2 - ‘A less superficial picture’: Things Fall Apart

Summary

Joyce Cary'sMister Johnson tells the story of a young Nigerian clerk who takes a bribe, loses his job, regains it, helps and encourages the young British colonial officer Rudbeck build a road, embezzles taxes to do so, murders a white storekeeper, and is subsequently tried and executed by Rudbeck. The novel seeks above all to celebrate the character of Johnson, who is portrayed as a Dionysian character, bursting with emotion, song, dance and spontaneity, and enamoured of European civilization. He is contrasted both with the self-interested and unimaginative pagan and Muslim Africans and with the British colonial officers, who are characteristically tight-lipped, constrained by reason and the letter of the law. Johnson provides Rudbeck with the inspiration and energy as well as the labour force and the money to build a road through his district. Cary's implication is that Johnson's qualities must be linked to and put to the service of Rudbeck's vision and technological knowledge, and that Rudbeck can become more humane and more creative by learning from Johnson, although Johnson's anarchic and destructive tendencies must be suppressed. At the end of the novel, Rudbeck follows the letter of the law in trying and condemning Johnson, but bends the law by agreeing to personally execute Johnson, who pleads with him to do so, reminding Rudbeck that he (Johnson) has always regarded him as ‘his father and mother’.