Igbo Wedding Essay

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Igbo Wedding and Burial Rights Essay The Igbo tradition for funerals and wedding have various impacts on the whole village and not just specific people. In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe uses examples of family and funerals to explain the way of life in Umuofia, where the novel takes place. The author portrays that marriage is a long process for not just the bride and groom, but for the family and friends. The celebration of a wedding brings happiness to everyone around. Also, burial rites in the Igbo traditions are not mournful, it is more like a celebration to show the importance of the person. Achebe shows in the novel how funerals and weddings bring a village together, let people honor the ones who were lost, and connect with their …show more content…

When Ezeudu passes away, all the people were at his funeral to honor him because he was the oldest man in Umuofia. The egwugwu, a person who embodies an ancestral spirit of a village, was also there to celebrate Ezeudu death. In the novel, the egwugwu come together and Achebe says, “there was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors” (122). Even though death is not good, it lets people connect to the ancestral spirits. When something important happens for the Igbo they then get to see the egwugwu and be with someone spiritually. While explaining how Igbo burial rites lets people connect to ancestral spirits the article, “Burial Rites of the Igbo Culture,” says that Once the body has been prepared for its passage from the world of the living into the spirit world, a wake is held. The eldest son of the bereaved family welcomes the community into the home with kola nuts and palm wine. Prayers and libations are spoken to beckon ancestral spirits into the home to escort the spirit of the deceased. The wake lasts the whole night until gunshots are fired early the next morning to alert the surrounding village of the death that has occurred.

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