Possibilities and Pitfalls of Ethnographic Readings: Narrative Complexity in Things Fall Apart, The

College Literature, Spring 2008 by Snyder, Carey

Yet assertions like Innes's that the narrator "speaks for his society, not as an individual apart from it" will not withstand close reading: the narrator frequently stands apart, becoming (in my terms) an observer, rather than an implied participant. We are told, for example, that "Darkness held a vague terror for these people, even the bravest among them. Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits" (Achebe 1996, 7; my emphasis). These remarks clearly install distance between the narrator-who presumably is not afraid of the dark, and likely does not believe in evil spirits-and "these people," who are cowed by their fear of the night. Here the narrator is aligned more closely with non-native readers than with the Igbo perspective, and, in this mediating role, is more ethnographic observer than native informant. The move is akin to what James Buzard has called the "self-interrupting style" of ethnographic narratives, whereby the ethnographer insists that however closely s/he may identify with the natives, s/he is not really one of them (2005, 34).

For the most part, pinning down the narrative perspective is not a case of discerning whether the narrator is inside or outside native culture, but, rather, of detecting the fluid movement between these vantage points. The slipperiness of the narrative voice is evident in a passage that begins, "Umuofia was feared by all its neighbours. It was powerful in war and in magic, and its priests and medicine-men were feared in all the surrounding country" (Achebe 1996, 8).That Umuofia is "powerful in magic" is presented in a declarative sentence that renders without question or judgment the native point of view. The narrator continues, "on one point there was general agreement-the active principle in that medicine had been an old woman with one leg. In fact, the medicine itself was called agadi-nwayi, or old woman" (8-9). This story of the origin of native belief is flagged as consistent with the clan world view: they agree that the old woman with one leg is the source of their reputation in magic. At the same time, the anecdote is consonant with anthropological accounts of primitive cultures that regard disability as a source of metaphysical power. Thus the narrator subtly provides an alternate frame of reference-a way of understanding Umuofia's reputation that accords with Western disbelief in magic. Rather than operating from a fixed viewpoint, the narrator moves freely between divergent perspectives.

Another passage that illustrates the narrative's liminal perspective-jockeying between inside and outside perspectives in ethnographic fashion-is the description of the Oracle, Agbala, in Chapter Three:

No one had ever beheld Agbala, except his priestess. ... It was said that when such a spirit appeared, the man saw it vaguely in the darkness, but never heard its voice. Some people even said that they had heard the spirits flying and flapping their wings against the roof of the cave. (Achebe 1996,12)