Examples Of Cultural Change In Things Fall Apart

Cultural Change and Progress, is it a Good Thing? Achebe and Mahfouz were both twentieth century writers of different lands that captured the religious views of their youth, through the progression of change happening around them. There writings reflected the cultural views of the past, the infusion of new religion and politics bringing about a cultural change and progress that was for the good or the bad.
Achebe in his writing “Things Fall Apart” about Nigerian villagers of Umuofia who held strong, “most of the time” too their views to keep the clan of their people strong and respected, “Umuofia was feared by all its neighbor’s, “its war-medicine was as old as the clan itself” (Damrosch, 2009), they had many gods. With time the rules …show more content…

The name “Zaabalawi” was known by a man in a song of his child hood “oh what’s become of the world, Zaabalawi, they’ve turned it upside down and taken away its taste” (Damrosch, 2009). The man recalls his father speaking of the saint, he searches hi and low for this saint never to find him and unable to realize the religious and traditional fact that he is within. The saint is but a memory too be longed for in the hearts of those who once worshiped his very mention, “I had become fully convinced that I had to find Zaabalawi” (Damrosch, 2009).
Both writers were dealing with social, religious, and political changes occurring during these times and the practices and beliefs of both nations seemed to become lost. I believe Mahfouz was more concerned with the progression of Arab as a literary recognized people, that could rise above the holding back of the religious authority of Egypt to a more “modernistic and lyrical Arabic novel” (Damrosch, 2009). Achebe appeared to be more about expressing how its “well-intended” colonizers changed Africa, whether it was for the good, one has to