Things Fall Apart - White Missionaries Caused Umofia to Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart - White Missionaries Caused Umofia to Fall Apart

Faith has always been a guiding force in man's life. Chinua

Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart is a story that describes the effects of a

new Christian religion in a tribal village of Africa. The tribe has their

own language, known as Obi, a dignified culture and a value system that has

continued for many years as they trace back into their ancestry. Yet,

voids that this culture can no longer fill for modern tribesmen enable

white missionaries to intrude upon this system and convert many of the

tribe's younger members to the Christian faith. The tribal system falls

apart because younger members are unable to remember persons of the past,

unable to relate to violence when they have lived in safety and peace and

are uninterested in a faith that does not fulfill their needs for music,

joy and love, instead of discipline of a higher being.

Okonkwo, the protagonist of the story, could remember to "another

time" when children, like his own son Nwoye, were not lazy. He could also

remember the indolence of his own father, Unoka, and that his father had

not received any titles as a clansman. He was determined to be a respected

farmer of yams to ward off the shame of his unsuccessful and dishonorable

father.

Fortunately, among these people a man was judged by

his worth and not according to the worth of his father...

As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could

eat with kings. Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands

and so he ate with kings and elder...

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Traore, Ousseynou. "Things Fall Apart; A Poetics of Epic and Mythic Paradigms." Approaches to Teaching Achebe's Things Fall Apart. ed. Bernth Lindfors. New York: MLA, 1991, 65-73.