Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Weddings are one of the greatest celebrations in any man and woman’s, or the family's life. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, the wedding for any member of the village is one of the most celebrated things. Every woman from the village takes part in the preparing for the wedding feast to make sure there will be enough for all the villagers who are all invited. The wedding is a sacred bond between a man and his new wife, and it is very important part of their lives in the village. In the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, he shows us how wedding ceremonies brings people together, bring out the tribal traditions and bring the community together as one. Through celebrating good and bad times people are always willing to help,

Nobody is left out when it comes to the wedding ceremony, even down to preparing the meal for after the wedding and celebrating the umunna, as said, “Everybody had been invited - men, women and children. But it was really a woman’s ceremony and central figures were the bride and her mother. As soon as day broke, breakfast was hastily eaten and women and children began to gather at Obierika’s compound to help the bride’s mother in her difficult but happy task of cooking for a whole village” (110). Everyone is excited to help pitch in for the wedding preparations, it is even considered to be like a festival. Additionally the wedding ceremony includes everyone in wishing the bride and groom a happy, and prosperous, life. The people are also not shy about asking outsiders to join the wedding celebration, as said by Widjaja, “It’s common to be invited to partake traditional weddings, even if you are a stranger to the people” (Widjaja). Here is how a wedding can not only bring one or two people together, but the whole village, and that's not all the weddings do for the Igbo people. The wedding also brings out the traditional side in them

Celebrating the wedding afterwards is all traditional for the Igbo people, dancing and chickens as offerings, even down to the dancing which is explained in the novel here, “When they had gone round the circle they settled down in the center, and girls came from the inner compound to dance. At first the bride was not among them. But when she finally appeared holding a cock in her hand, a loud cheer rose from the crowd. She presented the cock to the musicians and began to dance” (118). The traditional way and beliefs of the Igbo people is evident in the way they celebrate the wedding afterwards. The women wait in the inner compounds till the men are finished talking and then they come out without the bride and dance. Then finally when the bride arrives she hands a chicken to the musicians as a offering to them and then dances herself. There are also additional ways the Igbo celebrate a wedding traditionally, as explained by John