this point with anger by refusing to take kola nut from Okonkwo: “Take away your kola nut. I shall not eat in the house of a man who has no respect for our gods and ancestors.” (21) Ezeani speaks the mind of Achebe who believes that self-contempt is the bane of African pride and identity. Kiaga’s view, “Before God, there is no slave or free” (111) is instructive. In “Morning Yet on Creation Day” published seventeen years after Things Fall Apart, Achebe re-enacts his rage against self-contempt by Africans: “If I were God I would regard as the very worst our acceptance – for whatever reason – of racial inferiority.” (Achebe, “Morning Yet”: 44)

Achebe created his characters and invested them with emotions consistent with his mood of anger against colonialism. In what appears to be the hallmark of the creation of Things Fall Apart, one of the defining characters Obierika narrates: “The elders consulted their oracle and it told them that the strange [white] man would break their clan and spread destruction among them.” (97) Here, there is seeming anxiety in the writer despite that the adventure of the white man is done with tact –religious and economic motives.  Achebe writes with nostalgia the use of violence by white men to take Africans as slaves across the seas to Europe and America: “We have heard about white men who made powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true.” (99)

That feeling of unreality or panic attack is represented in the brutality meted on Abame in the novel and it is meant to confirm the stories told of white men in Africa and to assert that the African ways of life are rooted in tradition and belief. The idea is further authenticated by the Oracle. In an attempt to give voice or meaning to his intense feeling, Achebe as an intellectually gifted individual not only expresses self but the collective feelings of others. The anxiety, fear and apprehension experienced as an artist in Igbo society are part of the evolution in the traditional society. But as has been stated by Liane Gabora, “the bottleneck in cultural evolution is the capacity for innovation.” (Gabora: 5) The consequence of the conflict between African and Western cultures is the creative output in form of a novel. Achebe’s in-depth knowledge of his culture and his mastery in transplanting his emotions in the indigenous people and the foreigners alike make actions and reactions in Things Fall Apart quite realistic. The realism of life is further accentuated by the decision of rulers and elders in Mbanta to ostracize those among them that embrace Christian religion. Such a collective decision has semblance of rage.