Conversion Tactics of Mr. Brown

¶ … Conversion Tactics of Mr. Brown and Rev. Smith in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in his novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe draws a lively portrait of a Nigerian people, the Igbo, at the end of the nineteenth century, when the British colonization began in Africa. Chinua Achebe's main achievement in the novel is that of accurately rendering a complex picture of the African cultural tradition and identity from the inside the tradition itself, that is, by telling a story of the Igbo people which speaks for itself and which sees life from the perspective of the Nigerian people and not from the outside. The most important message of the book is clearly the gradual demise of the Igbo culture, of its traditions, customs and religion under the powerful wave of white European civilization. This message is already enclosed in the title of the novel: Achebe describes in his book the "falling apart" of the African culture. As it shall be seen, the Christian white missionaries in the book, Mr. Brown and Rev. Smith, are a major cause of the things falling apart. It is obvious that Achebe, without being critical of Christianity as a religion, criticizes the methods that were used by the white colonizers to undermine the African culture. While the conversion tactics used by the two missionaries are very different- Mr. Brown is moderate and tries to establish a relationship with the people while Rev. Smith is overzealous and intransigent and instigates major conflicts inside the Umuofia clan- both contribute to the same end: the falling apart of a culture.

Thus, Mr. Brown's moderation in his conversion tactics is obviously contrasted with Rev. Smith's zealousness. Mr. Brown, the first who comes as a missionary, tries to temper some of the intemperate converts, such as Enoch for example, and thus keeps some of the conflicts inside the clan at bay. Also, he builds a school and a hospital for the village and tries to maintain peaceful relationships with everyone. He can be said to be "successful" in his practices in as much as he gains the respect of most of the members of the clan: "Mr. Brown preached against such excesses of zeal, and so Mr. Brown came to be respected even by the clan, because he trod softly on its faith."(Achebe, 163) by contrast, Rev. Smith is portrayed as intransigent and limited in his views, seeing things as either black or white, that is completely banishing the 'inferior' African culture and religion and trying to bring it out of 'darkness' into the 'light': "[He] saw things as black and white. And black was evil. He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal combat with the sons of darkness. He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophet of Baal" (Achebe, 130). Rev. Smith encourages all the overzealous practices of the converts and causes Enoch to eat a python that was considered sacred by the clan. All these conflicts inside the Igbo people are irremediable wrongs that obviously cause the eventual demise of the culture itself.

Thus, the tactics of conversion used by the two missionaries are indeed contrastive, since Mr. Brown does token some understanding while Rev. Smith has none, but they are not entirely opposite. There are many instances of the author's sarcasm with respect to the 'good intentions' of both of the missionaries. First of all, the names he gives them put them on an equal footing: Brown and Smith are both typical, nondescript British names. Also, they both have the same obvious end in their missions: to submerge the African culture under the 'superior' white one. Achebe uses ironical, indirect devices to portray both of the methods used: Mr. Smith is seemingly a 'superior' character who is 'greatly distressed' by the 'ignorance' of the people that he is trying to convert to the new religion and who believes, in contrast with Mr. Brown, that only a few, superior and overzealous elect people can have access to real faith: "Mr. Smith was greatly distressed by the ignorance which many of his flock showed even in such things as the Trinity and the Sacraments. It only showed that they were seeds sown on a rocky soil. Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness...Our Lord used the whip only once in His life -- to drive the crowd away from the Church."(Achebe, 169)

On the other hand, Mr. Brown seems to have an overall positive contribution to the African community. Nevertheless, the author ironically implies that there is indeed only a difference in method between the two missionaries, and the decline of the Igbo culture already began under the more lenient government of Mr. Brown. For example, the school he builds can be seen as another way to indoctrinate the clan. This school is in fact the cause of other conflicts inside the Igbo community, since by attending this school an Igbo could become a 'court messenger', that is someone that would report and give out information from inside the clan to the white governors: "Mr. Brown's school produced quick results. A few months in it were enough to make one a court messenger or even a court clerk. Those who stayed longer became teachers: and from Umuofia laborers went forth into the Lord's vineyard. New churches were established in the surrounding villages and a few schools with them. From the very beginning religion and education went hand in hand." (Achebe, 166) Moreover, it is hard to speak of 'success' with any of these missionaries, since the author shows that what is achieved through the conversions and the indoctrination, is merely a deepening of the gap between the two cultures, the white and the African. The Igbo people do not understand the new religion, but merely associate it with their own views of the world, a fact that shows the complete inadequacy of preaching it in the first place: "It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow" (Achebe, 137) the irony of Achebe is obvious: through various methods, exemplified by the two missionaries, the white man insinuated his own culture in the African culture. Mr. Brown's soft tactic and Mr. Smith's loud one, have essentially the same effect of creating confusion and conflict among the Igbo people and thus, by bringing them apart, undermining the African culture itself: "The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart." (Achebe, 152) the conclusion is thus given by Achebe himself: Mr. Brown uses soft methods to convert the Igbo people, while Mr. Smith is a true religious tyrant, but both of them serve the same end eventually and bring destruction on the Nigerian tribe. Neither of them succeeds in anything more than causing things to fall apart by trying to 'civilize' the Africans. The ending of the novel is a culmination of the author's irony: the District Commissioner intends to write a book on the events that had taken place in Achebe's own novel: "The story of this man who had killed the messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. (Achebe, 191) the book that the Commissioner intends to write about Africa includes a small paragraph about Okonkwo's life (for which Achebe needed more than two hundred pages), proving the misunderstanding of the white people of the complex African culture. Okonkwo's tragedy described in Achebe's book is thus the tragedy of the Igbo culture itself that falls apart under the new dominating white wave. Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith are both instruments for this destruction. The "pacification of the primitive tribes" is a typical phrase for the colonialist who were convinced that the African were savage people who needed their salvation, while Achebe's book proves exactly the opposite, through the insight into real African tradition.