Chinua Achebe 's Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo was never nice to his family, in fact he was very brutal with them. He was always afraid to become like his father, in any aspect, because he always saw his father as weak and a failure. If he showed any of that to his family he thought he would become like his father. “Even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told

What would you do if Christianity came and took over your world? In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, describes a man who was affected by Christianity which not only destroyed him but also his family and his tribe. Okonkwo is the main character who faces the demise of his world when the missionaries came in and took over his world. Okonkwo is a very independent, impatient African leader and is affected by Christianity, impacting the way he is accepted back into Umofia or the way he lives. Achebe 's description of life in the village after colonization, helps to create a setting that condemns colonization. In the Caryl Phillips interview, Achebe believes that “Conrad is for the colonizing mission, and he concedes that the novel, in part,

In the story Things Fall Apart the author, Chinua Achebe, uses the character Okonkwo to show that a man’s hubris can one day lead to a terrible fate. Achebe does this by having the main character Okonkwo struggle with keeping his life together. As Victor Uchendu talks about life in The Igbo World “is an equilibrium that is constantly threatened, and sometimes actually disturbed by natural and social calamities”(Uchendu 227). In the beginning of the story Okonkwo starts off as the strongest character when he defeats “Amalinize the Cat” (Achebe 3). This shows the reader that Okonkwo is the strongest and is determined to stay the strongest. Achebe uses certain events later in the story to foreshadow that Okonkwo will soon meet a terrible fate by having him kill Ikemefuna, by having him get kicked out of his village, by having the British change his son, and by displaying his rage and despair at the end of the story.

Okonkwo is driven by a fear, the fear of being like his father, a person that is regarded as a waste, a lazy, feminine man. This fear pushes Okonkwo to be hard working. “But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness” (Things Fall Apart, 21). This quote shows how Okonkwo is fearful, stating exactly that his entire life he is been chasing this fear. The fear of failure is what makes Okonkwo so broad and powerful. “Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (Things Fall Apart, 21) is another example of where fear is linking his fear to his father. This pushes the idea that Okonkwo’s father is bad and Okonkwo needs to be something else. However, Okonkwo’s father wasn’t a particular bad person, he just wasn’t what the Igbo people thought a man should be like. This also adds to Okonkwo’s drive for success, he works his fields thoroughly, plants and weeds meticulously, all of this stemming from that fear of becoming his father.

Throughout Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo portrays a more austere type of person, only wanting to succeed in life to not become a failure like his father, Unoka. Achebe shows that Okonkwo cares for Ezinma most when he follows her to the cave. However, Okonkwo will never quite accept her fully because she is a woman.

Chinua Achebe’s portrayal of the role of women is significant because it disproves the stereotypes of non-western society. In Igbo society, women have many roles both in the household and in the village. “Igbo women [have] rights and freedoms”, such as “cook[ing] for themselves and rais[ing] their own children” (Ohadike xxxii). Because women are tasked with these important duties, women are very important. In Igbo society, sometimes women have more freedom than in other societies (such as western).

Have you even wondered what it was like in Africa after all of the slave trades, wars, and mass colonization were gone? Did Europe finally leave them alone or just dig themselves deeper into a hole? The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is an emotional tale of a man named Okonkwo who lives in the Ibo village in Nigeria. Okonkwo is a very powerful man in his tribe, after working his way up from the nothing that his father was. He eventually gets ban from the village because of a mistake that he made and returns to white, European, Christians who have taken over in hopes of spreading Christianity. Consequently, all of the events that happen because of them, lead Okonkwo to hang himself. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the white

Chinua Achebe’s first novel, “Things Fall Apart” takes place in Umuofia, Nigeria in the 19th century. Okonkwo, the protagonist, was a respected, strong leader of the Ibo clan providing for his three wives and their children. His father was a failure, making Okonkwo’s greatest fear being seen as a weak failure, but this also makes Okonkwo strive for success. “His whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness“ (2. 12). With his drive to succeed, Okonkwo managed to make many poor decisions resulting in unwanted consequences. Okonkwo is an exact representation of a western tragic hero in the novel, “Things Fall Apart.”

In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the Igbo’s way of marriage is vaguely defined throughout this universal book. For the Igbo men it is not uncommon to have more than one wife and many mouths to feed. For Igbo women it is normal to not receive a lot of affection, if any at all, from their husbands. Why is this?

Have you ever met a father and son that have very different perspectives on life? Well this is the exact issue that comes up in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo and his son have been raised in very different households, with extremely different circumstances. They also have conflicting ideas when it comes to religion. This makes the white man’s arrival a crucial time in the pair’s relationship.

In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe conflict is almost inevitable when two cultures come into contact. Okonkwo has a normal life as a male villager he has to grow his yams and live normal but when foreigners show up conflict occurs. This is shown in the book by showing the villagers saying to the white men to build their church in the evil forest and the white men go on and do it. This attracts some of the villagers to this which leads to major conflict in the village and they start to attack each other by burning things and arresting each other. It does not have to lead to conflict right away but it does happen at some point hence the name Things Fall Apart when the Christians first arrive all is ok but later on it all breaks loose. By looking

When outsiders encounter a culture unlike their own they tend to make misconceptions about that culture. The British see the Igbo culture as dark and gory. Achebe sees it as a fully functioning society. The Nigerian community may seem odd and not functional when in actuality it is functional. For a society to be functional, it must have a culture as well as properties of a civilization. The British judge it as dysfunctional, but this is irrelevant to whether the society truly is or isn’t functional. The Nigerian society fulfills many, if not all, of the properties of a functioning society. Despite the negative stereotyping of the Igbo culture by the British, Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart shows a fully functioning society.

For the duration of the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the role of religion and tradition is a very important part of the characters lives. It decides how they live their life and decides their fate. Some of the customs that are practiced in this culture may not be accepted and are frowned upon by the western cultures. One example of this is that they think that in some cases a child should be killed or that the spirits of the dead must be appeased. Thinking this could create a consequence with the white men. They feel the need to “save” the natives from themselves.

Things Fall Apart is a novel of a man whose life is dominated by both fear and anger. Okonkwo was very well known throughout nine villages and even beyond. As a young man he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze, the cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten from Umuofia to Mbaino (Achebe, 1994, p. 3). Drums were beaten and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath, Amalinze was a wily craftsman but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Okonkwo fame grew rapidly as he had taken down the cat. Everyone now looked up to him and saw him as fierce warrior of the clan (Achebe, 1994).

In many societies, your gender or race would put you at a disadvantage and while we still face struggles of accepting others differences like gender today, these don’t compare to the struggles we see in the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. In this book, Okonkwo’s villages in Nigeria face the struggles of European imperialism and he refuses to be pushed from his views on polygamy or where women should stand in society. He would not let go of the views he stood for and in the end, he did not want to be “pacified”, finally leading to his death. Okonkwo’s views that men are superior while degrading all women to a weak and soft category with no power in society would affect his daughter Ezinma’s and son Nwoye's lives, although his societies