The Effect of White Missionaries on an African Tribe in Things Fall Apart by Achebe

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The Effect of White Missionaries on an African Tribe in Things Fall Apart by Achebe In the book “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, we see the effect the white missionaries had on an African tribe and the antihero Okonkwo. The main character Okonkwo is a tragic hero. Achebe depicts Okonkwo as a Shakespearean hero with a tragic flaw, that tragic flaw is the fact that he will do anything in his power not to be a weak man like his father Unoka. Okonkwo did what he did because he hated his father and would do anything in his power to be the exact opposite of his father. Unoka is Okonkwo’s father, he is a very lazy man and has amassed many debts. Okonkwo is very ashamed of Unoka and seems to hate him very much. Achebe states that, “When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him? Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not the worth of his father.” Okonkwo was a strong man who was very proud and thought that any show of weakness would make him less than a man. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...tribe. Achebe doesn't care much about the people who left the tribe, but he understands that the missionaries were successful in getting more people to join them. He also feels that they did a pretty good job with doing so and gathered many people who gave them more power. The Ibo tribe, and their religion, was broken up by the missionaries who came and brought with them better and more civilizes ways of life. I think that Achebe thoughts were wrong, if he saw that the missionaries were getting a lot of people to join their tribe I think he should have said something about the tribe becoming smaller and loosing power. He waited to long to say that the tribe was going downhill. But I do understand that he didn't want to say that the tribe was breaking up, he did not want to say that the missionaries were successful, but he couldn't help it, the were very successful.

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