The first demonstration of an Ibo value in Things Fall Apart, occurs when Okonkwo’s daughter becomes severely ill with fever (iba), and is taken to Agabala, the Oracle; a god and prophet of the Ibo people. Achebe demonstrated the beliefs of the people by introducing and characterizing the Oracle as a well respected, religious figure of power and authority. The author also uses his native diction to emphasize the importance and realism of the Oracle to the clan. The relationship and respect shared between the Ibo people and their religious figures is proof that Achebe exhibited the value of religion successfully. The relationships in the Ibo tribe are necessary throughout Achebe’s novel. The clan develops relationships by age and gender, the men and elderly being highly respected, whereas, women are viewed as less and the childbearers. In the Ibo clan’s individualized families, Polygyny is acutely common, making an average Ibo family quite large. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s family included three wives and 8 children, whom he regularly becomes angered with and beat, and its regularity is accepted as normal. Ibo relationships can also be formed by the social status of the male, based on wealth that is …show more content…
Throughout the novel, Okonkwo is never physically alone. Okonkwo is always with a friend or family member, making community a hidden value in Achebe’s story. Community to the Ibo includes physical presence, as well as, folktales and proverbs often told or shared by the clan. A clear display of the importance of the folktales is Ikemefuna’s chanted song from when he was a child. Several other songs and chants are mentioned throughout the novel by fellow community members, or children singing about the weather. Similar to other values, Achebe uses his native diction to add verisimilitude and realism into the culture’s
“He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.” This quote by Chinua Achebe describes the self-inflictions when a person purposely goes after another. This goes hand-in-hand with the Nigerian author’s magnum opus, Things Fall Apart. For the duration of the book, Achebe uses subtle events to create amplifying changes. He uses Okonkwo’s relationship with others, his learning about the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves. Achebe also uses Okonkwo’s fear of change for the Ibo regarding to the missionaries and their spread of Christianity through the region. Creating universal and relatable characters, Chinua Achebe warns people of rash actions and their effects over time.
Achebe chose to write his novel realistically. He includes the beauty of the Ibo's culture, as well as the gruesome. He recorded that a man might help kill his own adopted son for fear that he would be "thought weak." He also revealed that newborn twins were thrown away. Along with the "great depth" comes tragedy, but all of the details were required to make an accurate presentation of the subject. The writer must understand that the truth is not selective to the pleasant facts. The District Commissioner believed that it was important that he "be firm in cutting out the details" and decreed that a paragraph would suffice for the explanation of Okonkwo. However, Achebe, in essence, wrote an entire novel about this character. It is arrogant to believe that the complete understanding of a human being can be accomplished so easily.
In Things Fall Apart, Achebe tries to convey sympathy and sorrow for his own tribe that gets destroyed. They are proud of their culture and are a peaceful tribe. The Ibo’s traditional beliefs relate to practices and systems that we still use today. Achebe is asking, why should what we have worked to hard to create and establish be disrespected and destroyed? The Christians had no right to secretly overthrow the Ibos. The main character, Okonkwo, gives up his own life because he did not want to see what means a great deal to him destroyed, but in the end, Things Fall Apart.
Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart was written about European colonization Africa. Throughout the novel language, social structure, and religion are all brought over by Europeans. Things Fall Apart focuses on the difference between genders in Igbo culture, a system of tribes, in Nigeria. Achebe uses a patriarchal society to describe the divide between the Igbo people. Okonkwo, the protagonist, is a great example of how all the authority in this African culture belongs to men. The representation of demanding African men, story telling, deprived African women, and Okonkwo’s fatal falling in Igbo society all contribute to the significance of what masculinity really is throughout Achebe’s book.
Chinua Achebe born November 16, 1930, was raised in a large village by the name of Ogidi, which is in southeastern Nigeria. Raised by his parents, he excelled in school and even won a scholarship for undergraduate studies and was a graduate at the University of Ibadan. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, He tells a story about the protagonist Okonkwo who is the leader of the Umuofia Tribe for the Igbo people. The Ibo religion has one GOD by the name of Chukwu who was the believed creator of heaven and Earth. Similarly the Oracle was a prophecy from GOD that the people must obey, and if disobeyed they shall be dammed. The Christianity religion of the western people, impacts the Igbo tribe through education, language and traditional
The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe has long been seen as a response to Christian colonial literature, which presents the African as a barbaric dark image. It is therefore ponder some that Achebe would choose to shed light on Africa by deconstructing and ultimately destroying his main character Okonokwa. Through examining Okonokwa and his character flaws and essentially the reasons for his downfall one may surmise that shedding light on the African plight was not Achebe's some message in this novel.
