African Culture In Things Fall Apart, By Joseph Conrad

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe incorporates a lot of African culture into the stories as a response to Heart of Darkness, written by Joseph Conrad, because there are so much more to the people and the environment. The culture itself, is injected into the characters and setting. To fully appreciate the characters and their interactions with environment, readers have to comprehend the culture because these aspects are inseparable. It is basically tridirectional: culture can influence character(s) and the setting, setting can influence characters and the culture, and last but not least characters can influence culture and setting; this idea is interlaced into the way Achebe structures Things Fall Aparts into three parts. The first part

There are instances where the narrator makes a reference to a word in the Igbo’s language like “ogbanje” and further elaborate in relation to the word like how “ogbanje” refers to the “wicked children who, when they [die], [enters] their mothers’ wombs to be born again” (77; ch. 9). Without the narrator’s translation and explanation as to what an ogbanje is or where the term originated from after referring to it, readers will most likely be clueless because there will be this lack of context and background information like stories that are sometimes several pages long in Things Fall Apart; the context and background information for the term ‘ogbanje’ is nine pages long. This context and background information from the narrator are vital to the understanding the culture. It also gives rise to bits and pieces of characterization of different characters and give meaning to different settings. This part of the novel really highlights Ekwefi as a character. She remains submissive to her culture, by permitting the medicine man to perform all of these rituals. Yet, she remains anxious over

Achebe does a fantastic job transitioning the novel from the pre to post European imperial era by using a metaphor to refer to invading Europeans as “locusts”. Knowing that locusts can be both destructive and beneficial to the the villagers, this piece of metaphor helps readers foreshadow what happens as Europeans keep on coming in. The Europeans attempt to integrate into the tribes and inflict their culture onto the tribal clans. Mr. Brown describes the attempt as a “frontal attack” (181; ch. 21). Because many worthy tribal members and outcasts are seduced by what the missionaries has to offer them. By accepting this alteration to their lifestyle, the members who are submissive to the new group, indirectly accepts the changes to their customs and beliefs. By integrating their community into the Umuofia in the Evil Forest and thriving on the piece of land that has to do a lot with what the tribe believes, the image of the Evil Forest as a whole is not about the culture of the tribe as much anymore. That is the why the narrator’s focus is shift away from the elaborations that are so abundant in the first part of the novel. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe structures the parts of the novel to depict this tridirectional relationship among culture, settings, and characters. The purpose of the narrator’s explanations abundantly throughout the first part of the novel is to