WHAT IF 'THINGS FALL APART' WAS WRITTEN TOMORROW?

If ‘Things Fall Apart’ was written tomorrow, I mean published some days from tomorrow, the book would be much interesting I think. More than it has ever been? A critic to Chinua’s work would be that its not relevant. We no longer live in mud houses, husbands no longer have a line of wives, wives cannot be tamed, children are the harbours of present information and the white man is not a foreigner for he has never been. Never been? To the one who was born in 1990, always thinking that she is ten years old if you ask her age, because of the millennium when the world was supposed to end; she found a number of things changed. Living in a quickly changing society, there is expected more new ways of lifestyles and Chinua, if we do not design his works to reflect a post-modern day, the books will follow him. He rests.

A play by the Catalysts based on Henrik Ibsen’s book, An Enemy of the People is the source of my intrigue. Dr. Stockman, the man in the book is replaced by a Dr. Stockman of the present time. What I mean?  Dr. is a man in the book and a woman in the play by the Catalysts. It is the responsibility of the informers to put information in present admissible, accepted and concerned with the technology at present so that nothing sounds archaic and ‘not of us’. For this they hit the nail square.

You can imagine how the husband in the play speaks the words of Mrs. Stockman. Billing is also a woman and Mortein Kill got his best replacement. She is the witch woman who went about buying shares at half the prices from the children’s inheritance kitty later to blackmail his daughter-in-law. A man could not have played that part so good though Peter Stockman had to remain that undying wicked and corrupt man as Dr. takes to blogging and mailing to spread the baths rottenness to the public. Ejlif and Morten are not in the play. Could it be because of a one-child policy? A few things make this interesting…Has gender roles shifted? Are women now the ombudsmen in conflict with continued unfair moral fabric? And are they being heard? It also resembles Shakespeare’s play, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ as performed by UAA theatre and dance 2011 performance. The book, wherever it is can’t be as fair as the play. Change something or have the modern characters and information will be taken in differently well.

The dying of the old and the beginning of the new. The new will also age.

Okonkwo is an ancient traditional man if you would allow me talk of him as such. I do not despise anything old. But some acts if placed on the time-line can be pushed back to the dark ages- no longer applicable. Okonkwo, using symbolism can be compared to a modern man torn between himself and the outside world. Who wants proverbs and symbols? It is only he who has nothing to say that opts to a proverb. If we are to read the book with Chinua’s signature then it is merely a bed-time sorrowful story told by husbandry men to their children when power is off and cartoons cannot play on the screen. The father may still have the instincts of the past days when the book was a best-seller in the African literary shelves. Not the rock listeners of the information age.

What he fought for? Mere preserving of godly culture and long-time order in his village. Village you say? Are we not talking of going to live on Mars? The adjectives that have been employed to represent the brave and hardworking Okonkwo whose yams grew like the thigh of a diabetic woman are no longer applicable to the modern smart men but the foolish second hand workers who toil much and get paid minute dimes. We no longer have men brave in war for the sake of fame and title. Once a war is won resources are scrumbled for and perpetretors killed in unknown circumstances. We no longer kill fifteen men and call that a historical moment. In Kenya there are tribes who descend on each in the valleys and shoot policemen and villagers. The Al-Shabaab are doing it to go to heaven. It is not a taboo to kill a kin. Women kill for wealth and men kill for the same. And no gods come to them in the night.

There is a book I’d have liked to read but the lender was too mean like me. Instead of borrowing yam tubers we borrow books to enhance our youth hood to a productive maturity. Denying me the book was in equal pain if Okonkwo had been denied the tubers by Nwakibie. It suggested about a future kind of life at its blurb. The houses will have adopted solar energy and denied all pollutions due to the increased global warming. Man will have discovered his fault of giving rise to foolish destructive heads and decided to keep a small number of heads. Marriage will be a dead word. Man will live in equal and respectable status with a woman. Women will be attracted to their sex as men. Yet Sodom and Gomorrah in biblical theory will have not been fulfilled. Whatever tragedy will happen to sweep the populations that will be regarded as a biblical prophecy by some of supersticious reasoners. People will die out of deception. For the lovers of science, it will be another moment to record a few truths that may later be regarded religious. The future will be the past.

Books do die. Though authors tend to avoid timelines or fixed kind of reasonings and applying a prophetic eye to the book that no longer goes for generations. Anne Frank’s diary, presently seen by some as a hoax, only served to necessitate healing and cohesion among the Jews and Germans. It no longer hits as it used to. Its historical. The Bible continues to keep its walking stick strong to the ground and only the superstitious give it a second thought. Just as we think of Okonko’s gods to be adultery so may be the white man’s religion in the past future. The non-alighned movement groups are on the increase and the book will attain a ‘good ancient book.’ The Word of God? I would want to see those days when man will be told the writings were an hoax- somebody’s propaganda to control the masses. That is tomorrow anyway. It may be the day after this year, decade, century or several millenniums. The fact that earth is in space should make somebody wonder and marvel alike.

Okonkwo played the roman fool by killing ownself. It is a stupid act. When a man takes his life, what remains? A soul? Do we have souls anyway? Where do they hang at our death? Where were they before we existed? And books help us to communicate with the souls of writers. It may just be the mind tricks that occur to people…like you never know what a mad person thinks though in their state of mind, without comparing them to whatever other human, they are as good as you. In the future people will not die aimlessly. Insurance will give them two hearts and two souls. When a person feels like ageing is here, simple plastic surgery will enable the person seek replacements of some organs and keep going. Death will be an archaic feeling and state. Governments will invest in organ production and replacements facilities. Okonkwo will live forever.

Akwonkwo, yes not Okonkwo will be the future main character of the African bestseller.. Unlike Okonkwo, she will have no husbands to live with and mistreat. Psychologically she will affect many for she will not be married but staying online, taking and posting nude modeling photos, calling and playing sex online for viewers, designing man’s ways and ruling him from behind. Many will love what she will do for there will be no discriminatory laws. And for the men who will have cursed their groins for making their lives miserable in following women, will decide to refrigerate their seeds and keep the parts mute for life. No intimacy, no relationships and no gender conflicts. Romeo and Juliet related deaths among other accidents will be at bay. Akonkwo will not bear children. Her seed will be joined by whatever she will will and be generated in the lab. The birth pain will not be associated with a curse. It will be a man’s doing. A human will be coming from the laboratories ready to impact the world in a designed manner. Instead of Nwoye, Ezinma will be born first. With characteristics that would see him fly to the sun without being burned on the way he….

I am not sure of what I was saying previously. The point is, traditional fire-place stories of Okonkwo will die tomorrow, if not already dead, when change will be change and be replaced with a sophisticated man whose destiny is in self- never discriminating, blaming or drawing lessons from super powers. In the mean-time, things are fallen.