Change In Things Fall Apart

In Things Fall Apart, when the missionaries first come to Umuofia, Okonkwo is very adamant in resisting their ways. He refuses to conform to them and holds fast to his traditional beliefs. He believes that Christianity is “womanly” and his own practices

Following Okonkwo’s seven year exile, the village Okonkwo once knew has changed due to the influence of Christianity and the influence of the British missionaries and officers. Okonkwo’s initial reaction is to arm the clan against the Colonisers and drive the British people out of Igbo.

Change is a reoccurring theme throughout history. It destroys and creates. It displaces and introduces. It can cause death and life. The movement of imperialism in Africa brought great change to the native tribal life. Forcing the indigenous people to turn away from their century-old traditions caused violent rifts between the European settlers and the tribes, as well as internal problems between once amiable members of the Ibo culture. With the introduction of the foreign Western Society in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the tribe’s life and ideals are drastically altered as the new ethics and principles collide with the old traditions and laws, causing the members of the society to either adapt or be crushed underneath the foot of colonialism. Achebe’s character, Okonkwo, was impacted immensely by the cultural collision, as his previous way of life was pulverized before his eyes, and he found no reason to live any longer.

This is an example of the difference in personal beliefs among family. Some may say that the book is about the differences in beliefs between the Africans and the colonizers, but it is more than that. It is clear that it was Okonkwo's personal beliefs and not necessarily the views of the people of Umuofia which guided him in what he did. One of these is his reliance in the strength of anger. Although he felt strongly in the beliefs and customs of the Ibo people, there are several occasions in which Okonkwo made a decision to disobey the customs in order to live out his own personal beliefs. For example, in chapter four, Okonkwo is yelled at by Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess, for beating his wife during the sacred week of peace. Okonkwo did not feel remorse for his actions and probably thought of it as a sign of strength and manhood. Okonkwo was always worried about being seen as weak. One good

This novel is the definitive tragic model about the dissolution of the African Ibo culture by Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo, a great and heroic leader, is doomed by his inflexibility and hubris. He is driven by fear of failure.

More and more villagers were falling under this new idea of a single God, not only villagers from Umuofia but from surrounding villages. The locals were no longer against the new religion. Okonkwo was one of the few who still was. The local villagers were sort of thankful for what the white men had brought to Umuofia. “The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he has also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia.” (Achebe 178) The white men had slowly convinced the local people that what they were doing was productive after all. The arrival of the white men in Umuofia allowed for larger flow of commerce. This is yet another effect of imperialism over the African villages, though it isn’t negative. The next effect however, is indeed negative and

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.

To begin, Okonkwo's response to the Europeans shows how differences in customs and values can lead to conflict. When Okonkwo returns to Umuofia, he is surprised that his clan has been taken over by the Europeans and that people were starting to give up preserving their own religion and customs. When he confronts Obierika, Obierika explains to Okonkwo, “‘How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? … Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’” Okonkwo feels betrayed as many of his clan members have left and joined the Europeans, showing the clash between Ibo culture and Western culture. The Ibo people value staying true to their own traditions while the

The missionaries conflict with everything Okonkwo believes or values. The missionaries are so outlandish to Okonkwo that his first reaction is just to laugh at them. This is shown on page 147, paragraph 4, “ At the end of it Okonkwo was fully convinced that the man was mad. He shrugged his shoulders and went away.” Okonkwo later begins to understand the threat the missionaries pose to his society and passionately speaks for forcing the missionaries out of Umuofia. However when his people will not listen to him, he feels like he is forced to take matters into his own hands. This is shown on page 204, paragraph 7,” Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body”. The Ibo people do not join in on the violence as Okonkwo had hoped, which contradicted with Okonkwo belief that the Ibo were warrior people. This final loss of Okonkwo’s core beliefs is what shatters Okonkwo’s final sense of identity as a man. As Okonkwo is no longer any of the things he has come to identify himself as, and Okonkwo blames the missionaries for this, his final response to the missionaries is to take his own life. Okonkwo's death is shown on page 207, paragraph 3 “ Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo’s body was dangling, and they stopped dead.” When Okonkwo identity was ripped from him he no longer saw a point in living and his fight with the

