Acting-Out and Working-Through: A LaCaprian Analysis of Trauma in Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Chinua Achebe’s legendary novel Things Fall Apart is more than a story of colonial devastation; it is a meditation on the wounds that refuse to fade. As first advocated by Freud and later interpreted by LaCapra, trauma is not confined to a single moment. It lingers, recurs, and disrupts until it is compulsively acted out or consciously worked through. This paper situates Achebe’s novel within this framework of Dominick LaCapra and examines how trauma is inherited, reenacted, and sometimes transformed. While previous scholarship has analyzed Okonkwo’s psychology and the distortion of Igbo culture by colonizers, none has explicitly applied LaCapra’s ideas on the novel. Through close reading and engagement with LaCapra’s concepts of acting out and working through, this paper explores Okonkwo’s obsession with his father’s perceived weakness, which traps him in the constant cycle of repetition, collapsing the distinction between past and present. In contrast, Nwoye drives himself away from this inherited trauma, signaling towards the tentative but essential path of healing. Ultimately, this study argues that Things Fall Apart dramatizes the haunting persistence of trauma and also hints at the possibility of healing.

Keywords: Trauma, Acting out, Working through, LaCapra, Achebe.