Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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In Things Fall Apart, Achebe changes Nwoye from a boy who struggles to please his father Okonkwo to a deeply converted Christian that defies his Okonkwo’s wishes. Achebe showed this by making Nwoye enter a very sad and vulnerable state made him very susceptible to the culture collision that the missionaries brought. Achebe was trying to show that the weak minded were the first to be changed when a new culture entered a more traditional one. Nwoye was always trying to earn Okonkwo’s respect from the start of the novel. No matter the cost. He gave up things like reading “the kind of [stories he} loved. But he knew … His father wanted him to be a man”( Achebe p. 52.) like Okonkwo. He would have done anything to please Okonkwo. It wasn’t until after Ikemefuna died that he stopped trying to please his father. He felt uncomfortable around him and blamed Okonkwo for Ikemefuna’s death. Afterwards he fell into a state of depression that he was desperate to break. And it happened to be the Christian missionaries that do it. …show more content…

Most discarded and ignored them, but not Nwyoe. From the start he was “attracted to the new faith from the very first day,”( Achebe p. 151). But, after a savage beating, it was Okonkwo that persuaded him to make his final choice and convert to Christianity. Originally he “kept it secret… for fear of his father” but when his father openly tries to kill him he has a revelation to leave his father and family to pursue his new faith. Achebe shows how those weak minded will easily lose their beliefs during cultural collisions. Nwoye grew from that point onto teach the young to read the bible and convert more people. He was finally happy and no longer looking for Okonkwo’s

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    Unfortunately, everything is not perfect. His son, Nwoye, seems not to be showing the characteristics of a real man. He prefers to stay with his mother, listening to women's stories, than to listen to his father's tales of battle and victory. Later, when missionaries come to the tribe, Nwoye is attracted to their Christian religion because of its unqualified acceptance of everyone, much like a mother's unqualified love. Of this, Okonkwo r...

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    But soon on of his good friends from Umuofia Obierika came to visit. He brought news of white men sighted in another village and that he was killed by the village people. But that action of the village people condemned them as they were wiped out. Soon after this White men showed up in other villages and news of them spreading a new religion were being rumoured. They eventually came to Okonkwo’s mother village and started spreading their religion there. Most of the village people were sceptical of them and did not take heed of their words. Okonkwo reacted rather negatively thinking even of violent ways to be rid of them, “Okonkwo, who only stayed in the hope that it might come to chasing the men out of the village or whipping them…”( Achebe 109). His own son Nwoye became interested in the missionaries and upon hearing that Okonkwo reacted even more

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