Things Fall Apart Power Quotes

1. Perhaps the best example of women holding power in this novel is the priestess Chielo. She is one of the spiritual leaders in Okonkwo’s town. She has the respect of the entire village, not just the women. Her authority extends so far that at one point in the novel she takes one of Okonkwo’s children in the middle of the night to a religious site. She is free to do as she pleases. Okonkwo recognizes her authority and doesn’t put up a fight. He ends up following his wife and daughter to the religious site, but doesn’t interfere. Another example of women in this society having important roles are their jobs as teachers. They teach their children the importance of community and other life lessons by telling their children stories. Okonkwo treats many of the women in his life differently. He is secretly very fond of one of his daughters and wishes she had been born a boy. This

The District Commissioner is a man who came to Nigeria with the idea that the people there were savages. He had the very common mindset for the period, in which Europeans were the educated, advanced, examples of a perfect society and everyone else was a savage. He went to Nigeria to share the ways of the civilized world. The only way he knows how to do this is by force. He enforced European laws in a society that doesn’t acknowledge them. He communicated his intentions through force, either because it was the only way he knew how or he just didn’t care. He used deceit to trick Okonkwo and the other community leaders into coming to his compound where he insulted and threatened them. He is the exact opposite of Mr. Brown, instead of using compromise and understanding to connect with the Ibo people, he uses brute froe and suppression. He symbolizes the way many of the Europeans saw the continent of Africa. Many people saw it as this wild untamed place that needed to be saved from itself through Jesus Christ and proper way of running a society, whether they liked it or