To understand Okonkwo let us look at Ibo society. We see the Ibo way of life before the change occurs and the way they live their life after. The main thing that happens after the arrival of the missionaries is that the tribe falls apart. The main reason for this is the coming of the missionaries, who bring with them new ways of life, and mostly better ways of life. Achebe tries to show us that the missionaries showed people who were hurt by the beliefs of the tribe that this did not have to go on in their religion, and that's the main reason why people switched to their religion. Achebe shows us that the tribe had many wrong beliefs bef...
The worst feeling in the world is to not belong anywhere. That is exactly what Okonkwo, the main character of Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, faces. The story begins by describing the life of Okonkwo. He starts off poor and with no status, and as the story progresses he works hard to build his reputation and a family for himself. However, things start to go sour for Okonkwo when he repeatedly breaks the rules of his clan, which eventually leads to a seven-year exile to his motherland. It is when he is in his motherland that missionaries from Britain arrive in the area. The arrival of the missionaries in Umuofia caused a great cultural shock in the area, and Achebe’s character, Okonkwo, was faced with a struggle of identity.
In the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the Ibo culture and culture today have similar and contrasting marriages. The Ibo and cultures today are similar because people can get married whenever they want. However today, people usually don't get married at young ages like the Ibo people. The Ibo culture and people today can also have as many children as they want. Both cultures usually have a lot of help from different men, women, and even children. "Some of the women cooked the yams and the cassava, and others prepared vegetable soup. Young men pounded the foo-foo or split firewood. The children made endless trips to the stream" (113). The Ibo culture had a marriage system called polygamy, which is when a man is married to several women.
The religious aspect of the Ibo culture is that of both pre colonial and post colonial aspects. The pre colonial ibo worshiped many gods and above all the other gods are Chukwu were the gods below him are just messengers such as the earth goddess ala. They as well worship their ancestors that give them better harvest and luck. Then when the white men came from england and other areas bringing christianity they changed the culture of ibo and if some towns and villages did not comply to them they would wipe out most villages, an example from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe in chapter twenty it talks about how the people of this village of Abame. Another example of this is at the end of the book in chapter twenty five the District Commissioner
Iyasẹre, Solomon Ogbede. “Okonkwo's Participation in the Killing of His ‘Son’ in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Study of Ignoble Decisiveness.” Understanding Things Fall Apart: Selected Essays and Criticism. Troy, NY: Whitson, 1998. 129-40. Print.
It is important to note that Achebe was a product of both traditional Igbo society and the colonizing British culture. Therefore, the narrative is influenced by two strikingly opposed philosophies. The tragic hero, Okonkwo, may have been crafted to express, not only the Igbo philosophy of harmony, but the outsider interpretation of a seemingly paradoxical belief system. Achebe's representation of Okonkwo may symbolize the collision of these two conflicting philosophies.
Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, is a story of a traditional village in Nigeria from inside Umuofia around the late 1800s. This novel depicts late African history and shows how the British administrative structure, in the form of the European Anglican Church, imposed its religion and trappings on the cultures of Africa, which they believed was uncivilized. This missionary zeal subjugated large native populations. Consequently, the native traditions gradually disappeared and in time the whole local social structure within which the indigenous people had lived successfully for centuries was destroyed. Achebe spends the first half of the novel depicting the Ibo culture, by itself, in both a sophisticated and primitive light describing and discussing its grandeur, showing its strengths and weaknesses, etiquettes and incivilities, and even the beginning of cultural breakdown before the introduction of the missionaries. The collapse of the old culture is evident soon after the missionaries arrived, and here Achebe utilises two of the primary missionary figures, Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith, to once again depicts both sides of the Ibo culture between them, with Mr. Brown depicting the sophisticated and Mr. Smith depicting the primitive aspects.
In Things fall apart, Chinua Achebe showed us the richness of the Igbo traditional culture as well as the destruction of it through the activities of British missionaries. The appearance of Christianity on the Nigerian tribal land led to the disintegration of belief in the Igbo society, and made way for British colonization. Were the British the only cause of the destruction of the Igbo culture? The appearance of a new religion was not the sole reason for the loss of a tradition. The Igbo people also lost their culture because of many unreasonable conceptions in their spirituality.
Okonkwo is the protagonist of this story. The weak are compared to women and the strong are compared to men in this society. Chinua Achebe tried to sketch the position and status of women in the Ibo society. In this story, Achebe gives an account of gender discrimination prevailing over the Ibo society. The novel is a depiction of Postcolonial criticism. For example, it is mostly concerned with text critiques. Post-colonialism is a concept that goes against colonialism. Therefore, pos...