The fact that these missionaries have started to really make an impact was unprecedented by the Ibo people; their continuous misunderstandings of one another contribute to make this situation frustrating to both the Ibo clansmen and the Christians that view their religion as superior. Okonkwo returns back to his home village of Umuofia after his exile to Mbanta, and he arrives to see missionaries have overtaken the village, created a government, and many Umuofians have joined the church. As Okonkwo and his friend Obierika are talking, Obierika says of the missionaries and their impact, “He says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us?...He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart” (176). The white men and missionaries have been successful in coming in and gaining power. They believe the customs to be “bad”, showing their disregard of Ibo culture, and how their motives for infiltrating Ibo life is based off of selfish ideas- only to gain more followers to their religion. Furthermore, by actually being successful in drawing Umuofians into their religion, they have turned

When the new religion is brought over by the white men, Okonkwo strongly opposes to it because he felt that its qualities display weakness and would destroy the Ibo culture. He refused to change and stuck to his old ways, but as more and more of his clansmen convert, Okonkwo sees his world start to crumble. “Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer stand as one” (Achebe 176). His clan slowly divides into two clear-cut sides, but the Ibo people didn’t want to fight back the new religion. As a result, Christianity took over everything, from the government, to the judicial system. Feeling powerless, Okonkwo commits his final act of vengeance and kills a messenger, committing suicide soon after. If the Umoufia had tried to fight back Christianity, they wouldn’t have loss so much power this quickly. This reluctance was due to the absence of

Chinua Achebe’s novel “Things Fall Apart” chronicles the life of Okonkwo, a strong man whose existence is dominated by fear and anger, and the Ibo tribe, a people deeply rooted in cultural belief and tradition. As events unfold, Okonkwo’s carefully constructed world and the Ibo way of life collapses. The story of Okonkwo’s fall from a respected and feared leader of the Ibo tribe to an outcast who dies in disgrace dramatizes his inability to evolve beyond his personal beliefs, affecting the entire Ibo tribe beyond measure. The “things” that fall apart in Achebe’s novel are Okonkwo’s life – his ambition, dreams, family unity and material wealth – and the Ibo way of life – their beliefs, culture and values.

Okonkwo’s culture tells him to beat what he cannot fix, this idea evolved from his father, his mother culture and the lazy ways that came with it. The major factors that shape Nwoye’s view on a culture are his father, his mother culture and the white man. Along with Christianity he completely destroys the values of Okonkwo’s culture. “ Nwoye had been attracted to the new faith from the very first day, but he kept it a secret”(Achebe 149). Nwoye is too afraid of his father, as is, symbolically the clashing culture afraid of the mother culture and the outcome of the clash. The notion of the white man, along with Christianity assimilates Nwoye and his culture. And the factors above shape the view of what he wants a culture to be.

Okonkwo is a strong and confident man who has vowed to never be like his father Unoka. His father was lazy, unsuccessful and carried no titles. The relationship between Okonkwo and his father motivated Okonkwo to gain titles and become successful inside the clan. In this sense, Okonkwo has gained many titles, has three wives, and respected by the clan. Okonkwo chose to feel that identity in the clan was most important, and through this he had become a presence in the clan, noticed by the elders. However after the arrival of missionaries, who had come to convert the clans to Christianity, Okonkwo’s view is completely contradicted by the missionaries. Okonkwo had grown accustomed to members of the clan being ranked by certain tiers, while the

       The book Things Fall Apart successfully expressed how Chinua Achebe had succeeded in writing a different story. It pointed out the conflict of oneself, the traditional beliefs, and the religious matters of the Africans. Throughout the novel, Chinua Achebe used simple but dignified words and unlike other books, he also included some flashbacks and folktales to make the novel more interesting and comprehensible. Things Fall Apart was about a man named Okonkwo, who was always struggling with his inner fear although he was known for being a strong, powerful, and fearless warior. He feared of weakness, and failure more than the fear of losing